Taxi Gourmet – Fasten your seat belt and let the food quest begin…

2015 was a good year to be a passionate eater in Berlin. When I landed here in 2010, this was still a city where many people avoided restaurants altogether. And now? Berlin is drawing more and more young chefs and restaurateurs. Compared to Paris, London and New York, the barriers …

Photo: Rumen Milkow Something remarkable happened on the way to the movies a few weeks ago: Rumen and I hopped in a cab with a driver named Aziz – who used to make his living selling pieces of the Berlin Wall, and who’s been driving a taxi for 16 years …

Photo by Rumen Milkow Before he started driving a taxi 16 years ago, Aziz made his living selling pieces of the Berlin Wall. From 1990 to 1995 — his first years in Berlin — he manned a souvenir stand at Brandenburg Gate, learning German, observing the tourists, watching some of …

A burly, broad-shouldered man with a mop of black-brown curls who might be in his early 50s, Osman maneuvers his taxi with a light touch, like a piano player who enjoys an easy relationship with the keys. The expression on his face is not the expression you would expect of …

There aren’t too many cabbies in this world who can pull off a purple fedora and “make a potato salad that’ll slap your mama.” Constance Marie Barnes is one of them. The diminutive cabby, whom I met in 2010, also recommended what is to this day one of my favorite …

I don’t know about you, but I’m obsessed with maps, and I couldn’t resist creating ones with all the cabby-recommended restaurants I wrote about in Driving Hungry. The map above is from the New York section of the book: At each marker, I’ve included a few lines from the story. …

We’re taking this book on the road! If you’re in any of these seven cities, I hope you can join me for an evening of stories about hunger and wanderlust: New York: Monday, July 27, 2015 – 7:00PM – McNally Jackson Books, 52 Prince Street Washington, DC: Tuesday, July 28, …

It’s Independence Day in Argentina, and I thought I’d celebrate from afar by re-posting the story of one of my all-time favorite Buenos Aires taxi adventures. I’ve been back to Albamonte many times since taxista Antonio dropped us off here, and I’ve never been disappointed. It isn’t only the thin-crust …

This is the second in a series of posts about how I got my book deal, i.e. how Taxi Gourmet led to Driving Hungry. In Part I, I wrote about how I found my agent. In Part III, I’ll write about refining my book proposal and closing the book deal. …

Berlin is crawling with lebenskünstlers – so-called “life artists” who put their talent into their work and their genius into their lives. A man who calls himself TaxiBerlin drives among them, writing “Autofiktion,” taking photos, and reading all the European literature he can get his hands on while he’s waiting …

My three German co-adventurers and I had no idea that our taxi driver had steered us to the birthplace of döner kebab when he dropped us off at Hasir Restaurant in Kreuzberg last week – nor that Anthony Bourdain had also tasted the lamb there when he visited Berlin. Stay tuned for …

Hagan Blount is a hungry man on a New York mission: “For thirty-one days straight, I will eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner at NYC’s best restaurants with more than 60 of the city’s most influential food writers, blogging our every bite.” On Monday, I joined him for two of his …

There is a lot of bad baklava in this world. If you,ve ever fallen victim to soggy, honey-soaked, butter-laden pastry where nuts get lost and no amount of strong coffee can beat back the sweetness, you know what I,m talking about. The only thing bad about the baklava at Güllüoglu …

When Martín the taxista dropped me off at Don Lechón during last week’s taxi adventure, he was kind enough to let me in on another secret: La Mezzetta. “Everyone is nuts about this pizzeria,” he said, “It’s not my favorite – I don’t like their dough. But you should probably …

For most of us, having a precise replica watch on our wrist helps us get our daily tasks done on time. It’s the difference between missing a train, being late for a meeting or being late, and even earning a good or bad reputation. Yet the reliability and accuracy of …

When it comes to choosing between a black or blue Rolex submarine watch, some people have a hard time deciding. Style and price are crucial factors to consider. Let’s look at the Rolex Submariner 116618LN and 116619, which are essentially identical watches, despite a few key differences. So to understand …

A few days ago I met a Berlin taxi driver named Zlatan who told me his favorite place to eat is Rogacki, the superdeli/marketplace in Charlottenburg that started out as a smoked fish stand back in 1928. Once a week, Zlatan stops by the cafeteria at Rogacki for fried codfish …

Sometimes the cab ride, and the conversation with the driver, is the most remarkable part of a taxi adventure. Sometimes it’s the food. When I was living in New York, the trip with Vinod Dogra to Ganapati Temple Canteen in Flushing, Queens was one of those rare and wonderful instances …