The beat of New York is the beat to which Abu moves. Watching him weave through the midday traffic heading uptown on Third Avenue, I wondered if it was the city that had made him so frenetic. Or was it taxi driving? Or was he just fast and furious by …
Read More »From Blog to Book, Part 5: Revising the Manuscript
This is the fifth in a six-part series of posts about how Taxi Gourmet, the blog, led to Driving Hungry, the book. Photo by Autofiktion.com “A poem is never finished,” wrote W.H. Auden. “It is simply abandoned.” This became my mantra as I went through the process of revising …
Read More »L.A. Dispatch: Circling back to Fish Tacos
My uncle checking out Holé Molé on Obispo. He used to live in the apartment in back of the restaurant. Every year, at least once a year, I fly to California to visit my family in Long Beach, and every year, we take a bittersweet drive to 421 Obispo …
Read More »Berlin Dispatch: Best Thai in Town?
“Maybe it’s one of the best Thai in town,” Rumen told me, as he led me into an indoor mall on Frankfurter Allee, to a restaurant called Sala Thai, at the beginning of our taxi-food tour of Berlin. Sala Thai is sandwiched between the post office and a Mäc-Geiz, …
Read More »From Blog to Book, Part 4: Writing the Manuscript
This is the fourth in a series of posts about how Taxi Gourmet the blog led to Driving Hungry the book. In Part 1, I wrote about how I found my agent. In Part 2, I described what went into writing my book proposal. In Part 3, I talked about …
Read More »Update: Time Traveling with Troy (and Sad News re: El Quijote)
To ride in Troy Johnson’s cab was to get a taste of New York City in its glory days. To eat at El Quijote, his favorite restaurant in Manhattan, on the ground floor of the Chelsea Hotel, was to be transported to another time and place. So you can understand …
Read More »New York Dispatch: On a Food Quest with DJ Bad Vegan
One of my goals in 2015 – besides eating more – is to crowdsource the food quests: I would love, love, love to start publishing stories of your taxi adventures here, in any city, in any form – whether photo, video, or (50 to 500-word) postcards in text, like this …
Read More »Berlin Dispatch: My 8 Favorite Cheap Eats of 2014
I spent more time with my manuscript than doing taxi adventures in 2014, so this list is a little thin. I hereby resolve to make it fatter in 2015. In any case, I wanted to tell you about a few of my favorite dishes from this past year – some …
Read More »From Blog to Book, Part 3: The Anatomy of a Book Deal
This is the third in a series of posts about how Taxi Gourmet the blog led to Driving Hungry the book. In Part 1, I wrote about how I found my agent. In Part 2, I described what went into writing my book proposal. In Part 4, I’ll talk about …
Read More »Berlin Dispatch: Musa’s Grill
Lamb ‘antrikote’ at Maranda. Photo by autofiktion.com I have to confess I’m a little rusty, not to mention a little resistant, when it comes to jumping back into the taxi adventures after spending most of the last two years sitting at my computer, writing about taxi adventures gone by. …
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