A fascinating set of photographs by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio have been making the rounds this week. The pair traveled around the world in 2007, photographing families displaying one week’s worth of food – a striking set of images now published in their book, Hungry Planet: What the World Eats. You can easily scroll through hi-res copies of some of the images on imgur, but it would be worth your while to slog through Menzel and D’Aluisio’s work in a series two galleries published by TIME in 2007 (galleries one, and two here, as well as a third gallery with other images from the book), since they feature information on each family’s location, weekly expenditures, and favorite meals, as well as the full set of 27 images (not all of which are on imgur).
The Celik family of Istanbul. We’d like to stay with them!
As revealing as these photographs are, they raise as many questions about the relationship between class, nationality, ethnicity, and access to food; as well as the obvious representativeness of each family of their national origin (this is easily dealt with in the original book, but imgur leaves out all the identifying information so that each photo is just labeled with a country.) Interest and criticism aside, can we just say, can we have Menzel and D’Aluisio’s job? What lucky people to have so many families invite them into their homes – we’re sure they had many good meals come out of the project!
Living in Chicago spoils one for taco choices: there are amazing taquerias everywhere, from the high-end fancy places to tried-and-true local establishments, and the price is nearly always right. But Brazil seems to have the opposite problem: Salvador has but a few Mexican restaurants, and Rio de Janeiro even less, proportionately. However, Mexican food fans in Rio now have a new option. The relatively new restaurant Azteka, 
We enjoy latte art, though it usually doesn’t go much beyond a leaf or a heart. However, 
M does not like cappuccino. Or coffee of any kind. At least this is the story he told himself, until an encounter with the most delectable, sweet, delicious coffee drink he has ever sampled: the famous cappuccino at Rio de Janeiro’s landmark 
We recently wrote about the boom of 
It is not a secret that we love 
Rio de Janeiro is full of middle-Eastern restaurants, ranging from
We are very excited about 
Welcome to the inaugural post of our new feature profiling African foods and drinks (plus other gastronomical related subjects); and the people on the continent and in the diaspora that are defining and reshaping our ideas and tastes of these. We’ll call it “Africa is a Kitchen”. To kick off the series, we will be speaking to a Chef in the diaspora who is defining African cuisine both on the continent and in the diaspora. Pierre Thiam is a chef, restaurateur, and cookbook author. He was raised in Dakar, Senegal. Thiam moved to New York in the late eighties and started working in various restaurants in the city. In 2003, Thiam opened his first restaurant, Yolele, a visionary African bistro and his second restaurant, Le Grand-Dakar Restaurant, opened in 2004 in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. Thiam now runs a catering and gastronomy consultancy: Pierre Thiam Catering. In addition to his work…
