dinner party dazzler

“UNHURRIED” WOULD PROBABLY be the best word for the way Frédéric Eliot cooks leg of lamb in the kitchens he oversees. At Scales—restaurateur Dana Street’s classic seafood spot in Portland, Maine—the French-born chef stuffs local…

I HATE GOING to barbecues,” a vegetarian friend once confided as she poked at flavorless charred zucchini and bell peppers, an obvious afterthought by our host that evening. That’s why the grilled avocado made such an impression…

ALL THAT BUZZ A drizzle of honey is optional here. But its sweetness, acidity and umami quality lend depth to high-summer…

STICK WITH ME. I’ll get to the soufflés. I’ve been thinking about a scene in “Mad Men” where the lead character, Don Draper, goes to watch his daughter in a school maypole performance. I’m not sure whether it was in…

BACK IN 2018, we wrote a book called “Brunch Is Hell,” in which we declared the dinner party the cornerstone of civilization—and brunch its evil antithesis. Unlike brunchers at a restaurant, we noted, dinner party hosts selflessly welcome…

FOR YEARS, the American food story has been primarily told as a white food story. The Netflix series “High on the Hog: How African American Food Transformed America” seeks to change that. Much of the…

HELLO SUNSHINE In this recipe, green mango brings bright flavor and color to punchy, herbaceous chimichurri sauce.…

IT’S BEEN A BUSY year for Portland, Ore., chef Gregory Gourdet. For five months, at the height of the pandemic, he ran Kann, a Haitian-inspired pop-up and outdoor yurt village. He also entered a pod of 180 people to film the…