With the launch of the IgoUgo Community Table, we joined a growing contingent of travelers focusing on food. One exciting offshoot of this trend is the booming foodie-travel blogosphere, and these 14 standouts will whet your appetite.
DavidLebovitz.com
A window into the chocolate-glazed kitchen of esteemed pastry chef David Lebovitz would be a thrill under any circumstance, but the fact that he writes about his culinary adventures from his home in Paris elevates this blog to even chicer levels. If you’re hooked on his cooking and writing—and you will be—the dessert connoisseur offers chocolate tours of Paris. Failing that, check out his recommendations for the best eats in the City of Light and elsewhere.
101 Cookbooks
Heidi Swanson began blogging about food in 2003 with the premise, “When you own over 100 cookbooks, it is time to stop buying, and start cooking.” Since delving into her library, she’s moved on to creating her own recipes: this blog helped spawn two cookbooks of her own. Along the way, she’s shared her travels through the language of food; in Rome, we can almost taste her “sludgy, unctuous and dark layer of strong and sweet espresso granita sandwiched between two billowy clouds of unsweetened whipped cream.” From that treat to dishes in Sri Lanka, New Zealand, and her own kitchen, Swanson—and her globetrotting fans—will leave you hungry for more.
Chocolate & Zucchini
There’s a reason that Chocolate & Zucchini enjoys such a fervent following of foodies, and her name is Clotilde Dusoulier. You couldn’t dream up a lovelier companion for cooking or for traveling than this Parisian; luckily, the charming gourmet invites readers on her Nutella-ice-cream- and warm-Hokkaido-squash-filled adventures (sometimes literally).
The Traveler’s Lunchbox
Melissa Kronenthal packs her Traveler’s Lunchbox chock-full of tales from her home base in Scotland and from around the world. You’ve got to love a guide who wraps her head around a new destination by visiting its supermarket, and whom you can count on to take a gorgeous photo of Calabria’s beaches—and then an equally gorgeous photo of its sardines.
Pinch My Salt
After four years living and blogging in Sicily, Nicole recently moved back to the US, and she brought her passion for food and travel (Transylvanian kurtoskalacs, anyone?) with her. She also managed to bring her sourdough starter, but that’s another story.
Delicious Days
Whether cooking for friends in Munich or booking it across America’s highways to arrive in time for reservations at The French Laundry, Chez Panisse, and L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon, Nicky and Oliver are entertaining blog hosts. Between their culinary skills and love of travel, we’d hop in a car with them any day (especially en route to The French Laundry).
Food Vagabond
Let us count the ways we love these Rome-based (for now) writers. For one thing, their “about the bloggers” blurb is, rather, a confession: “When we travel we first look for good food and wine. And sometimes we travel only because of good food and wine.” Secondly, they’re not afraid to break rules (typical post: “This Pizza Does Not Conform with My ‘Rules for a Good Pizza’ - But I Love It!”). And third, they can dish up genuine insiders’ dining guides to Rome, Istanbul, Munich, Madrid, Stuttgart, and more.
Chubby Hubby
Between yummy assignments like photographing Lonely Planet’s World Food Malaysia and Singapore guide, the husband-and-wife team at Chubby Hubby blogs about their travels and meals. Recent posts have come from Turkey, Bhutan, and Thailand, but their world isn’t all fried hornets and other exotic treats; they also mangent Paris like pros.
La Tartine Gourmande
Warning: Don’t go to La Tartine Gourmande hungry. Béa, the Boston-based French Gourmande behind the blog, takes such beautiful photographs of her dishes (like drop-dead gorgeous beets—really) that you’ll want to nibble your computer screen. She offers equally vivid shots of her travels to places like Peru and Australia—and, of course, France. The photos are accompanied by wonderful stories, recommendations, and directions for finding places she’s scouted. A perfect guide to eating well.
chez pim
Pim’s posts are sometimes awash in Michelin stars, but she banishes any hints of pretension right away with her blog’s title and subtitle: “chez pim: not an arbiter of taste.” She injects her recipe posts and restaurant reviews with humor, and she may well have the best food stories ever (read: “How I went to dinner and came home with a cow”). And her photos are worthy accompaniments to the tales; the pictures of faces seen on her travels are particularly engaging.
Rambling Spoon
If Karen Coates’ spoon serves as her entrée to new cultures, it’s been kept quite busy: the Gourmet correspondent has twice lived in Cambodia and currently calls Chiang Mai, Thailand, home. Her blog offers snippets about food cultures from the Himalayas to New Mexico, all beautifully told. You’ll want to join her on these “adventures with food and things that sure looked like food when she stuck them in her mouth.”
Nordljus
Well-stocked with substantive eye candy, food photographer Keiko’s blog is visually stunning. And from the looks of her cooking experiments, she’s as talented in the kitchen as she is behind the camera. This skill and enthusiasm extends to her trips, of course, and the result is post after post of delicious imagery from England, Japan, Europe, and beyond.
Movable Feast
Louisa Chu is a chef, food writer, and TV producer based in Paris and Chicago; her many hats (and places to hang them) prove a winning combination. You can catch her on PBS’ Gourmet’s Diary of a Foodie, and online in between episodes. She has the scoop on foodies in the media—even at the Emmys!—and on local happenings in her cities (Charlie Trotter Day in Chicago? Who knew?!).
Writing With My Mouth Full
“It was only in the last couple of years that I realized I liked food so much I was willing to write about it,” says cia_b, the Filipino cooking, eating, and traveling maven behind Writing With My Mouth Full. We’re lucky she did; it’s not often that someone can make us salivate over a perfect duck confit or a steaming bowl of tripe and blood stew—all with stunning photographs and equally tempting recipes from her home kitchen. The bonus: she writes about her travels at IgoUgo too.