Comstock's magazine • 12th November 2024

Late-Night Dining Returns to Sacramento

When the pandemic put a plug on nightlife, some of the spots that fed that world either whittled down their hours or closed outright. There are few Sacramentans who aren’t mourning at least one, tied to memories of the nameless but necessary meals that nourish sleepless nights.

Photo by Hana Urank, courtesy of Tio Moncho’s

LA Taco • 12th July 2024

North Pole Tacos

We found birria at Tio Moncho’s, the world’s northernmost taquería, on a recent spring day, while seeking warmth deep in the Arctic Circle. Other than that, life here is pretty normal—people go to work, get drunk, fall in love, and long for tacos.

Courrier International • 13th June 2024

Mes festins artiques

French translation of "Dining in the Dark."

Financial Times • 20th April 2024

Dining in the Dark

Though much has been written about the hidden paladares of Havana, the seven-course cenone of Italy, I doubt there are many cities in the world with a dinner scene as thriving and vital as that in Longyearbyen. These private gatherings are especially important in the polar night that lasts from mid-November to the end of January, when home-cooked meals and close friendship provide the light and warmth we need to get through the long months without the sun.

Eater • 13th July 2022

Kimchi With a Side of Whale

(Best American Food Writing, James Beard finalist) An Iñupiat staple and its unexpectedly perfect Korean complement bring Alaska’s many cultures together on the plate.

Time • 21st October 2022

Soil’s Power as a Climate Solution Has Often Been Overlooked. Until Now

Soil, that layer of organic material and crushed-up rock that covers much of the terrestrial earth like a chocolate coating, contains about 2,500 billion metric tons of carbon. It’s the second-biggest carbon sink on the planet after the ocean, currently holding about three times as much carbon as the atmosphere. Some scientists and activists think it could do even more.

Time • 14th October 2022

Here’s How The Ocean is Being Harnessed as a Climate Solution

The ocean’s ability to absorb carbon and stabilize the climate is attracting attention from scientists and companies alike looking for ways to counteract the rise of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

Time • 17th October 2022

The Complicated Popularity of Net-Zero Emissions Climate Targets

Whether it’s a public learning laboratory, nonprofit organization, small business, corporation, or government doing the math, achieving net-zero involves balancing an equation.

Ambrook • 28th March 2024

The World’s Fattest Deer Are Doing Just Fine

Svalbard reindeer, the northernmost subspecies of Rangifer tarandus, has flesh so richly striated with fat that it forms a sheen around the mouths of those who eat it, leaving visible kisses on the rims of glasses. When fried in a pan, it browns like bacon in its own rendered grease. Stews made with Svalbard reindeer form a thick seal of fat as they cool, as cream rises to the top of fresh milk.

Comstock's magazine • 12th August 2022

The Seeds of Conflict

This year, overzealous Instagrammers are the least of sunflower farmers’ troubles. The region’s most photogenic crop is facing a barrage of challenges, including supply issues related to the war in Ukraine, global currency volatility and drought.

Atlas Obscura • 15th March 2024

The World's Northernmost Town Toasts the Sun With Mangosteens

The sun rose in Longyearbyen, Norway—the world’s northernmost town—for the first time on March 8, after more than four months below the horizon. Meanwhile, at Svalbardbutikken, the local supermarket, another long-awaited sight returned: the annual Solfestuka Fruktfest, or “Sun Week Fruit Party.”

Esquire magazine • 23rd February 2024

Filipinos Run the World’s Northernmost Sushi Restaurant

Some days, there is no tuna at Nuga, the world’s northernmost sushi restaurant. Restaurants in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago just 400 miles from the North Pole, depend on air deliveries for fresh fish and other perishables; the weather is occasionally so rough that no planes can land.

Eater • 13th July 2022

How Filipino Adobo Became a Southeast Alaska Staple

“You Filipinos may have invented chicken adobo,” says Chuck Miller, a.k.a. Daanaxh.ils’eikh, the cultural liaison of the Sitka Tribe, “but we Tlingit perfected it.”

San Francisco Chronicle • 18th October 2022

There’s a whole world of Filipino vinegars. Will they finally go mainstream?

At modern Filipino restaurant Abaca, the longanisa skewers come with a glass dish of vinegar, an egg yolk floating on the surface like a rising moon. The vinegar, sepia-toned and turbid, is a reduction of sukang iloko, a speciality of the Ilocos region in northern Luzon that’s fermented from sugarcane wine. Breaking the yolk sends Van Gogh swirls into the dark.

Comstock's magazine • 23rd May 2022

The Might of Mycelium

The goddess Fermentia looms over The Better Meat Co.’s production facility in West Sacramento. In a digital painting that hangs above the entrance to the fermentation room, she resembles a shieldmaiden from Norse mythology — though dressed in a lab coat and sensible shoes. A supplication is printed below her sneakered feet: “Oh Fermentia, please protect us from contamination and bad data."

ABS-CBN News • 16th February 2020

Migratory species: The Filipina fish processors of the Faroe Islands (Doreen Gamboa Fernandez Food Writing Award Winner)

Rowena Bech still remembers the salmon factory. “It’s hard work,” she told me, when I visited her one-year-old Filipino buffet in Vágur, a sleepy village on the southernmost of the Faroe Islands.

San Francisco Chronicle • 23rd May 2022

The legacy of slain Oakland restaurateur: Lucky Three Seven is about more than Filipino food

There was a line outside Lucky Three Seven in Oakland this weekend, though not for the spicy-sweet G-Fire Wings or shatteringly crisp, fried-to-order lumpia that put the Filipino restaurant on the map after it opened in 2013. Instead, friends and family gathered to leave offerings of flowers, candles and twisted bicho-bicho doughnuts at a memorial for co-owner Artger “Jun” Anabo, who was shot outside the restaurant last week.

Comstock's magazine • 16th February 2022

The New Fusion Food

The Capital Region has long been a blended place, home to one of the country’s most ethnically diverse populations for decades. The region’s young restaurateurs are increasingly opening concepts that reflect the experience of living and eating in a diverse place, rather than hewing to an amber-glazed idea of authenticity.

Comstock's magazine • 11th May 2021

How Cornish Pasties Got to California

On the counter of Marshall’s Pasties in Grass Valley, next to a few of the awards the 53-year-old shop has accumulated, there’s a blackened metal lunch pail. It doesn’t look like much against the stacks of plaques and framed certificates, but the pail is a direct connection to the mines that once powered this gold rush town.

ABS-CBN News • 1st March 2020

The Mountain Maiden of the Seas (Doreen Gamboa Fernandez Food Writing Award Winner)

In Capiz, I served the dalagang bukid simply, fried in the charcoal-fired “dirty kitchen” with a side of ensaladang ampalaya. I’ve had it rarely since; Caesio cuning is hard to find outside of her Southeast Asia, and I’ve spent the past five years traveling far afield. Yet I think of her often.