If you’ve heard of Whistler, the mountain town in British Columbia, it’s probably for the skiing. But Whistler has aspirations of being more than just a magnet for downhill enthusiasts.  Taking a page out of Aspen’s book, it fancies itself an emerging center of food, wine and culture.  So, once a year, the town throws a big, 10-day party of nearly non-stop, over-the-top eating and drinking.  I checked out the festivities recently for Canadian Geographic Travel magazine and also handled the photography for the article. 

Eat. Play. Repeat.

Story and photography by Remy Scalza for Canadian Geographic Travel
(For the magazine version with photos, click here: Eat Play Repeat)

Inside the kitchen of Araxi Restaurant + Bar in Whistler’s Village Square, it’s the calm before the storm. On a crisp Wednesday afternoon in November, executive chef James Walt has come in early to prepare for a meal two nights away. “Expectations are extremely high,” he says, looking up from straining jus for a Wagyu beef cheek. “The type of people who come to Big Guns know their stuff.”

One of Canada’s premier chefs — not to mention good buddies with Gordon Ramsay — Walt is not easily intimidated. But then he’s not preparing for any ordinary dinner. A seven-course, $250-a-plate affair, Big Guns is the culinary climax of Cornucopia, the gastronomic highlight of the year in a town that loves to eat nearly as much as it loves to ski.

For a week or so each fall, gourmands assemble in the Whistler mountains for a celebration of food and wine that would leave Bacchus blushing. Five-, seven- and 10-course dinners are de rigueur. Gala tastings showcase hundreds of wines. Brunches are champagne-paired and afternoon tea comes with martinis. After dark, even party-hardy Whistler is stretched to new extremes with swanky fetes that carry on deep into the autumn night.

In Walt’s kitchen, stockpots are bubbling. Cooks crowd in, clamouring for his attention. It’s my cue to go, but before I do, the chef lets me in on his secret weapon for the big dinner. “White Alba truffles,” he says, raising an eyebrow conspiratorially. “The real deal.” Truffles, of course, are a foodie’s best friend. White Alba truffles — so rare they wholesale for upward of $7,000 a kilo — are the crème de la crème. “It’s gonna blow them away,” he says. [Read more…]

Portland is justly known as the birthplace of America’s craft-brewing renaissance.  A quarter-century ago, Portlanders were experimenting with hoppy new home-brewed concoctions, while the rest of the country was still happily debating the merits of Miller Lite (Great taste! Less Filling!).  These days, of course, craft beer is everywhere.  Yet Portland is still decisively ahead of the curve.  I checked out some of the city’s latest brewing experiments – including bottled beers aged like wine and sour brews inoculated with yogurt cultures – for an article in the Washington Post.

In Portland, Ore., Craft Brewing Reaches New Heights

It’s no secret that Portland, Ore., is the center of the craft beer universe. In the late 1980s, when most drinkers were still chugging light beers and lapping up the antics of Spuds MacKenzie, Portland brewmeisters were turning out flavorful artisan suds modeled after European exemplars. Fast-forward a quarter-century, and craft beer culture has gone global. Fizzy yellow beers are positively passe, and even casual drinkers these days know their IPAs from their hefs and pilsners.

Yet Portland remains in a league of its own, pushing craft brewing to new, hoppy and occasionally weird heights.For tippling travelers and beer snobs, it’s a liquid Shangri-La.

And the vanguard of Portland’s craft brewing scene may well be the Central Eastside. Well off the tourist map, the gritty ’hood sits across the Willamette River from downtown Portland. Here, railroad tracks and buzzing interstates give way to a post-industrial panorama: block after block of aging factories, brick warehouses and auto-repair shops. Yet in recent years, vintage boutiques, cafes and brew pubs have begun popping up, the advance guard of a wave of urban renewal. For thirsty locals (and intrepid travelers), the Central Eastside is fast becoming the place to sample cutting-edge brews.

My first stop is the Cascade Brewing Barrel House, on busy Belmont Street in the industrial heart of the Eastside. On a sunny afternoon, dozens of bicycles are locked to the patio railing — a clear vote of approval from Portland’s bike-riding, beer-swilling hipsters. I make my way through the beer garden out front and into the barrel house, where no fewer than 23 house beers are on tap, from hoppy IPAs to farmhouse-style saisons and straw-colored pilsners.

Read the full article on the Washington Post website here.

South Texas might not immediately bring to mind an ecological paradise.  The Lower Rio Grande Valley, where the U.S. meets Mexico, has more than its share of R.V. parks, big box stores and barbecue shacks.  But it also happens to have more than half the bird species ever recorded on the continent – 500-plus and counting.  The green sliver of fertile land along the river draws species from throughout North and South America, not to mention a very special breed of birdwatcher – the avid lister.  I spent some time recently with birdwatching’s super fans for an article published in Canadian Geographic Travel magazine.  I also did the photography.

Rare Birds: Spread your wings with birdwatching’s elite guard in south Texas

On a muggy April morning near the banks of the Rio Grande in south Texas’ Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, a little bird is causing a big fuss. Dull brown and no bigger than a robin, she flits among a canopy of cedar elm and Texas ebony hung with tendrils of Spanish moss. Nearby, an arsenal of binoculars, military-grade scopes and camera lenses the size of bazookas zooms in for a better view.

The bird: a clay-coloured thrush. Her admirers: birders, and not the backyard variety. I’m among avid listers — birdwatching’s elite guard. Uniformed in sensible shoes, sun visors and khakis, listers can ID a warbler at 50 metres. Some plan vacations around migrations. Others think nothing of spending days in the rain to glimpse a rare goose. And, naturally, they keep lists: compulsive, lifelong tallies of every thrush, sandpiper, tern, owl, titmouse and tanager ever sighted.

It’s no accident that birding’s cognoscenti have gathered here at Santa Ana. To the uninitiated, south Texas, with its sprawling RV parks, strip malls and barbecue shacks, might seem an unlikely eco mecca. But the Lower Rio Grande Valley, a 225-kilometre ribbon of green space along the U.S.-Mexico border, boasts more than half the bird species ever recorded in North America, some 500-plus and counting.

Read the full article (and see the photos) here.

The exact origins of the term hipster may be unclear, but there’s no doubt that Portland is full of ’em: bearded, bike-riding, wallet-chain-swinging, mildly employed young adults who know their craft beer, coffee and street food.  And the newest locus of hipster culture is the Eastside Industrial District.  Until recently a scary place of factories, empty warehouses and post-industrial ruin, the Central Eastside, as it’s know, is undergoing a slow renaissance.  Lured by cheap rents and riverfront real estate, brewpubs, coffee shops and other harbingers of Portland sophistication are setting up shop.  I checked out the area for The New York Times.

A Culture Moves East in Portland, Ore.

By Remy Scalza for The New York Times

The east bank of the Willamette River in Portland, Ore., shows up on few tourist maps because, until recently, not many tourists went there. Unapologetically industrial, the area, Central Eastside (part of the Inner Southeast), stretches a dozen blocks from the water to Southeast 12th Avenue, with few residences and little green space in between.

But in the shells of old factories and brick warehouses, staples of Portland culture west of the river — coffee roasters, brewpubs, locavore restaurants and one-off boutiques — have begun to take root. Cheap rents and riverside real estate, walking distance to downtown, and an honest-to-goodness grittiness have enticed young entrepreneurs and restaurateurs, as well as plenty of bicycle-riding Portland tastemakers, into the former no man’s land. A streetcar line that made its debut in September, Portland Streetcar, promises to open up the neighborhood even more, bringing the Central Eastside firmly into the orbit of downtown Portland.

Read the full article on The New York Times website here.

Europeans vacation in Turkey all the time, but among Americans the country is often overlooked when it comes to travel plans.  That’s a shame.  I visited Turkey for the first time earlier this year – not really knowing what to expect – and was blown away.   It’s a Muslim country with billboards advertising lingerie.  It has a history stretching back to the Ancient Greeks, yet Istanbul is among the most  forward-looking of European capitals.  The food alone – mezes and kebabs and koftas – is worth the trip.  Part of my whirlwind tour took me to the Aegean town of Bodrum, where I spent a week sailing on a traditional wooden gulet for an article for Bombardier’s Experience magazine.

Into the Blue: Sailing Turkey’s Aegean Coast

By Remy Scalza for Bombardier Experience Magazine

Hassan is a man of few words. So when he begins shouting in Turkish early one morning
and pointing to a spot off the stern, I spring to my feet and crowd the rail. The bonito
are jumping: Dozens of rainbow bodies shimmer in the sun, then plunge back into the
chalky blue water off Turkey’s Aegean coast. Hassan, a deckhand who moonlights as
the ship’s cook, reaches for a fishing rod, while the captain veers starboard to cut off the fleeing
school. I cup my hands over my eyes and scan the water. Nothing. Then, with a wild burst, his reel
clicks to life. The struggle that ensues is brief. “Dinner,” he says two minutes later in accented
English, dropping the foot-long fish in a bucket before descending merrily to the galley.

We’re a two-day sail out of the seaside city of Bodrum aboard Casa Dell’Arte’s 115-foot-long
(35-meter) CDAII, a traditional Turkish gulet that I’ve chartered for the week, with captain and
crew. Handsome two-masted schooners built of mahogany and decked in teak, gulets have sailed
the country’s Aegean and Mediterranean coasts for hundreds of years. Long favored by fishermen
and sponge divers, these boats are also the vessel of choice for Turkey’s fabled Blue Cruise: a weeklong
voyage along some of the most secluded and storied stretches of the coast.

“The Blue Cruise is a process,” wrote Turkish novelist Azra Erhat, who, in 1962, penned the
seminal travelogue about the experience, Mavi Yolculuk (Turkish for “Blue Cruise”). “It not only
shows us the heavenly corners of the world. It shows us how to merge with the world.” For generations
of adventure-seeking Turks, the voyage has represented an almost spiritual rite of passage – a way
to connect with sea and sky, the distant past and the ageless rhythm of seafaring life. Now, growing
numbers of international travelers like me are climbing aboard, eager for a glimpse of an ancient
coast and a time-honored way of sailing.

Read the full article here.

I spent a year living in Uruguay – a tiny country of three million near the southern tip of South America.  In many ways, it’s a lot like its neighbor, Argentina: an outpost of southern European culture and cuisine, marooned in the New World.  Wine, beef and pasta reign.  Futbol is the national passion, and Spanish is spoken with an Italian inflection the locals call castellano.  Yet Uruguay has an eccentric streak all its own.  And perhaps nowhere is that more evident that the seaside, new-age capital Piriapolis.  Built by a Kabbalist real estate developer a century ago, the planned community continues to attract mystics today owing to its “good vibrations.”  I checked out the scene for BC Business Magazine.

Piriapolis, Uruguay: South America’s new-age capital

By Remy Scalza for BC Business Magazine

Carlos Rodriguez sees dead people. “I’m more in the next world than this one,” says Rodriguez, a mystical tour guide in Uruguay’s quirkiest beach town, the new-age Piriápolis. A diminutive South American country of three million wedged between Brazil and Argentina, Uruguay remains largely untouristed, nonglobalized and, in the best sense of the word, odd.

Take Piriápolis: set on a sandy coast one hour outside the capital city of Montevideo, it’s a fairly unassuming seaside town at first blush – leafy lanes, boardwalks and the like. But under its suburban exterior are enough dark legends and Byzantine conspiracy theories to fill a Dan Brown novel.

It all started in 1890, when local real estate baron Francisco Piria bought 7,000 acres of undeveloped coastline in pursuit of his twin dreams: to make a load of money selling vacation homes and to build a utopian city based on Kabbalah, the mystical set of Jewish beliefs.

Click here to read the full article on the BC Business website.