What is Salmaland? It’s where I try to answer the eternal question: Where to eat in New York City? As a food and travel writer based in NYC, I get this question all the time, and often I’m the one asking it. The lists of my recommendations here, to your left, are meant to help [...]

Jasmine and Fire: A Bittersweet Year in Beirut, is my memoir of the year I spent in Beirut trying to come home again. I’m thrilled with the great early review in Publisher’s Weekly,  and the mentions in Food & Wine and AFAR. The book comes out on June 5, 2012, from Broadway Books/Random House—and it’s [...]

Click the BEIRUT EATS link at the top of this page to see what I’ve eaten around Beirut and in villages all over Lebanon while spending a year there working on my book. Now that we have things like Video Skype (the ultimate retro-futurist fantasy finally realized), you’d think there would be a way to [...]

That's me in Byblos, Lebanon, in a pic from ForbesLife.

For anyone who has asked, “How’s your year in Beirut been?”….here’s the beginning of an answer: An essay I wrote for ForbesLife is in the May 2011 issue.

Please check out the sidebar on page 2 of the story too, for a list of excellent books for [...]

Glamour magazine’s latest cookbook, 100 Recipes Every Woman Should Know, includes some recipes from yours truly. Glamour hired me to co-write the book and work with a small crew of staff editors and writers to make it all happen. Was lots of fun, lots of work, and a great team at Glamour. Btw the title may [...]

If I had to make a list of desert-island foods, chicken-fried steak would be way up there. Since it’s incredibly hard to find great chicken-fried steak outside Texas (and a few choice places in the South), I’m not sure how I’d ever find a decent chicken-fried steak on a desert island. But I’ll worry about [...]

For restaurant tips, Salmaland updates, and miscellaneous musings, follow me at… @salmaland