Stalin Museum

I picked khachapuri (bread filled with cheese) for Georgia not because it is the country’s national dish with its own national day, not because there is some variation of it in every region, and not because its popularity runs beyond borders into the former Soviet Union – though all of these played some part – …

Keret House

The abrupt shift to WFH in March turned my office gym into a lockdown casualty. I have since rescheduled my daily exercise during the hourlong void that was once my morning work commute. Some days in the week I go to the nearby cemetery for a run, cutting patterns along its neatly laid perpendicular roads. …

City of Arches

The recent business of unhappy people tearing down statues of historical figures linked to the slave trade gives today’s article two kinds of relevance. The first is the week’s country, St. Vincent and the Grenadines – one of the Caribbean plantation destinations for labour shipped from Africa. The second is the primary ingredient for the …

Underground wine city

Austrians call their language German, not Austrian. Non-Flemish Belgians call their language French, not Belgian. So why do you call yours Moldovan instead of Romanian when they are both identical, a leading Romanian cultural institution asked the Moldovan President. He had declared his support for a Moldovan national language, fanning the flames of a long …

Red Sea Boys

It says Eritrean food, I said of the restaurant sign. The implication that it did not say Ethiopian food was not lost on my friend. Eritrea had been in the news a few years back for securing its independence from Ethiopia after a long conflict. No strangers to Ethiopian restaurants, we needed little convincing to …

Theory of Goat and Yam

I followed the shortcut recommended by the recipe tutorial video to deskinning black-eyed peas – put them in a food processor, add a splash of water, pulse a few times, pour the beans into a bowl and discard the skins now floated to the surface. But after nearly two hours standing hunched over the kitchen …

Angela Merkel Barbie

Around this time in 2017, I was on the phone with a colleague in the Frankfurt office. Unknown to each other for years, we were now talking a few times a week, brought together by a common cause of helping the company plan for Brexit. After the purpose of the call was met, conversation eased …

Masai Mara

So here we are in South London on a seemingly ordinary suburban street outside what appears to be a seemingly ordinary terraced house but 575 Wandsworth Road is anything but ordinary, the presenter on the BBC video clip says, then walks up to the house and opens the front door. The camera dollies through the …

David Beckham temple

We were standing across the road from The Churchill Arms, a short walk from Notting Hill Gate station. In a city filled with outstanding pubs, this one is a literal standout, its façade partially concealed by exuberant floral displays. The ways of the crumbling cookie had taken a toll on the hanging baskets and window …

Foreign types with the hookah pipes say whey oh whey oh, ay oh whey oh

If you think Covid is bad, consider what biblical Egypt had to endure. First the rivers turned to blood. Then frogs emerged from the waters and invaded the land. Then the land’s dust turned into lice and set upon the people. Then swarms of flies filled their homes. Then their livestock dropped dead from pestilence. …