Diana Henry, Food Writer

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0:57Hello and welcome to the Travel Diaries podcast. I'm your host Holly Rubenstein and here each week I'll be speaking to a very special guest about the seven chapters in their life's travel diaries. From their all-time favourite destination and their hidden gem to their worst travel experience and what's at the top of their travel bucket list, we'll be uncovering their adventures around the world and the travel experiences and destinations that have shaped their lives. Well, hi everyone. I hope that you had a lovely weekend and that your week is getting off to a good start. I, before we get started, wanted to let you know about an amazing competition that I have launched on my Instagram to win a luxury holiday to Phuket in Thailand.

1:45I've teamed up with Tresara, which is Phuket's most exclusive private resort, to offer you and a guest the chance to win a three-night stay in a stunning ocean view villa with its own infinity pool wow the hotel is tucked away on phuket's serene northwest coast it's home to thailand's most private beach and its only michelin-starred restaurant this is your chance to experience pure heaven on earth head over to my instagram page at holly rubenstein to learn more about trisara and check out my reel about the competition for details on how to enter. Loads of luck. So I took a little day trip myself this week, a little excursion to one of my all-time favourite UK hotels, Beaverbrook in the beautiful Surrey Hills, just about 45 minutes from London.

2:35Long-time listeners might remember that I stayed there the night at my wedding, so it holds a really special place in my heart, and I try and get there a few times a year for a meal, to spend the day there, basically. And this summer, they are celebrating five years of their magical balloon dining experience. This is a fixture in our summer calendars. It's such a fun celebratory experience that runs from the start of summer all the way through till around late September. This year, it's called Fanning the Flame and it's an alfresco feast that is set inside these six stationary hot air balloons that are dotted around the Italian gardens at the hotel around this beautiful pond with fountains bubbling away.

3:17It's a stunning setting. And you're given a cocktail before embarking on a four-course Japanese-inspired journey. So you start off with sashimi and salads. And then you're brought your own yakinuki barbecue where you flame grill these superb meats. You know, the wagyu beefs and so on. It's like really fun to get stuck in yourself in this lovely alfresco setting. The menus start from£85 a head. And yeah, I can't recommend it enough. I can't wait for next year. Someone who would no doubt appreciate the food at Beaverbrook is my guest today, a woman who can conjure entire worlds through her writing, whether she's evoking the salty tang of the Lofoten Islands, the rustic flavours of rural Normandy or the buzz of a New York kitchen.

4:03It is, of course, Diana Henry, one of Britain's most celebrated food writers. She's a James Beard Award winner, a long-time Telegraph columnist, and the author of many best-selling books like Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons, How to Eat a Peach, and Around the Table, a new collection of essays spanning decades of food, travel, and life. As you'll hear, Diana's wanderlust was born not from glamorous holidays, but from her imagination. growing up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. She escaped into books and encyclopedias, dreaming of faraway places long before she'd ever had the chance to visit them.

4:41So in this episode, we trace her journeys from Dublin to the Dordogne, Spain to Maine. We talk about foraging for mushrooms in France and eating codsheads in Iceland. She shares why she reads restaurant menus for fun in the evenings and the deep emotional connection she feels to the places she's travelled through Taste. I think you're going to really enjoy this one. So let's buckle up and get started. Here's Diana.

5:12Diana, welcome to The Travel Diaries. It is so lovely to meet you. How are you doing? Um, I'm good. Well, I'm not good because Trump's in the White House. But I mean, apart from that, everything's fine. Is that kind of dominating your overall mood? Absolutely. And it's kind of, it's sort of mad my children. I was like, mum, stop watching him. You, you know, you basically, how dare they call me this, but you're a housewife and completely ignoring my job. You're a housewife in North London. What are you going to do to change things? But yeah, I've just got it because it comes up on Insta all the time.

5:48I guess working in a national newspaper as well, you're going to be part of those conversations on a daily basis as well. Yeah, you hear about it constantly. And I should forget, I should forget. Although at the minute, I wouldn't go to the States. No, it's really interesting. I mean, the tourism numbers to the States have gone way down, haven't they? And it, you can see. Well, they pick people up all the time. My publicist here, Charlotte, her sister's just been picked up by ice. She's in California. She's a scientist. She actually works on, she's a rocket scientist, would you believe? That's what she does.

6:23And they've given her 30 days to get out. Oh my gosh. She's Canadian. They don't like Canadians. Oh, my goodness. How upsetting for her. I know. She's going to have to get married to her boyfriend before they were meant to do it. They were supposed to be doing it around Christmas. That would be kind of like nice next year. But they're just going to go and do it nice so that there's no more hassle. Well, except probably won't be the end of it, to be honest. Because she's Canadian. And you've clearly, from following your career and your writing, you know, travel has been hugely important and really formative.

6:58And a lot of that has been, you know, influences from the US. I know. I was interviewed by someone from The New Yorker recently and she just said, your whole life is full of yearning and longing. And that was there when I was very small because the Troubles in Northern Ireland, they started in 1968. So I was four. And that's where you grew up? Yeah, I grew up there. Yeah, and I was there obviously until I left to go to France. That was when I had a year out. But I was really focused on the US because I think it's an Irish thing. I used to have this dream, which kind of like repeated quite often.

7:38And it was about, it's funny, there was a kind of like, there was a cat in a barrel in the garden. And this is what I was dreaming about. And I was looking with him towards, there were kind of like just fields of wheat and stuff at the back of our house. So you had this golden stuff, then you had the blue horizon. And I always wanted to know. I thought if I just went that way, I would be able to step over the horizon. And to me, America was there. And it's, I think it's probably the American dream. Yes, it's partly being Irish because, you know, there's such a thing about going to America. But for me, it's also to do with the troubles in Northern Ireland.

8:21And also to do with the fact that the house was full of American books. We had an aunt who sent them to us. But also we had these collier encyclopedias, the big purchase when I was about five. Yeah. And it came with a range of storybooks. They were all American. So I wanted to go to a dime store. And I wanted to have a kind of like sundae and one of those kind of ice cream bars. And my whole focus was on that. And when we went to, for years, we only went to Dublin. That was all. and when we went there you'll kind of think this is potty because it seems potty now we went to Dublin airport to watch the planes taking off to go to America which seems seriously we did and I kind of think they're not that far away there's Boston on the board and I just thought of them as they they had their big air lingers shamrock on the side but I just wanted to go to America and my mum read me this story over and over again called Rosa Too Little and that was about this little girl who she lives in she's in Brooklyn and she sat when it was warm she just sat on the stoop and she chatted with people as they went by and she was too young to join the library by the end of the story she does join the library but I just wanted to be with Rosa because I was waiting for myself as well yeah and I just I mean I had a whole picture of her I could see her kind of like dancing in the street when they put the fire hydrants on on a really one day, she'd be there.

9:45But these things had an enormous effect on me. I mean, the place I really wanted to go to was New York. I didn't get there until I was 30. But I think, well, everybody has this to a certain extent because of American movies and stuff like that. But it's taken up a place in my head. And that will never go. I love that. I totally relate to that. It's so interesting isn't it when you're a child how the books that your parents read to you can be so formative and so transformative and you almost you just you're trying to manifest the characters to be real people yeah like because that's how big your imagination is as well at that age but also really interesting because in a way you've kicked off our travel diaries today because we're going on a journey through the seven chapters of your life's travel diaries and we start with chapter one which is your earliest childhood travel memory and you say that you know you you would mostly go to Dublin but I love that like you were traveling in your mind at the airport beyond that's that's something that went on all the time and actually I think formed my career eventually because we didn't go much anywhere it was there was kind of four children it was too expensive really you had to go to you always had to go to Belfast first and then you had to go via London so we just accepted that we weren't gonna we're really weren't gonna travel so I thought about that and read about it all the time um so not just kind of like storybooks but anything that was to do with I don't know lumberjacks for example if a lumberjack program had come on or there'd been a film about one yeah I'm there because I I read and I watched things in order to travel and I cooked in order eventually in order to travel as well um and they were my ways of, I think cooking and reading were kind of like my, it was my whole survival mechanism.

11:39It was, this was the life, but it wasn't going to start till later. And I think that was a difficult thing in a way, because I think it makes a certain insecurity around you. You long for this thing, but you know, I'm six and I'm thinking, well, I'm leaving home. Because quite a lot of people did think that because we were, you know, we were living in violence and it was a sort of, it was the sort of thing that you nearly had to do it was incomprehensible that you would stay and I never talked to anybody about it but I remember I just I thought about it a lot I mean I can remember one really sunny day in the summer and I don't know why there was a plane going above because they didn't usually you couldn't hear them from where we lived but one did and we were we were outside and my mum was waving a kind of like tea towel now it seems ridiculous because you know who the hell cared and who could see us but I was going bring us back things from America you know and the fact that it was going above our home was like yep yep it's all out there although funny enough I'm quite an anxious traveler well you know to a certain extent it's to do with I've not been to India for example and I wanted to go there for years and I don't know how I would manage it because scared of what I would feel about the poverty and that kind of thing.

12:58And then also learn to think more positively, think about the color and everything. But that is a massive culture change for me. And I think when I go abroad, wherever it is, I feel things very keenly. And I think that has helped in being a writer because to keep on the straight and narrow when I'm someone new, I usually talk myself into a restaurant kitchen or a hotel kitchen, that kind of thing. And it's kind of, oh, so who's doing that? and who's doing something else so I think it's been my way into another culture especially a culture that is very foreign that's absolutely fascinating and do you think that also the kind of dream of going to America and a kind of going beyond beyond Northern Ireland was was was influenced by actually wanting to like how fearful were you in your childhood of the violence that was going on is it was it like a wanting to escape the political situation as well yeah you kind of like thought about that it didn't we were about 50 miles from belfast so we didn't have bombs going off all the time but you were incredibly aware of it as well like if you went to belfast you had to make arrangements with your mom or whatever because she might want to go mns i want to go somewhere else and you had to say where we'd meet up if there's a bomb scare and also when thinking about this we we always have okay there'll be a bomb scare so people will go to such and such a place and then there might be a bomb there so we're trying to second guess what what terrorists would do that's a lot to kind of process and to contemplate when you're a child yeah and i don't think i've kind of like realized till i was much much older that that really is quite damaging yeah you're always dealing with stress or tension it's just part of your life are you kind of do you think it's ingrained in you to have your eye out for danger yes I do I definitely do think that and that's kind of silly but I've just been reading about it recently that kind of thing where you're always on alert and I mean I'm not I've been in London for like since I was 22 but you just don't I think you lose that I think it's the way I function because you grow up and my siblings well a couple of them would say the same sort of thing the unexpected could actually happen there so it's like being prepared yeah I mean I remember the first day there was a bomb in my hometown so I was about eight or nine and I was in the playground and I heard it going off and then after that there were sirens and stuff and there was a sense that this is awful but you when you're literal there's a sense of excitement as well but that was just the first one that had happened where we lived so you thought oh my god it's just really nearby yeah um and that was weird yeah that must have made it feel way more real somehow yeah um and so you mentioned that your so your childhood travel memories were largely to Dublin yeah they were yeah and how was that how would you how would you spend your days there well kind of like the first bit that was exciting to me was kind of like going down going to Republic of Ireland because there was a little um there was a stop on the way that sold shellfish a little kind of like you know van um so you got shellfish and um cured herring and all the rest of it from this little place and my dad we always went there that was the first kind of stop we didn't want to eat it um but he really wanted to he came back with his little um styrofoam kind of like pots of different things and he was he was a big influence in that he was kind of like i was sort of timid about traveling although you couldn't see it on the surface and he was not timid about life ever so he would kind of like he would hold things out on the fork from this van he go good try it try it eat it um and then when we got kind of we made that spot I just was he was happy we were happy it was like we're going to Dublin and it's hard also to kind of like explain to people your English that you didn't really you didn't think about London you thought Dublin was the most honestly starry place that you could possibly go to I mean they had not like Piccadilly Turricots not as big as that but I'd seen pictures of that and when you got to Dublin they had the lights on and like those kind of I don't know where they have them anymore um and it was just like I could have been in Hollywood I swear to god I just thought it was so wonderful to be there no it was and the other thing I always noticed when we were there was kind of like couples strolling in the evening and kind of like there was a sense of, I don't know whether this is because people were kind of more guilty there because of the whole Catholic Church thing about sex and all the rest of it.

17:45But I just would look at couples who were going along hand in hand and my imagination was working overtime about what Dublin, what was hidden in it. But every so often you got this kind of picture of it. So it was like it was the centre it was all I mean it was my capital if you like even though I'm from Northern Ireland yeah so I loved I loved that and I really there was one particular year um we hired a house in Dublin and it was it was honestly I thought of it as a storybook house I can't even remember the um address it was um Sydney Parade Avenue and before we got there we're making up things that might happen in Sydney Parade Avenue and when we got there I mean it was just big lovely storybook house red brick and it had a big wicker chair like the kind they used to read Jack and Oray in so at night time I would kind of do that I sit in the chair and pretend that I was doing Jack and Oray but we were just kind of like yeah Dublin just seemed the best place in the world Grafton Street you wanted to walk up and down Grafton Street the women seemed better dressed they had lovely hairstyles so it was just yeah it was a wonderful place to get to that's so lovely I mean what how lovely that that's the place that you went regularly that it had such a special place in your heart yeah so when we move on to chapter two and that is the first place that you fell in love with I mean beyond Dublin France and the particular place I mean I had gone twice for women's for an exchange.

19:22Another time was for being an au pair. So I spent quite a long time there. The only area of France I didn't go to, I think, was Burgundy. So me and my boyfriend, we had this really, really capped out car. I mean, sometimes it didn't even make it to the ferry. But we went round in that. It's quite eccentric because I was, I mean, I was young. I was only about 22. But that's another place I had in my head constantly was France, because I could speak it. I'd been, you know, I'd done it for A-level and stuff like that. But the place that I thought this country is so wonderful was in the Dordogne. And we went there to a little hotel in Saint-Cypre-la-Poppie.

20:07So it was one of those village perches. And there was, you know, a river alongside. And we got there And this place looked really cute and very French. But the bedroom had these plain stone walls that were kind of just whitewashed and a blue ceiling, like azure blue with gold stars. And it was just like, oh, my God, I've come to this place. And it's just remarkable. And we had, you know, Southwestern Food, so that was kind of like duck confit and everything, even though it was kind of a bit hot for duck confit. but I just thought I've never been back actually to George Onion because I don't want anything else to happen I don't want another I don't want another layer on top of that particular memory um but that night and I knew France very well already but it was just like this is just sounds magical I thought I might end up there as well and I've written a sort of whole piece about it because the guy who ran it Mishra Matushe he was kind of like he could play jazz on the piano know he was doing all of the stuff in the kitchen he seemed to be the only chef and I thought yeah it stays quite sort of frozen in time for me but when I think about France that's one of the first bits of it which I kind of like just adored oh gorgeous and then kind of beyond that was it the food the markets the the ritual like what what was it that really captured your imagination um my on my first trip there um I went with a with an exchange student we kind of swapped but I went there first.

21:38And I couldn't believe how civilized this place was, mainly because they took time about their cooking and they took time about eating it. And I just thought this was the most civilized way. I still think that civilized way to live because, you know, Plotilda was my exchange person and she's the same age as me. And we had breakfast. And then as soon as we had breakfast, we were thinking about what we'd make for lunch. And then during now we'll be thinking about what we meant for supper and um it's not wasn't it wasn't the eating this does not come out of greed this comes out of just sitting and chatting with stuff that's beautiful and the it was never complicated what we cooked it was like lamb rochette and all those oh i loved all those kind of like things that you get before the meal like um crudités and um lentilles en salade things like that oh and carot frappé I love that what was that?

22:34why the hell did that carot frappé are just these it's quite coarsely great at carrot that you then dress nobody likes it here but kind of like the French love it yeah we would always buy that when we went to the deli in France on summer holidays yeah kind of like a variation on coleslaw almost yes but much better than coleslaw because it's got a dress a good dressing and everything on it I came back from that I had always cooked a lot at home anyway but I was like I was like a changed person with only that I was only there for a month um because of how they ate and we had I mean everybody talks about this something that was in the kind of 60s and early 70s we had olive oil but it was in a it was in a kind of like the cupboard in the bathroom because we only used it for warming then to put if you had an earache so that's what olive oil was used for and also we always made dressing in a jam jar and when I was in France, I was taught, it was the most, I will never forget this, lovely lesson really in making vinaigrette.

23:34So Clotilde, she always started with a particular herb and we could go to her granny's, which was just across the way and go into her garden and think, are we going to have tarragon? Are we going to have mint? Are we going to have chives? Most often it was chives, but these were snipped into the bottom of the salad bowl. Then Dijon mustard went in then um red or white wine vinegar seasoning and then you had to with a fork you had to whisk everything as you added the olive oil extra virgin olive oil and french of course they would have no truck with these um the fact that everybody now wants like a tuscan extra virgin olive oil very bitter yeah i mean stuff that was french which is hard to get here it's hard to get a good French olive oil here.

24:17To do that at every meal just seems to me fantastic. And still sometimes I think when I sort of, you know, people ask me what would you like to have for the rest of your life if you could only have one thing? And it would be a perfectly dressed green salad and French bread. Lovely. You always had it after the main course. And Americans do it for different reasons in a different way. but it seems to me just that's a great pause before you move on to cheese yeah do you think that that trip then planted the seed of the food writer that you'd one day become I had no intention of being a food writer that was all kind of like accidental because I'd been in television first but it did plant the seed for obsession with a love a love of food oh my god yeah there's no Yes, absolutely.

25:09Because there were lovely markets there. But also they had all of these camions delivered. So we had somebody delivered every day. So there was an actual fromagerie on wheels that we'd go out and we'd get things. And then the most amazing thing was the guy who came home with fruit and vegetables. Because in Northern Ireland, we have one peach each. And my mum had to divide up strawberries if we had strawberries, because there was four of us and we'd fight. And in France, they just bought peaches by the actual palette. It was just like this huge wooden box of peaches. Extraordinary. I thought that was just extraordinary.

25:46Abundance of the project. Yes. Complete. That must have been so exciting. Where in France were you for this part? We were in a place called La Motte en Blésie, which they used to call La Motte en Paradis. And it was near Colombie, Les Deux Églises. And honestly, it was a dirt track going through it. And we still got those deliveries. There was one morning when we went picking mushrooms really early in the day. And it was still misty. And I just thought this was wonderful. And somebody up the road was a rabbit farmer. So we would go and pick up rabbits from there and then pot roast it. So it was very kind of like tiny, but this wonderful world.

26:26We ate outside every day. They didn't have our, you know, we make a big fuss about barbecues and do kind of like six different salads and then, you know, burn the chicken on the outside, but not on the inside. But they just had this little kind of grill, the kind that you buy in a, you know, petrol station forecourt. And we use that every day. But we put things like, we marinate the chops, our pork chops after breakfast, and we put herbs in that and grated garlic. And then that was going to be lunch. It's so conducive to a good quality of life. another one of my guests this season is um dan butner the host of the blue zones documentaries and the longevity expert and you know listening to you talk about you know again just the alfresco dining yeah focus on local produce picking homegrown things i mean it's really but you didn't think about it like that that was kind of when i know everybody forages now because it's cool but we actually didn't think oh we're going foraging for mushrooms that word was never used it was as if it was as if people were kind of like focused on the right things and the things that would make you feel better and even though you know I went on to kind of like cook more and more and more that that feeling of ease when you've cooked and people are going to arrive and you're gonna sit around the table I mean I think the table is so important yeah it's not always happy.

27:54It's where you can argue or, you know, you've seen it in movies. You know, that's a place that if marriages are going to fail, they're going to fall apart there. So I think it's not, I don't want to be too romantic about the table and we all sit together and do this, except I kind of keep it as that. But I think it's very important. I think when you're at the table, you sit down and you talk and you can't avoid looking at each other. So I still have a, it's, they're not living at home anymore now but when they come home it's kind of quite strict we will sit not in a horrible way but we will sit at the table and after we've actually eaten with your kids yes and then it goes and then it goes on and on I mean then kind of like we're watching little videos and stuff I mean some stuff which is a scourge of modern life like we're sitting watching like little YouTube videos they want to show me but there's a lot of laughter and the plates are still sitting on the table well I mean we move on to chapter three which is the place where you learned the most about yourself was there a moment of you know reinvention or a place that was especially formative for you during my um the summer before I started university I traveled around Spain and Portugal and Spain I don't know if you kind of like read that Ted Hughes thing that he writes for Sylvia Plath which is kind of Spain frightened you and I had learned Spanish and can speak it very pretty well.

29:22But there was something, to me, quite dark about Spain. And I think it's to do with the violence in these different places in Spain. And we had a foreign teacher in our school who came and sort of did conversation with us. So she was called PATH and she was from Salamanca. And so I wasn't ignorant about Spain, but she was kind of frightened in Northern Ireland that Franco somehow would still kind of like, he would arise again, or he was living around the corner just from our little country school in Northern Ireland. And when I went to it, I picked up this kind of darkness about Spain. And now sort of I embrace it.

30:07And I think it's to do with the fact that they had to, after the war, they had to forget. I mean, it was almost kind of like an unwritten rule. we've got to put this behind us. And I felt, you know, but people were missing, you know, they're still kind of like complaining about that, los olvidaros. And I did think that thing, which kind of foreigners quite often think about Spain and the Spanish don't like it, la leyenda negra, there's kind of like a darkness and you had to absolutely put a lid on it. And you had to be, you know, have a great time because, you know, Spain is so, it's about white sunshine actually you know you look at flamenco dresses you know how hot it is but um beneath that there's something not okay like they had to i mean their country was torn apart and then they had to put it behind them and that's not easy and it's not easy in northern ireland either that's so interesting because i think you know it could be very easy to travel to spain and completely disregard any historical context at all and just go for the sun and the sangria but never i've never seen it that way you felt it in a palpable sense yeah i think there's definitely a darkness in people's souls there despite you know i've got to congratulate them as well they put their best foot forward you know what they're eating is like they don't go out for dinner until 11 o 'clock at night and before that they have to go to endless bars where they have vermouth or you know sherry and tapas and then they keep partying until you know they can not kind of like go until three in the morning and then they have to get up and go to work so they have this fantastic staying power and i think places like catalonia are really remarkable because of well the food there and the architecture i mean spain is a kind of like real powerhouse of modernity actually but they have to they still have that thing in their past and i don't think you i don't think you can kind of like wish that away or optimistically push it away I think at some stage there has to be a reckoning so maybe they should be talking more about that than they have done and in around the table you take us on these kind of beautifully sensory journeys here Catalonia California Mexico yeah and it feels almost like a map of your palette like did you did you realize when you were going back through everything did you realize how much of your life had been shaped by place and by flavor I should have known it because if you think about the life I'd led up till then it was all about going places um but I wasn't really aware of it until I started to put that book together I mean I was going to use places before way before I was a food writer but I would always I mean it's not I'm not very serendipitous honestly it's kind of awful I always have a schedule well and if I'm if I'm going there with people who wouldn't like that I keep the schedule to myself but I find out what um what the kind of like specialties are of each region and I I nearly always book restaurants ahead and so I have this food plan and I've I've always done that because I don't want to honestly like when you're away you do not it's not worth it to have a bad meal it really isn't you're away and there's one day and you're not going to do that thing where it's going oh let's see what we stumble across chances are you're not stumbled across anything decent and you'll then go home feeling ripped off because it's been expensive and you haven't you you haven't been in the soul of that place so yeah the soul of it that so that's your travel hack then you know pre-booking your meals so that you don't end up in a market square where every menu is exactly the same yeah and it's and it's and it's just for tourists so how do you research the places that you want to go to get to the soul of the food the thing is it used to be much harder because there was no internet can you imagine doing research for that so at the weekend or in various magazines that I brought that I bought and I've still got quite a lot of the cuttings I would um tear things out and then I would have this kind of like pile maybe that was the kind of Californian box or whatever and then I think of like ridiculous things like driving miles out of our way to go to a place that had fantastic doughnuts.

34:27I mean, I remember doing that. But anyway, I would do lots of research. Books, when I went on holidays, and if we went in the car, or even in a car car, I would have this enormous bag of books. So guidebooks, or novels that were set in the place where I was going. I was always in Johnson, Marylebone in London, kind of because they've got, you probably know, They've got it all sectioned off into countries, but not just guidebooks. It's like stories that were set in Provence or whatever. So I would always have, these are all my, okay, these are the next holiday. So I'd nearly been on holidays for two months before I actually went on holidays because I did all this planning.

35:09I remember there's a place in Normandy and it still exists because I checked a little while ago. They had their own ham. They had eggs. the main thing there was the cider but it was just ham eggs bread and cider and god I think it's called L 'Etonneau I think it's called L 'Etonneau I can't remember what village it's in but in Normandy okay I'll put it in the episode show notes I mean honestly places like that you're sitting in them and I'm thinking oh my god I'm here this is real I'm here and it feels like more more French than France if you know what I mean. So that leads us on to chapter four the big one which is your all-time favorite destination.

35:52Not right this minute because of Trump but before that I would have said always New York I just love it the energy the fact that they talk to you all the time I mean people say New York is lonely nobody will let you alone in New York so you're really not going to be lonely you'll be sitting at the next table and they'll ask you what novel is that you're reading and if it's any good and then I'll want to know where you got your handbag and before long they'll be telling you about you know they're kind of like health issues and stuff but they talk they just talk in a way that I mean it's that's quite northern Irish in a way but it's it's really not English I mean it's just it's a it's a bit of a shock but I love that love the energy love the kind of like places like the Empire State Building which has been with me since childhood and love the food, love the carts, love the fact that they're kind of like full of red sauce Italian restaurants, not just, you know, a place that has a place to the River Cafe.

36:52I mean, that's where all the kind of people who know about food go to. They don't go to those red sauce places. But I love those. Like the mum and pop type thing. Yes, exactly. There's actually someone, she does this thing, and I read this even though I'm not planning to go to New York anytime soon. she's called the Gaia Mission and she writes for the New York Times and she writes about those mom-and-pop places every week or the hall on the walls or you know a kind of couple who have you know emigrated and they're using their knowledge of their own culinary skills and the food from their own country as as kind of a way to present themselves outwards in the place and we get to participate in that because we can go we can go we can go to I remember her writing about a place that was Iranian.

37:40And she talked about how thick the rice was with barberries, that kind of thing. And everything just tasted of another world. So in fact, when I go to New York, I can travel beyond it as well, because of all that thing. So it seems to me that everything is there, and everybody is there. And they do their own thing, but yet they don't, because they're all enmeshing and stuff like that. But a place where a lot of immigrants have been cast up on the shore of it, I love those places. And I like to sort of unpick them if I can. Is there a particular restaurant that you love to recommend to people to visit when they go?

38:19I used to always go to the Union Square Cafe, which is run by one of the best restauranteurs in the city, actually. Oh, I know what I'd say. And I go here every time. And nobody makes a big fuss about it in New York and there's even an offshoot now in London that nobody makes a big fuss about it's called ABC Kitchen and um and I think it's by Jean-Georges um as in the the Connacht Jean-Georges yes and um and I look at it on Instagram every day because it kind of like whatever else I feel it sort of settles me and sometimes I'll smile I realize that I'm smiling when I look at the pictures and they just do their own it's kind of very sort of you know I suppose it's mostly you might say Mediterranean they do pizza and stuff like that but they do it in an American way and it's an American way of cooking and eating that I really love it's got lots of fresh vegetables it's got these pieces got bits of Spain it's got bits of Italy and it's it's a lovely space the first time I went there it's got lots of tiny lights that hang down and everything is kind of like white although there's also a kind of mirror surface which looks like that mottled old kind of like mirror and and i just lots of little flowers on every table and on every kind of place they can stick some in around the kind of like there's a kind of like a bar area at the front and the um the restaurant's down the back and i don't know i mean i wouldn't i wouldn't tell anybody to put it on their list because i would feel like i was very out of touch which I probably am now but as a place of feeling I like the feeling I love that more than any other restaurant I think oh and they would definitely have to go to Estella Estella is one of my favorite kind of it's sort of modern American you would say but it's good as well they do really kind of interesting dishes and they do unusual things with them oh those are It's so lovely to get, you know, specific recommendations.

40:23I'm sure a lot of my listeners are going to be adding those restaurants to their bucket list. Would you say that New York is your favorite city for food or is there somewhere that you always go to? Well, everybody raves now about L.A. Because, you know, at one time it was San Francisco and then it moved to L.A. Because L.A. is brilliant because of the different, again, because of kind of like particular nationality of different groups. they fuse because you will so you find there you can actually eat Mexican Korean because they kind of like there's a complete crossover between different um different styles of food but I like going to yeah I think I like going to New York and I also I kind of check up on what they're doing there every so often I spend an evening and I'm looking at menus of different restaurants that I've been to there or even ones that I've heard about and haven't been to ever um trying to get again into that it's not the underbelly it's kind of like the lovely stuff the good stuff but I want to know what's yeah what's happening there's there's a particular kind of cooking in New York I think it has its own style I love that you spend an evening looking at menus of restaurants in another continent I just think that's so nice no okay that's kind of me that will really cheer me up and it will give me ideas as well and think oh my god they're putting those two things together there that's fantastic yeah I guess it's just such a source of inspiration which which leads me on to around the table and let's talk about it um such a lovely transportative kind of um nourishing literally read that's good what would you say was the kind of reason that this book came into being and how do you feel about it coming out soon i was kind of like surprised and i was surprised about i think you can tell if you go through especially the bits that are about traveling how um intensely I feel it when I go somewhere different you might even be able to pick up just anxiety so I have this twin thing with places and it's kind of anxiety and then it's um excitement and then it's peace when I was in my late teens and we started going to places abroad with my this is my family um I would do this thing which is ridiculous I would get to someone new that I didn't know at all and I would think sitting in the car in the back of the car from the airport kind of think what do I think of this and my my kind of little game of myself was could you live here if you had to and I would always be thinking that I'm moving in next week I mean it's a ridiculous way to but it made me feel I had to have that feeling that I could cope wherever and that I would get into it through food and through making friends and I mean I didn't scare myself in a funny way which is just stupid but I I've always had that thing and I don't think I've been I've not been many places where I wouldn't be able to settle down to live yeah yeah I mean lately the place that I've kind of oh my god it's just such great scenery such great country um Norway I went to the Leverton because I'd seen that I'd seen that in a, and I've kind of been on a sectopedia since my childhood, you know, the kind of the salt clod hanging up and the red houses.

43:47And when I was little, I used to think, oh God, I want to go there. I really want to go there. And then eventually the Norwegian seafood company, they paid for me to go there. And I spent a lot of time actually in Norway over the years because of the book I'm writing about North, but also again, just trying to get into the soul of the place. And I think it's the most stunning place I've ever been, the most beautiful. And I like the fact that it was tough. See, I'm not, I'm not really an adventurer. And I just was thinking, how the hell am I gonna, how the hell am I gonna work with this? Everybody was a chef.

44:22And there are two people who were journalists who I'm still in touch with. And everything meant that we had to get into one of those kind of like those boats again, the rib boats and travel to another little place where we get into another a little rib boat quite intrepid well I made myself do it that's a good thing about books actually um you kind of make yourself do stuff that you wouldn't normally do at all I'd never normally have taken that as a kind of like I'd be far too scared but um there I was every morning kind of when it's still dark we got up and it looked beautiful and the candles were there and it was an amazing breakfast and then I had to get into my little kind of like Nisha man's suit which is absolutely not me but then we were off doing things you know going and kind of like line fishing to get cod which was so fucking cold that your hand freezes to your phone and it it's it's so so painful but then you can't you you just find out your whole phone's frozen even it can't work and I did these things and I would come back every day and this is the best thing about Norway apart from just looking at it um I was exhilarated constantly I came back from that after I think it was 10 days and you'd think I'd been injected with adrenaline it was being in the cold yeah making yourself do things that you didn't really want to do being quite scared feeling absolutely triumphant in the evening because you looked at what you'd done during the day and a lot of it yeah definitely was the cold and the whiteness and the snow I love snow I love it I said to my children recently because of all those kind of like um conversations about whether we should have euthanasia or not I just said look just push me out into the snow and and they went what you mean do you want to die because you'll get so cold I said no we'll go to bloody Switzerland but you have to let me sit in the snow while it's happening yeah because that would be my best yeah that would be a good send-off I would think for me so you're the snow is your happy place oh oh my god I love it I really love it I don't go so much now and I don't ski I hate skiing but um I've got for years we went to the Savoie and um I just trunched along on snowy walks and stuff like that I just like watching it I think it's magical stuff yeah yeah so transportative so that that trip where you're going between on the boats uh on the little ribs was that between different islands in the Lofoten yes islands right and so if somebody was wanting to plan a trip there to experience kind of that incredible energy that you brought to life just then you know how long would you say they should go for what what would be like the essence of what they should include in their itinerary would you say um I think Oslo I didn't love Oslo but I think you should if you can you should because I did that as part of one trip come on a kind of like a Norwegian ferry down the coast from start off at the border between Norway and Russia and then um and then travel down that coast all the way would you see the fjords on that route no you wouldn't you kind of like honestly they get mixed up in my head because I've been to Norway so often because I did a fjord thing there as well and funny enough that isn't as kind of like happy making because you feel you're enclosed all the time and in fact when you meet people there who are not Norwegian who've married a Norwegian or whatever that's what they say they say okay this is July now imagine what this is like in November it's like you are in very it's in this very kind of like black place but stick to the coast and go up and down it go down as far as then as um Bergen and I think you'll have an amazing time but you need to take lots of money that's the only negative thing I have to say about Norway it's expensive it's terrible you can't even put a picnic together and you're kind of like I can remember kind of like buying packets of cheese slices and bread rolls for kind of I mean that's the kind of most basic picnic you can think of and it was very expensive so we just stopped kind of like we used to just eat a lot of breakfast and then keep going until dinner piece of cake and a cup of coffee 14 quid wow yeah I mean I think I I had the same experience in Iceland, actually.

48:48It was very, very pricey. But it's one of those places that it's like a bucket list place, isn't it? Where you just have to accept that that is part of the experience. No, I love it there. That's a wonderful place too, because you go around every corner and there's a new landscape. You know this. And funny enough, you know, I make notes wherever I go about, oh, kind of like either dishes that you would like to make yourself and you can kind of like work it out. or there's something there that makes you have another thought, which is just to do with, in Iceland, it was always about texture. I mean, they kind of like barley and fish.

49:26And you just kind of like, you get into this headspace where you think of things all the time that are got to do with it. And texture is something you think about all the time when you're there. I don't know if you felt the same thing. But then it's very, very different as you go around so very different depending on what area that you're in and I like the way they I mean Iceland had to kind of like reinvent itself after the economic crash before that it was ridiculous if they were planning a dinner they'd go out in Reykjavik and they could buy emu you could buy ridiculous stuff and I used to work on this program called TV Dinners years and years ago and there was very competitive dinner party giving that I discovered during filming of that program and then that's what existed in Reykjavik before they didn't have any money anymore and they and people then started to come in because it did make it cheaper to go to Iceland before that it was just impossible and they'd ask the Icelanders what their kind of what their cuisine was they didn't know what it was because it had all been either about this expensive stuff or before that boiled cod's head i mean none of the dishes were made to be especially delicious it was just all about surviving yeah and um but it had changed after the crash and i kind of was really lucky to get there after that the first trip i had there after that because yeah restaurants were opening and people were people became knowledgeable about what they could get there like they've got wild oyster leaves there and um the first time i tasted that it was this guy from he has a restaurant in the westman isles and he said look just taste this and it looks a bit like a basil leaf but smaller i smelled it first no smell at all and he didn't ever taste taste it and um it tasted like oyster flesh and they actually use those in restaurants in new york and they're eight dollars a piece there.

51:26In Iceland, the place is carpeted with them. Like they do this incredible cod's head. It's been cooked, but they now cook it in chicken stock or fish stock. And then they take it out. You know, because it's the head, there's lovely little nuggets for you to eat. But what they also do is they burn it. They kind of like have a blowtorch. They have a blowtorch and they make it look like by the time they've kind of like done that kind of like done that all over the surface it's bronzed and it looks like a sea monster you've never seen anything like it and they serve it with another very Icelandic thing they serve it with um a potato and love edge salad because love edge is very big there as well yeah they pay a lot of attention to what is very Icelandic and what they can do with it you know rhubarb the oyster leaves kind of like cod's heads tiny crabs like they're doing stuff with it all and they have kind of like salt works there as well so kind of like dried salt is a big thing there as well yeah it's a very exciting culinary destination now oh yeah i agree fantastic yeah um and also actually i have really vivid memories of a couple of times us not having planned a place to eat and we were driving around you know what felt like the middle of nowhere i know and where you would stop and there would potentially be a hot spring by the side of the road and they have been baking some bread in the ground i know that kind of that's delicious that bread yeah with you know just some really fresh butter and that just even in itself being such a memorable meal they eat more cheese than the french per head because they're not they're They're not sent abroad because they eat them all themselves.

53:14So there's much more to Iceland than really you would think. Well, we move on then, Diana, to Chapter 5. And that is your hidden gem. So that's a place that you love that maybe my listeners don't know so much about. I've got something brilliant for this, OK? So it's off Main. You need to go to, I think it's called Rockport. I love Main. I think it's, well, I do this thing nowadays still. It's not kind of like, could you live here? it's like I go over and I think oh my god I want to move there tomorrow you know Portland, Maine, Camden, Maine you know Vermont I'm always kind of imagining where I'll not end up there now because I've got my children here but you know you think my god this would have been so good um so it's off the coast of Maine and it's called North Haven and it's a little island there are lots of islands off there I mean there must be a group of about eight um and I found out about this hotel i don't know how i don't know how i found out about it called nebo lodge and i just basically wanted to stay in nebo lodge because i thought it looked fantastic it had great rugs it had all this kind of interesting glassware and then it had some rooms which kind of every single tablecloth on the tables was different and it had this wood lined bar where there was i mean i practically could hear this before i got here where the um where they were shaking cocktails in against this wood panelling anyway I went there and I think on the way there on the ferry and when it came into view and you saw um you saw the pine trees and stuff I think it was the happiest I have ever been it was just you could have touched it and then we went to stay there it was lovely it didn't let us down at all I think there's a lot of tech bros around there because there are a lot of men who kind of like evidently were rich but also scruffy um so that that kind of thing that you get and we they give us bikes from the thing from the hotel and we kind of like we have cycled for miles and this is on the island off main as well right yes this is well main's great in itself but yeah but um how big was the island then how long would it take you to cycle around to cycle around the whole place maybe three hours so it's a decent size Oh, yeah, it's not tiny.

55:31Yeah. But it's just every view was like to see if you kept on a particular sort of track. So you saw these great yachts and these old sailboats and stuff like that all out there. You imagine the history as well, right? Yeah, but also you felt it kind of like cupped you. I mean, I tried to find somewhere to rent to go back and then I kind of like I eventually dropped it. Because there's something about that hotel which made it very special too. And there was a farmer's market on the Saturday when I was there. It's not a place I could live because it's too limited. But I would love to go back there and have that feeling again.

56:07The feeling of freshness and pine and water as you go there on the ferry. It's just brilliant. Oh, that's the best hidden gem. I am 100 % adding that to my list. Do you know what they do as well? They do these farm dinners in the summer and they're outside on these wonderful, I mean, it happens in California as well. and it's all local food or as local as they can get it to be and it's just like oh my god love life why don't you just love life because this is amazing beautiful landscape beautiful beaches amazing seafood lobster yes yeah yeah yeah oh yeah fantastic well i need to book it book a trip oh no i think i think you'd love it and also you can just go and you can spend it on maine but it's just a very unusual kind of place so well in complete contrast our penultimate chapter diana is your worst travel experience, chapter six, or the place that you would just never want to go back to?

57:04I feel bad about this because I really love the food. And I was lucky enough to get advice from Claudia Rodin about where I should eat in Marrakesh. I would not go back to Morocco. As an entire country. Yeah, and it's kind of my fault in that we drove from the airport into Marrakesh with this driver and I was just a bit stupid. He kind of then offered us to kind of, he was going to take us to the Atlas Mountains. We did go on all these trips with him. But when we were up in the Atlas Mountains and I was quite drunk, he said, okay, so I've got things I'd like to send back to London. Could you, do you think you could take them with you?

57:44And I say, yeah, fine, sure, whatever it is. I mean, it was drugs. And he did not let us alone after that. No, honestly, he would turn up at the hotel at all times of the day to see whether we were there or not. And on the day going home, we had to be, I can't remember what it was. I think it was kind of like 11 o 'clock flight out. But we were convinced because he'd always be turning up and he'd find out what time our flight was at on the day of leaving because, you know, because he's just talking all the time and you don't think you're going to have to be suspicious of people. But we actually left the hotel that morning at five o 'clock so that we could get to the airport and check in and end up in a place that he couldn't get to.

58:29Because he also worried, like he'd taken us on so many kind of like trips, but never agreed a price for that. And I thought, oh my God, I'm going to end up in the clink here. So that wasn't great. And that was a place I was not able to settle down. I mean, possibly because of this, I don't know. But it was a lot of hassle. I was, there's a shocking juxtaposition of outside your Riyadh, which is all kind of jasmine flower water and fountains and mint tea and all the rest of it. And then what it's actually like in the, you know, the little shops and things around, like there's kind of open to the air butchers.

59:09So you go from, you know, a smell which is really bad. So then you go back to your, go out to your hotel and you're kind of all covered in flower water i thought the um the contrast was very extreme for me so that combined with someone who wanted me to do a drugs run it's kind of like it wasn't it wasn't great a bad taste in your mouth i just don't think i could go there again because i think i'd be right back to feeling oh my god oh my god where is that guy i mean we would be we would be in the kind of like um bizarre and everything and suddenly because those have got little roads in them we'd see him and it'd be like oh my god how does he know we're here i mean yeah that that wasn't good it's quite spooky but i absolutely adore the food like tagines well and you know the philo pastries and it's just i mean it's one of the most delicious cuisines but also it it feels as if it's from another age i mean it does the country feels like that it's just kind of this is biblical yeah and i think there are ones which feel more extremely like that than than marroquette yourself and i when people go from here to there i know quite a few friends who've been but they're really focused on what they'll buy it's all about oh the bazaars and we'll bring this and we'll bring that and it's kind of like i don't want to go on holidays to shop um but yeah even the food would not bring me back to morocco i don't think i make it i make it at home yeah but i don't think yeah i don't think i'd ever go back you bring morocco to you yeah in your kitchen well diana i could chat to you for hours i mean it has been such a pleasure going around the world with you we are on to the final chapter of your travel diaries chapter seven and that is the destination that is at the top of your travel bucket list where would you love to go that you've not yet been or where would you love to go back to um i would love to go to Japan and my two sons want to come as well so we might do that next we might do that next summer it just do you know who else really loves it um Nigel Slater and he goes off to these really he's in solitude and you can be that in Japan and nobody's going to bother you but to somewhere if you think of it a place of extremes again you know Tokyo like Blade Runner and then the countryside with cherry blossom or with snow.

1:01:28And I think they do snow sculpture stuff every year and they keep it up as long as they can. So it's like your dream and also the amazing food. Exactly. Although I think it would be hard for me to eat Japanese food for a couple of weeks. I'd just be craving other things. And I don't know if there's like kinaan coffee. It's kind of like tea more, but I would just love to. yeah I'd love to see the contrasts I want to go to these beautifully designed hotels that are kind of like plain plain plain and not modern and not all-fashioned they seem to manage to do a plainness that just is yes just stunning yeah beautiful simplicity well thank you so much Anna those were your travel diaries it's been a joy no it's been great thank you so much

1:02:19oh well what a lovely conversation thank you so much diana for joining me on the podcast around the table 52 essays on food and life is out now on audio and in hardback on the 2nd of october thanks so much for listening today if you'd like a reminder of any of the destinations that we chat about on any of the episodes just open up the episode show notes on your podcast app and there's a destination recap list in there or you can visit my website thetraveldiariespodcast.com if you'd like to find out who is joining me on next week's episode come and follow me on instagram i'm at holly rubenstein and i'm also on tiktok at holly rubenstein too if you can't wait till then remember there's the first 14 seasons to catch up on that's about 155 episodes to keep you busy If you enjoyed today's episode and you fancy leaving a little rating or review on your podcast app, that would be fantastic.

1:03:13It helps other people to discover the podcast. In the meantime, wishing you guys all safe travels, a wonderful week, and I'll be back on Tuesday.

1:03:37Thank you.