Articles

Don’t limit Chicago to business only. It’s a great city for a weekend getaway.

Thomas Keller’s French Laundry is one of the most influential restaurants in America. Its alumni have fanned out to open their own restaurants and raise the culinary bar throughout the country. Here six recount their experiences at the feet of the master.

California’s leading role in culinary innovation is recognized by the first ever statewide Michelin Guide.

If you’ve ever wanted to rekindle romance and fall in love with Paris again, where better than the grand hotel where George Gershwin wrote the score for “An American in Paris” in 1928?

Bal Harbour has become synonymous with luxury, one of the world’s most fashionable addresses — and all the more remarkable for a village of less than 3,000 residents whose exquisite ocean-to-bay enclave encompasses barely 1 square mile on a barrier isle along the Atlantic.

Perhaps no other locale better evokes the phrase la dolce vita than Bellagio, the fabled Italian resort town known as the pearl of Lake Como. Ever since the early years of the Roman Empire when the poet Virgil wrote about the lake and Pliny the Younger built a hilltop summer villa, visitors have celebrated the sweetness of life in this idyllic lakefront town in Lombardy.

In an imperial city replete with fantastic characters, many of whom were emperors and archdukes, royals and aristocrats, there are few Viennese doyennes more fabled than Anna Sacher, the 19th century bon vivant and hotelier whose outsize personality helped make the Hotel Sacher the cynosure of Viennese cultural life and one of the world’s great luxury hotels.

Designed in 1879 to evoke the avenues of Paris, Lisbon’s Avenida da Liberdade is often considered the city’s Champs-Elysees: a broad, leafy boulevard lined with fountains and statuary alongside sidewalks of Portuguese mosaic. The Avenue (as it’s known to locals) is home to fashion houses, art deco movie palaces and luxury hotels, all of which made it a fitting neighborhood for one of Portugal’s most famous actresses, Beatriz Costa, who made her home at the five-star Tivoli Avenida Liberdade Lisboa.

One of the more fortunate felines in the world is a Burmese named Fa-Raon (the phonetic spelling of the French word for “pharaoh”) whose fabulous realm is free “reign” of Le Bristol Paris. Given the ancient Egyptians’ belief in the regal nature of felines, it’s fitting that Fa-Raon should lay claim to a six-story limestone palace located on rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré—two blocks from Élysée Palace, the official residence of the President of France.

Chicago bartender Jay Schroeder has written a timely 101 called Understanding Mezcal that tells you everything you need to know about the smokey Mexican spirit.