Photography

Franco Pepe Pizza Chef

Franco Pepe: Pizza Chef was photographed by Adam Bricker and me, written by Franco and Elisia Menduni, with introductions from Faith Willinger, Nancy Silverton, and Daniel Young.

This was Adam and my first cookbook, and every day was an adventure. From convincing a local Neapolitan gravestone maker to build miniature tiled pizza backdrops to teaching the Pepe family Monopoly Deal over Franco's top secret tavern-style 'Pepe-roni,' shooting this book was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. What a joy to share Franco's incredible story and craft with the world.

Huge thanks to Franco for his trust, Emilia Terragni at Phaidon for her backing, Leica Camera for their generosity, and the whole Pepe in Grani family for making it all possible.

England

London is an eel sandwich at Quo Vadis with Jeremy Lee, lunch at Quality Chop, dinner at Legado for Nieves Barragan's brilliance, and a meal at Dalla that somehow gets better every time. Outside the city, The Seahorse in Dartmouth feels both human and timeless, with playing cards stuck in the ceiling from a magician who came for dinner and couldn't help himself. At The Chapel in Bruton is doing tortellini in brodo with wild mushrooms and a crispy squash sandwich that has no business being that good. And Thyme in the Cotswolds is the kind of place where Charlie Thyme's cooking makes you forget you had plans to leave.

What makes England special is the people. Mitch Tonks changing the way a country eats seafood. Margot Henderson building a country pub that feels like it's been there forever. Franco Pepe launching a book at The Connaught while Agostino rolls a martini trolley tableside with handmade bitters. The food and the people who make it are inseparable.

Faroe Islands

The Faroe Islands. Grass-topped buildings, waterfalls accessible through mountain-slicing tunnels, and cardamom waffles with raspberry jam at Asta Klokkan in Tórshavn. Poul Andrias showed us around, and Adam Bricker and Patricia Mateo made for the best travel companions a guy could ask for.

The highlight was Stóra Dímun, the smallest inhabited island in the Faroes, accessible only by sea and weekly helicopter. Eva and Jógvan Jón's family has been there for eight generations, working the land, tending sheep, caring for a single cow (the ultimate micro-dairy), and training sheep dogs tough enough to handle terrain their humans can't. Over coffee and skerpikjøt on rye, Jógvan Jón demonstrated a traditional puffin hunt at the cliff's edge with a 15-foot net and pole. It's a harrowing task. Five of the family's last nine patriarchs died falling from those cliffs. The puffins didn't cooperate that day, and truthfully they've stopped hunting them altogether now, a 90% drop in population having ended the tradition. We finished the visit with rhubarb wine at the family's winery and met their newest sheep dogs-in-training. Eva and Jógvan Jón didn't choose isolation. They chose an older, more fulfilling life.

Italy

Italy is often the place I measure everything against. Amerigo 1934 and their tortellini in brodo is one of my favorite restaurants in the world. I first went thanks to Faith Willinger, who called Alberto while I sat in a car park hoping to sneak in for a table. Now it's a pilgrimage. Simplicity plus quality equals perfection, and nobody proves that better than they do.

Bologna is a city I can't stay away from, even if it's just a 90-minute sprint between trains for a mortadella panino at La Salumeria and a Crema Sette Chiese gelato at Cremeria Santo Stefano. Matteo Poggi is there reviving a pasta from Pellegrino Artusi's 1891 cookbook that had basically disappeared. I'm still thinking about it. On the Sorrento Coast, Peppe Guida at Villa di Nonna Rosa makes the best Nerano in the world, for me. And just outside Bolzano, on the southern slope of the Ritten, Mali has been cooking at Buschenschank Baumann for 50 years, famous for her Schlutzkrapfen, a rustic spinach ravioli that her daughter will eventually carry forward.

Italy is full of people like this. Families and cooks who've been doing the same thing for generations, not because it's trendy, but because it's right.

Japan

Villa Della Pace in Nanao was recommended by Yoshihiro Imai from Monk, and it became one of my favorite meals of the last several years. Hirata-san has been making precise Italian food with ingredients and flavors from the Noto area for nearly a decade, and after the tragic earthquake of 2024, his cooking evolved into something even brighter. Microgreens with their tiny roots crisped in oil, perfectly crunchy while the leaf stayed fresh and dewy. That kind of detail. Nearby, Hitotsu Notojima, Kisoba Enju, Noto Milk, and Kota Glass Studio.

In Ayabe, outside Kyoto, Wataru Hatano is a painter turned washi paper maker who trained at Kurotani, where handmade paper has been produced for 800 years. He grows his own kozo trees, makes the paper by hand, and turns it into paintings, furniture, and entire interior spaces.

In Karuizawa, SSH003 Bathhouse, train station udon, and dinner at Restaurant Pramol x Shola. Asama Meat in Tsumagoi and a mushroom farm in Naganohara. In Tokyo, Sushi Mizukami, Udon Maruka, Tonkatsu Keita, Ryan, Adi, Base, Parklet Bakery, and K5.

Artisans and cooks who care so deeply about doing one thing well that the result feels almost unreasonable. That's Japan.

Spain

A lot of my time in Spain is thanks to Patricia Mateo, who has become one of my closest friends and the ultimate guide to the country. The prawns at Asador Etxebarri. Lobster cooked over fire at Sa Llagosta in Menorca. Lera in Castroverde de Campos, where Luis Alberto Lera has turned a tiny town in the middle of the Castilian plains into a pilgrimage site for game lovers, his family cooking there since 1973.

Lana in Madrid, where the Narvaiz brothers are running one of the best Argentinian grills in Europe. And Ultramarinos Marín in Barcelona, where Borja García took over an old bar, kept the slot machine by the door, and is quietly turning out some of the most honest food in the city with experience from Etxebarri and Noma behind him.

Thailand

Thailand is Nok Suntaranon's world. Nok is one of my dearest friends, an incredible storyteller, and the reason every trip to Thailand feels like an education. She'll tease you for not knowing how to eat curry and rice properly, and then take you somewhere that changes the way you think about food entirely.

A morning at Jok Prince, beef balls at Si Yan, Khao Soi at the cooking school of Kru Padung, an expert on Royal Thai cuisine. Nok arranged a visit to Jantararat Hemvej to learn about the traditional art of fruit carving, originally used to decorate the tables of the Royal Family, which ended with a garlic bulb being carved into a flower. Outside Bangkok, Kui Mong in Suphan Buri and time spent in Trang.

Thailand is a place where the traditions run deep and the people who carry them forward do it with joy, humor, and zero pretense.

United States

LA is home. Brunch at Sqirl with Jess Koslow, Fátima Juárez at Komal doing incredible things with heirloom corn and pre-Hispanic recipes from Oaxaca and Mexico City. Kato, where chef Jon Yao is cooking some of the most exciting food in the city with Ryan Bailey running the room and the wine program. Hannah Ziskin's cakes at Quarter Sheet. Dunsmoor, Yang's Kitchen, Golden Deli, Pane Bianco DTLA, Barbacoa Chef, David Wilcox, and Junya Yamasaki's silken tofu salsa macha on the new izakaya-style menu at Yess. In Philly, Jessie Ito's Royal Sushi Omakase and Nok's restaurant Kalaya. Up north, Sea Ranch. In North Carolina, Cameron Indoor Stadium for Duke basketball, a love affair that started way too early in life and has never let up.