Jeanne O'Brien Coffey

Plunging into Lake George literally took my breath away – gasping both from the chilly water, and from the sheer joy of swimming for the first time in three months. After eons of home-schooling two tweens, and only heading out for walks in our hometown and trips to the grocery store, the whole family was desperate for a change of scenery—me most of all.
So we packed the car and drove to the Sagamore Resort, a grand dame of lakeside inns at the southern edge of the Adirondacks.
The first hurdl...

Back in March, Ian Hunter, co-founder of Deacon Giles Distillery in Salem, Massachusetts, started getting dozens of requests for a product he had never made before. Hand sanitizer was suddenly desperately needed by everyone from first-responders to emergency daycare centers, and Hunter was uniquely qualified to provide it.
“We were getting phone calls more than hourly,” Hunter recalls. “People were looking for thousands of gallons.”
Everyone was turning to Deacon Giles because the most import...

Do you miss your favorite bartender? They miss you too. And with the coronavirus shuttering restaurants across the country, they also miss their jobs, which they really can’t do from home. In the meantime, Privateer Rum has come up with an innovative plan to put some money in pockets and give you the satisfaction of watching a talented bartender prepare a perfectly crafted cocktail – ideally using ingredients you already have at home.
Since St. Patrick’s Day, the Ipswich, Mass.,-based distill...

Matt O’Neil is a glass half-full kind of guy. Last week he turned his restaurant, Ledger Restaurant & Bar, a beautiful fine dining spot in a historic former bank in Salem, Mass., into Ledger Basket. Borrowing the moniker from a popular New England supermarket chain, he is now offering prepared foods and pantry staples.
“It’s like being given the opportunity to open a different restaurant, with nothing to lose,” O’Neil says of the order to shift exclusively to take-out in Massachusetts – and j...

Matthew Morello is the first to admit that his interest in oysters borders on obsession. He makes an 80-mile round trip at least twice a week—and sometimes at the drop of a hat—from his restaurant, Elm Square Oyster Co. in Andover, to Taylor Lobster in Kittery, Maine, to make sure he gets dibs on new, unique bivalves from small producers along the coast. He’s developing his own line of barrel-aged hot sauces because he thinks Tabasco is an insult to a pristine oyster. And he even traded in hi...

IKEA uses its sheer size to influence global forest policy for the good.

It takes a bit of nerve to put fried clams on the menu at a brand-new eatery in Essex that is sandwiched between Village Restaurant and the double threat of Woodman’s and J.T. Farnham’s, all three with generations of fierce adherents for that very dish. But chef Mario Capone and his staff are well up to the challenge, bringing the same care to the upscale pub food at Great Marsh Brewing Co. that is on display at the much-loved Bancroft restaurants Capone also oversees. Their fried clams are p...

Halvah is a well-known treat in the Middle East and Israel. People buy slices of the sesame-based sweet cut from wheels or loaves in open-air markets and snack on it, crumble it onto toast or yogurt, and even make it into sandwiches.
Here on the North Shore, unless you grew up near a Jewish deli or have traveled afar, it isn’t so familiar. But Victoria Wallins thinks it should be. Nut-free, gluten-free, and packed with protein, the crumbly, melt-in-your-mouth candy made from tahini (a paste o...

I am lounging in the sun, reading a book. Sipping an Aperol Spritz, cruising along the Garonne River in Bordeaux, headed toward the tiny town of Bourg. My two kids are splashing in the tiny swimming pool on the deck.
I’d never heard of the town of Bourg, but I trust Captain Daniel Sak, the professionally trained chef who owns Tango, the only private hotel barge navigating the Gironde estuary—the rivers that wind through Bordeaux — and his first mate/concierge Daphna Cuevas. In the same way I ...

Our own Editor-in-Chief Danny Seo wasn’t planning a move. But an open house lured him in and, somehow, his new house found him.

In 2016, Andrea Borgen was feeling pretty good. She had just eliminated tipping at Barcito, her restaurant in an emerging neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles, promising staff a fair wage and health benefits. Accolades poured in for the then 26-year-old, from a video on ATTN: that garnered 60,000 views, to awards from Eater and Zagat. Sales were increasing, and her staff—consulted every step of the way in her decision—seemed happy with the predictable income and benefits.
Two years later, Bor...

I may be dating myself, but I remember when Two-Buck Chuck first appeared in Trader Joe's. And honestly, it wasn't too bad. I believed the stories — that they were buying bulk wine that was sometimes very good, and sometimes not so good. My experience with the wine reflected that at the time— although these days, it's just not good.
Supermarket wine has a pretty bad rap here — deservedly so. Much of it is too sweet and unbalanced, with little thought given to flavor and a focus on price. But ...

I am standing barefoot in a Hindu temple in Kerala, having checked my shoes in a pile of hundreds and hundreds of others at the door. Dusk is falling, and music, lights and incense swirl all around me. Dozens of elephants are brushing past, close enough to touch. Walls lined with thousands of small oil lamps flicker on the crowds.
My group of five Americans are the only foreigners in the temple, in a crush of thousands. We're such an unusual sight that kids tugged on their parents’ clothing, ...

Typically, when you go to a tequila tasting, you taste tequila, right? You take it into your mouth, and even if your intention is to spit, you ingest some of the spirit. But the interesting thing about “taste,” as we all learned in biology class, is that humans can only identify a few distinct ones. Most of what we experience when tasting actually comes from scent – or more specifically, olfaction, as Harvard professor and serial inventor David Edwards can tell you.
“You can identify about a ...

The soaring windows are draped with opulent blue and gold velvet. A delicate antique writing desk, adorned with a magnifying glass and letter opener, stands in the corner before an inviting tufted chair. A delicately painted French Provincial style bed, with a tall white headboard and matching curved footboard, is edged by a pair of inlaid delicate antique nightstands. Beautiful ceramics adorn the gilded furniture and a leaded glass door leads to a terrace with sweeping views of the Loire Riv...