I grew up north of Seattle, studied at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, and then hit the road. The next four years were spent traveling in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, and Asia.
After those years of constant roaming, when food was as much of the joy and discovery as the people and places, I settled in London to do graduate work at King’s College London and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
There, in the kitchen of a shared Hampstead residence hall, I met another foreign post-grad, a Catalan woman. When she returned home to Barcelona to do her PhD, I followed. That was 1996. We married not long after, and for most of the time since then we have lived here. We have two young girls. Barcelona is home, though I continue to travel widely and frequently.
Along with my cookbooks and two non-fiction works, I have written, mostly about food and travel, for many magazines and newspapers, including Saveur, Food & Wine, Gourmet (RIP), NPR.org, nationalgeographic.com, EatingWell, the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Atlantic Monthly on-line, Christian Science Monitor, Dwell, Virtuoso Life, Aramco World, Destinasia, and Afar.
Darjeeling won the 2016 IACP award for literary food writing and a Gourmand Best in the World prize for book on tea.
For me food is an ideal subject because writing about it is writing about culture. It is the window through which almost any story can be told.
Books in order of publication:
La Paella: Deliciously Authentic Rice Dishes from Spain’s Mediterranean Coast – 2006
Rice Pasta Couscous – 2009
MOROCCO: A Culinary Journey with Recipes from the Spice-scented Markets of Marrakech to the Date-Filled Oasis of Zagora – 2012
Spain: Recipes and Traditions from the Verdant Hills of the Basque Country to the Coastal Waters of Andalucía – 2013
Darjeeling: The Colorful History and Precarious Fate of the World’s Greatest Tea – 2015
Where the Wild Coffee Grows: The Untold Story of Coffee from the Cloud Forests of Ethiopia to Your Cup – 2017
The North African Cookbook – 2023
Matisse in Morocco: A Journey of Light and Color – 2025
The Spanish Mediterranean Islands Cookbook – 2025
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