Every summer growing up, my family took a week-long vacation to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware where one of the highlights, since I can remember, has been my Aunt Kathy's Maryland crab soup. Among our many other family traditions of happy hour at the beach, boardwalk games, ice cream cones, and bike rides, no beach week was complete without one night's dinner being a good ol'-fashioned crab feast, hon.
Read MorePortland, Maine is by all accounts, barely a city. With a population of roughly 66,000 (people), it's really more of a large town by global standards, and yet it's managed to become something of a craft beer mecca in the American northeast. Depending on who you ask, craft brewing has eclipsed other longstanding Maine industries like seafood and timber as an economic superpower; providing local jobs, drawing in tourists, and boosting the state's income by millions.
Read MoreBefore World of Beer sent me to Kansas City, MO on assignment to get to know Boulevard beer better, I had never really been to the midwest (apart from a short weekend working trip to Chicago, which doesn't really count.) It remained a mystery to me, and I was excited to see if everything I'd heard was true - are the people that nice? The barbecue that good? The local pride that real?
Yes, yes, and yes.
Read MorecIt was a Sunday afternoon and I was on my way to Midtown to sell an iPad Mini to a Craig's List rando, very much looking forward to getting it over with so I could go home and sit on my couch and very purposely waste the day, when I got a text from my friend Brian: "Wanna grab lunch on City Island?" I pondered for a moment, and thought... fuck. Yes, I do. Dammit.
City Island had been on my to-do list for over a year, and given my resolution to squeeze every last drop out of the dwindling summer, I would have to rally some energy and the couch would have to wait.
Brian met me in Queens with his car and we got on the road. One thing that makes City Island a hidden gem of New York City is that you really need a car to get there, something most city-dwellers lack.
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