Barry Yourgrau

As my plane descended towards Scotland, I boasted to the guy next to me that the first thing I'd do in Glasgow was grab a meat pie and a pint of Tennant's 80 shilling ale. After we landed, I settled for a square-cut-sausage sandwich and a cappuccino -- life-threatening enough.

Nicolas Winding Refn's hard-boiled stripped-down crime thriller Drive thrums with such knockout style, I'll wager a platinum set of dual carbs on an Oscar nomination for its cinematographer, Newton Thomas Sigel, at the least.

The film, which opens Friday, has already garnered the...

A pearl of Istanbul's glory days is about to mark the first anniversary of its reappearance.

The Pera Palace Hotel, born in the gilded age of the Orient Express, reopened its doors last September after a monumental feat of restoration lasting over two years at a cost of...

The starship of the dining future, El Bulli, just closed its doors. So ends the restaurant phase of Mr. Wizard Ferran Adriá. Phase 2.0 will be a wide-ranging research center housed in a state of the art/future recoversion of the restaurant's...

I'll have the pleasure of doing a bilingual reading on Thurs. Dec. 9 in New York with my good friend Motoyuki Shibata who is visiting from Japan.

We'll be reading at Kinokuniya Bookstore in Manhattan from my new book of stories Gangster Fables,...

"Any lives they endangered, they're personally responsible for and the blood is on their hands." ~ Mike Huckabee.

The Wikileaks leaker has blood on his hands. But George Bush doesn't.

The Wikileaks leaker has blood on his hands. But Dick Cheney doesn't.

The Wikileaks leaker has blood...

*SEE PHOTOS BELOW*

In Seoul last month, my first visit, I was pleased to discover one of the coolest little bars in the whole wide world.

It's called Pub of the Blue Star. It can be found in a side alley off the northern end of Insadong-gil, the arty...

I had the pleasure of a month in Amsterdam this summer (ciao to New York's hottest June-August on record). I knew Amsterdam's attractions from previous visits. But this time I realized how it's one of the world's great cities for walking (but watch out for bicycles!).

I love rambling...

I flew to Amsterdam from New York a couple of days ago, connecting through Madrid with a long layover. So happenstance offered me a paired glimpse of the two capitals from the World Cup final: red winner, orange loser.

Madrid

We had five hours in Madrid between planes. We...

Spain won a final that turned almost immediately from a sporting contest to a morality play. Spain were the good guys.

Holland deserted its great legacy of Total Football and went for a disgraceful program of thuggish fouling. (Take your pick of such adjectives from a wide spectrum of

It ain't been a good World Cup. Some thoughts on doings in South Africa as we head to the quarterfinals:

The vuvuzelas are a nightmare. They ruin the experience and drama of a live contest. Their relentless mechanical drone produces affectless. It has a sense of purposefully drowning out the...

A couple months ago, I said to my friend Steve, a soccer maven of the highest order, that I thought a key factor in the World Cup would be the timely health of players. In other words, injuries. His response, looking up from his charts and tactical diagrams, as it...

Those who study the ways of child abuse, like the pyschologist Alice Miller, tell us that adults who abuse children were themselves usually abused as children. Abuse is a self-perpetuating noxious cycle. As you were mistreated, so will you pass that along.

So I wonder: were all...

(This strange screed has come to my attention. I share it here. - BY)

Dear Sara Ms Palluns or Mrs Palluns,

Hi, you don't know me, but I sure know you. I have two eyes and ears and a TV--wow! That's what I gotta say. Okay, I don't have...

A horrific viciousness, the Moscow subway bombings. But surely the word "suspected" or "alleged" should be applied to the "two female bombers" being trumpeted through an Associate Press story on HuffPost and elsewhere. The source for this allegation is the head of the successor organization to the KGB -- who...

In accepting the Best Original Screenplay for Hurt Locker last night, Mark Boal said:

"I would also like to thank and dedicate this to the troops, the 115,000 who are still in Iraq, the 120,000 in Afghanistan and the more than 30,000 wounded and 4,000 who have not...

John Carlin is a much accomplished journalist and author who ranked as the dean of foreign correspondents (for the UK Independent) in South Africa during the last days of apartheid and the birth of the new South Africa. He was a significant witness to Mandela--and his book

Istanbul, city of fables, the bridge between West and East, is celebrating its status as a 2010 European Capital of Culture. A wealth of activities and events entice the visitor.

But I want to write now as a longtime frequenter of this city, where we have a little...

UPDATE: El Bulli to close permanently; see below.

Following Cook It Raw! in Italy, I tagged along to the big daddy of chef conferences in Madrid.

MadridFusion, a yearly world-all-star gastro-vaganza, has pretty much operated as house stage for Ferran Adria, the Catalan...

Thirteen of the world's best young chefs gathered last month for the 2nd freewheeling Cook It Raw! culinary event, this year held in the trendsetting wine-region of Collio in Friuli, on Italy's border with Slovenia. The theme: "Winter Was Hard."

As the partner of a food...