This Feeds Me Hungry Musings of a Gastronomic Gypsy – NC-based freelance writer Victoria Bouloubasis

Yamazushi exists as an unparalleled dining experience in the Triangle, serving a traditional, high-end Japanese kaiseki menu in a decades-old strip mall. The story behind the place is a very personal one. It is one of sustenance, survival and the will to keep on. Many are comparing Chef George Yamazawa to the famed Chef Jiro [...]

Sometimes, my immensely talented friends let me write their professional bios for them. While it’s not about food or farming, that’s exactly how I met Steph, of Steph Stewart and the Boyfriends. She was one of the Crop Mobbers a couple years back who I met while doing a story on the group. A few [...]

The food on our tables– sweet potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, chicken, pork and more — come from hands tied to a cycle of repression and injustice. Supporting that is a variety of indirectly connected societal behaviors. Among them: consumer choices, discriminatory legal policies and community prejudice.

In this week’s Now Serving, I write about homemade treats for that weird love holiday that will incite you to really love your neighbors. Discover savory cookies to pair with local microbrews, modern Peruvian confections and raw chocolate to awaken the senses, all handmade in the Triangle. Read about them and adore, err, order your [...]

A couple of published news pieces today. Have you checked out the Sunday brunch at Motorco Music Hall? Free live music, bacon Bloody Marys and KoKyu BBQ sliders. I’ve dubbed it Sunday Slurp and Slide. Check out my Indy Big Bite post about it here. In this week’s Now Serving, The Mecca adds late-night hours, [...]

My first piece for SavorNC Magazine is now in the January/February issue. Inspired by the upcoming National Truffle Festival in March, held every year in Asheville, NC, I delved into our state’s blooming truffle farming industry. What I found out didn’t necessarily surprise me: North Carolina is a pioneer in yet another culinary, agriculture movement. [...]

The New York Times sure does love Cackalacky. Durham exudes cool all over the place as #35 in the newspaper’s travel list of 41 Places to Go in 2011. What garnered the Bull City this coveted spot among the world’s most exotic locales (and only three other U.S. cities)? The food, dangit! We’re some happy [...]

But I’m back in full swing. And so very excited to be back in full swing in North Carolina. I don’t take this place for granted. No ma’am.

An oasis in a food desert TROSA Grocery opens in East Durham by Victoria Bouloubasis Cornbread smeared with sweet orange marmalade and live music helped mark a celebration in East Durham last week as residents welcomed the first grocery store to open in the neighborhood in at least 50 years. TROSA, the Durham-based nonprofit, opened [...]

The air is thick with thoughts of biscuits these days, and not just because The New York Times discovered Neal’s Deli this month. In a new Durham food blog, You Don’t Know Biscuits (youdontknowbiscuits.blogspot.com), Chris Rhyne Reid explores her great-grandmother’s recipes like a tragic heroine, battling the Southern cook’s classic challenge: making a perfect biscuit. [...]

Check out the 15th Annual Piedmont Farm Tour! And if you’ve never eaten a fried duck egg, sunny-side up, you’re in for a treat. “Want breakfast?” my friend asked. “I have one duck egg left!” She reached into her fridge and pulled out the egg, almost double the size of a chicken egg, tinged a [...]

Joel Salatin let out a big-bellied laugh in front of more than 600 people while serving on a speaker panel at Meredith College last month. A sense of urgency escaped from his jovial, Southern lilt, as the celebrated sustainable farmer delivered tongue-in-cheek opinions unabashedly. “I don’t know why [farming's] not sexy. To me, a hoop [...]