May 2022
Life
Like April, May was a prolific month of travel for me – in total, I was probably in New York for less than a week. After a few short trips in the first half of the month, I left the city around mid-May and ultimately ended up in Seattle by Memorial Day, where I would call home for the summer.
I started the month with a long-weekend trip to Savannah and Charleston. Both cities were impressively charming and historical, thanks to excellent preservation efforts that have kept their look(s) and feel(s) in the 18th century.
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| The streets of Savannah, Georgia |
Savannah, in particular, really made an impression on me. As America's first planned city, it is laid out in a curiously practical and modular pattern. The city consists of 22 wards; each ward has a square in the center, 4 commercial lots on the left and right, and 40 residential lots sandwiching them (you can read more about the Oglethorpe plan, named after its founder James Oglethorpe, here). Savannah is very picturesque – most buildings faithfully preserve classical Georgian styles, with large century-old trees providing shade over the sidewalks and squares. The city is also very walkable – I spent my afternoon wandering around the wards aimlessly, stumbling upon 3 (!) weddings in the process. In retrospect, I can see why: the weather was perfect in early May and the city squares provided both the perfect venue and backdrop. Not to mention it's probably free too.
The next morning, I caught the train to Charleston, about 2 hours north. Charleston was once the wealthiest city in Colonial America, and you can observe this fact from all the fancy colonial mansions downtown. Unfortunately, a lot of this wealth came from the slave trade; almost half of the slaves imported to the US arrived through Charleston. The city was also the site of the first battle of the Civil War, Fort Sumter.
Like Savannah, Charleston has also significantly preserved its downtown and prevented new architectural styles from encroaching in. However, it lacks the charm or organization that characterizes Savannah. That's not to say Charleston is worse – there is a lot more to see and do by being a much larger city, and it possesses a lot more historical significance. I visited the Nathaniel Russell house, one of many cool historical-home museums downtown, and it felt like touring a mini European palace in terms of grandioseness. I also biked out to Sullivan's Island, a small beach town about 10 miles north east, and got pretty sunburnt in the process.
My hotel in Charleston was the highlight of my time there. With ~20 rooms, the Wenthworth Mansion is situated in a 4-story mansion originally built in 1886 for a large and affluent family. Staying at the hotel is like taking a step back in time; if you ask the staff, they'll happily share plenty of interesting details about the property from the original pieces of furniture still around to the history of the owners. The mansion was built with grandeur in mind – there's original Swiss marble on the floor, Italian crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceilings, staircases made from fine English Oak, and Tiffany stained glass. To get to live in such history was a very intimate and lived way to experience (upper-class) Charleston.
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| Parlor room at the Wentworth Mansion |
The next weekend, I headed back to Chicago to staff another Quiz Bowl Tournament – this time the Middle School Nationals – but basically didn't leave the hotel next to the airport. After a quick stay back home, I went to Boston for a Causal Inference training, and stayed into the weekend to take a day-trip to Maine (state number 43). Portland felt like a very quaint destination town with only 70,000 residents, even less than half the population of Sioux Falls. I took a BYOB boat tour around the islands on a schooner, an old-school double-masted sail boat about 70 ft long. I was the only non-white person on my tour. I also didn't realize that it was BYOB.
We had a company training (read: offsite) in Las Vegas the week after. I went dune buggy riding out in the 40-degree sun, but it was probably an oversight to not check driver licenses as I don't think I could've driven one of the buggies. The experience ended up being my first time operating a vehicle for more than a couple minutes, and it was not exactly a gentle first introduction. The 30-minute long route consisted of random sharp turns, steep hills, and particularly narrow paths. The guy sitting next to me had no idea it was my first time driving even though I was nervously holding the wheel with both hands the entire time.
From Las Vegas, I flew directly to Mexico City for my (now) once-a-year tradition to visit my favorite food city. I had expected my second visit to pale in comparison to my month there last year, but I'm glad to be proven wrong. During my week back, I tried to balance between revisiting favorites and also trying out new places. Outside of food, I didn't plan to do much else - after all I was working that week and it turned out to be a pretty hectic week at work that I often had to take out my laptop over dinner or on the taxi. Regardless, I'll share 3 non-food memories here:
First, there's a very strong cocktail scene in Mexico City, which I suppose is another gastronomic reason to visit. There are 4 bars alone that rank in the world's top 50. I highly recommend Licoreria Limantour, a bar in Roma that does an awesome job incorporating diverse fresh fruits into its vibrant cocktails. I also really liked the matcha dame blanche at Handshake Speakeasy, which had an aftertaste of drinking chocolate.
We also visited a few works by Luis Barragán, a Mexican architect who was the 2nd Pritzker prize laureate. Barragán's style features bold colors and simple geometric forms, with plenty of right angles that emphasize the intersection between horizontal and vertical planes. A modern-day monk who prioritized privacy, his residential projects prominently displayed beautiful gardens, often allocating more lot space to gardens than to the house.
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| Casa Pedregal by Luis Barragán from the Rock Garden. The rock gardens in the foreground were formed naturally by volcanic activity. |
Lastly, this time I spent a lot of time in Condesa, my favorite neighborhood in the city. It's not exactly picture-perfect with buildings from all eras between colonial and modern, but it has a relaxed and European vibe to it. The area is very green; there is a large park in the center that literally shapes the neighborhood, and its streets are so well shaded that it felt like a walking in a forest, but in the city.
Food
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| The Grey is located in an art-deco style Greyhound bus terminal |
- The Grey (Savannah, GA): The Grey is the one restaurant that’s on any Savannah food list. Chef Mashama’s food isn’t just inspired by traditional southern cuisine, but actually lives it. Sure it’s made more sophisticated with complicated processes and inspired presentations, but every course was a clear callback to a more traditional dish. The food isn't fine dining, but feels like something you would get at the best at-home dinner party.
- Husk (Charleston, SC): Husk made me appreciate southern food in a way I hadn't realized before. Everything was executed perfectly, classically, and with an emphasis on the best ingredients. Take for example the butter beans: I’ve never been a beans person, but every single bean was rich and flavorful - with a fun celeriac accent that I thoroughly enjoyed.
- Oysters (Portland, Maine and Charleston, SC): both the Northeast and Lowcountry are known for its oysters. South Carolina produces these delicious Capers Blades – particularly long and skinny oysters in shape – that are on the brinier side but also subtly sweeter.
- Pujol (Mexico City, Mexico): Pujol is the epitome of cuisine in Mexico; you must try to come here if you are planning a trip to Mexico City. My second time at Pujol was as good as, if not better, than the first time. The magical experience did not diminish at all.
- Tacos! (Mexico City, Mexico): as good as Pujol is, the reason I love Mexico City is its street food. Ask me for recs; I can talk about tacos for hours. I also wrote an article about them once.
- Panadería Rosetta (Mexico City, Mexico): I dream of eating the guava roll here every day for breakfast. It’s a pastry that comes with a light ricotta bed, topped with guava marmalade with the texture of pulp. The guava marmalade is special - a rich and authentic fruity paste that pairs so well with the ricotta and buttery crust. Their other pastries – the cinnamon roll, Berliners, Mille Feuilles – are all stellar as well.
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| Los Cocuyos, the one taquería you must visit in CDMX |
Misc
There are no traffic lights in Savannah. Kind of rare for an American city.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of Bachelorette parties take place in Savannah. White women roam the streets in packs. Peddle-and-drink bikes are a regular on the streets, and can be heard from blocks away blasting music. There's also the odd horse drawn cart with the obviously miserable laborer, while astonishingly many trolley buses carry older tourists who do not wish to walk.
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| A bit of irony |
LaGuardia Terminal A is the strangest airport terminal I've been to in the US. Known as the Marine Air Terminal, it first opened in 1940 and is the only active airport terminal in the US today dating from the first generation of passenger travel. Designed in an Art Deco style, the building has a large circular foyer as its main check-in area, sort of like an American train station built during the same era. Huge murals on the walls give it a weirdly soviet vibe, as well as the grandioseness of this public infrastructure project. Only Spirit airlines and JetBlue's LGA-BOS route fly out of this terminal (JetBlue has since moved out when I went).
There was a trend among 18th century American elites to have faux mahogany painted on wooden furniture, despite it being more expensive than actually just using mahogany. They did this to show off their wealth. #justrichpeoplethings
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| Overseen at Eddie Merlot's in Boston |
Why are all American hot sauces sour? Tabasco, Southern hot sauces, Sriracha...
I visited the Frida Kahlo Museum in CDMX this time. Wow did she have an eventful life, and that's definitely using the word optimistically. Chronic pain plagued Frida throughout her life - she contracted polio at 6 and was involved in a debilitating car crash at 18 – and these were constant themes in her art. Not to mention her eventful relationship with Diega Rivera.
My new favorite word: obstinate. It means stubborn. I visited this restaurant called The Obstinate Daughter on Sullivan's Island, which gets its name from an eighteenth century British cartoon on the American revolution. In the caricature, Miss Carolina Sullivan is depicted with a cannon fortress in her hair, and is labeled as one of "the obstinate daughters of America".
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| Riding dune buggies in Las Vegas |