Vicarious Travel - Dakota D

It's true, these New York girls love their big city, and a big Manhattan cocktail to go with it - but we also appreciate leaving the canyons of gotham to see a bit more of this great planet we spin around on. 

When we can't exactly get on a plane and jet off Hong Kong, we satiate our travel bug with a few trusty methods.  1. Anthony Bourdain No Reservations (obviously), 2. vintage issues of National Geographic (tried and true), 3. our friend, the internet.

On a recent scour through the depths of the interwebs we stumbled upon the travel journal of Dakota D - a Kiwi living in Bordeaux, France.  His photographs are breathtaking - snapshots of vibrant cultures - their people, exquisite architecture, vibrant festivals, and the details of daily life.  When looking at his images it is easy to be transported, you can allllmost taste the pastries and hear the hustle and bustle of local markets.

Although tempted to hop a plane and feign mono for a month or two, we instead sized the opportunity, and reached out to this talented photographer to ask him about his journey:


 G: First of all, we love your travel blog, Dakota D Journal - your photographs are just exquisite!  You must have been to a lot of cities by now, what are some of your favorite places?

DD: Spain in general is one of my favorite countries in Europe, but if I had to name one of my favorite cities, it would be Seville in Southern Spain! It's a city that cultivates a strong art culture and the festivals here are full of inspiring colors. I also really loved Sicily in the South of Italy. The people here left me with some of the best memories and the turquoise-colored coast was beyond breathtaking. 

G: How did you start doing photography?

DD: I started photography whilst traveling through Thailand and Cambodia almost six years ago. Since then, photography is something that has followed me everywhere. Capturing photographs is like having a second set of eyes! For me, it's a way to see and experience things in another way. 

G:  What camera/s do you shoot with?

DD:  I shoot with a variation of Canon cameras and lenses.

G:  You seem to eat extremely well - your photographs of European delicacies have us drooling all over our keyboard.  What was the last amazing thing you ate?

DD:  The last thing that I ate was in Nazaré, Portugal at the house of a local family. The old woman of the household named Valentina, made the most delicious barbecued sardines on a fire, the traditional way! Everything else that she made for us, she made herself... Like the delicious handmade chorizo that was flavored with white wine, paprika, cracked pepper and mediterranean sea salt! The most memorable aspect of this type of cooking though were the ingredients. All of the vegetables used were grown organically in Valentina's garden. She even grew her own gourmet olives! And I'll never forget the coffee that she made with her 20-year-old espresso machine from Italy!

G:  What has been one of your memorable meals during this adventure?

DD:  One of the most memorable meals that I experienced was in Valladolid, Spain. - Underground, in the labyrinth-like wine cellars of Yllera where a restaurant space had been set into rock hollows. The stone walls were decorated with beautiful pictures of Spanish women and painted Ariadna murals, an ancient myth told through imagery. Pepper-infused lamb here was delicious!! Not to mention the various glasses of wine from the estate that I savored, too. 

G:  Do you have a favorite food memory from your homeland, New Zealand?

DD:  My favorite memories of cuisine are during the summer months in my hometown: Whaingaroa - Raglan. We spend sunny days on the balcony of my house, overlooking a harbor named Moonlight Bay! Sunsets and dinner here are like no other! What I love the most is the fresh South Pacific seafood and organic produce. Not to mention the delicious New Zealand wines that taste lush and fruity.

G:  Have you learned to cook differently while living in Bordeaux?  If so, what's your new favorite dish - and how do you prepare it?

DD:  I love the style of cooking in the Southwest region of France. The food here is rustic, with an interesting gourmet flair. I like the way that you can indulge here, but still eat healthy. Magret de Canard is my new favorite dish in Bordeaux at the moment! The rich flavors of duck complimented by vegetables are particularly delicious. 

G:  We love your attention to detail - from a city's water fountains, the markets, festivals, the lamp posts, to the opulent architecture of days gone by.  You're obviously into excess.  What's your favorite thing to photograph and why? 

DD:  My favorite things to photograph are snippets of life, culture and detail. I focus on things that people might notice less. In a city I like to wander through it's alleys, to get a taste of the people and the way of life. And I always love to photograph the local faces and festivals of a place. 

G:  Of all the places in the world, where do you want to travel to the most? 

DD:  I want to travel everywhere. But right now my heart is aching again for South East Asia! My family lived in Thailand for many years so I've been brushed with a taste for South East Asia's color, spirituality and varied lifestyle. At the moment I have Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam on my mind...

G:  When you're in New York, you must let us take you out for a proper New York evening, will you join us? (Say yes)
DD:  I'll definitely join you ladies for a proper New York evening! Just let me know: when, where and what time!


For more of Dakota D's photography, visit his website. 

Big Story, Small Package

Oh, dear readers. Sometimes we come across something so special, so elegant, so surreal... that it just takes the words right out of our mouths.

In this case, though, that's a good thing, because these works of art do a pretty fantastic job of telling their own stories.

Photographer Christopher Boffoli has a wide-ranging body of work, from photojournalism to portraits to incredible Western landscapes, but our foodie heart belongs, naturally, to his Disparity series, which uses miniature figurines arranged on food landscapes to tell a tale. And like his body of work, these tiny tableaux offer a range of stories that run the gamut from sweet to strange and back again... just the way we like it.

It was too hard to decide which one to post, but the rest can be found here. Happy scrolling!

Play With Your Food - Assiette

Let us preface this post with a fact - stop animation is guaranteed way to win our hearts and our affections.  Stop animation featuring kick ass chefs, ambient music, and fresh ingredients that begin their metamorphosis into surreal landscapes???  We swoon.  Our bellies ache, and we long to shrink ourselves into wee little ladies and frolic in them hills.

The hills are alive..with the smells of croissant...

We've got a major lady crush going for the two film makers Natasha Subramaniam and Alisa Lapidus, who you may remember from their gorgeous trailer for the upcoming film Zergüt.   This time they've collaborated with patisserie Jordan Kahn of Red Medicine. 

ASSIETTE from Zergüt on Vimeo.

In their words:

"The concept of depicting a culinary world growing from an empty plate as a landscape in itself is what inspired this exploration. Assiette is the first in what will be a series of works that depicts a dish emerge, ingredient after ingredient, and assemble itself to completion.  Our objective was to make a fleeting, entrancing film which would reveal itself in a single continuous take, with no cuts -- a cinematic "bite".  Here, a traditional croissant unravels to become an avant-garde dessert.  We were interested in investigating the parallel between the ingredients on the microcosm of the plate mirroring the macrocosm of a green forest."

Keep it up ladies, we know there is more goodness to come from Chayka Sofia!

Zergüt - A Gastronomic Short Film

So we're a little excited about this one here at Gastronomista HQ - we've been starving for some gorgeous imagery to get us through the week - and now this.  Our mouths water, our eyes tear, and we suddenly don't feel so guilty for those rotting bell peppers at the bottom of our refrigerator.

A short animation by the Los Angeles based multimedia artists Natasha Subramaniam & Alisa Lapidus with the cinematography of Oliver Fitzgerald was shot over two years - and they sum it up best in their synopsis:

"Within a refrigerator, a battle ensues as moldy, decaying foods forgotten in the depths of the black rise up against the fresh ingredients that reside in the front.   These confrontations escalate, as foods morph, disintegrate, dance, explode, and become a textural, abstract display of color and form culminating in a grand scale finale sequence that results in their obliteration.  Set to Sergei Prokofiev's Opus 84, Dance of the Knights, from the ballet Romeo & Juliet, Zergüt merges cinema, gastronomy, and classical music through stop-motion animation and high-speed filmmaking, bringing alive a culinary universe in the vein of a contemporary day Fantasia.  Zergüt focuses on the unique, often overlooked beauty of everyday eatable delights."

Bring. It. On.


Untitled from Zergüt on Vimeo.

Seems like they are still doing some fund raising to finish the film - if we were in LA we would go to their event on May 15 - if you are in the area details are here.

And now for some seriously gorgeous stills from Zergüt:

And then there's this bit: in slow motion  - set your own soundtrack.  What a teaser. 


Untitled from Zergüt on Vimeo.


We cannot wait for the film's completion.  The film is dangerously inciting - good versus evil, explosions, character disintegration, stop animation!  Much more to come from this pair, we are certain of that.

Cake Splitting

Let us talk for a second about food porn.  Ah yes, food porn, the delicious, and often gratuitous, images that inspire us to cook, bake, eat, and all the while keep looking.  Some food porn is better than other food porn, and yet, we are shamelessly drawn to it, tickled by it's temptation.

We are obsessed with the photographs of our friend Susan Surface - she's got a keen eye and a divine sense of the uncanny.

One of her latest projects (of many, we must ad) is for Victor Agran's course, Drawing and Architectural Form, at the Yale School of Architecture is making us drool.  Drawing inspiration from Gordon Matta-Clark's  communal gastronomy projects as well as his deconstructive architecture; she made 20 pounds of cake to photograph and then share with her fellow classmates.  


The images are beautiful - she capitalizes on the strangely intimate moment of cutting into a fresh cake and revealing its many colors, layers, and secret flavors.   In the artist's own words: "I was inspired by the pornographic gaze evident in the video recordings of site-specific works such as "Splitting." I am also engaged with historical uses of food in art and architecture, such as in the traditional vanitas, still-life, and memento mori - how depictions of food force us to consider our own materiality and mortality. I combined this with some thoughts about artificiality and preservation in the use of something so inorganic and nontraditional as inkjet print and edible spraypaint on frosting."


Enjoy - we hope you don't drool all over your computer like we did.

Or if you just need a quick hit - there's always Food Porn Daily - NSFW.

Food Styling - The Way it Should Be

Guido Mocafico is a Swiss-born photographer who draws inspiration from Dutch Masters of the 17th Century. We love his Nature Mortes series - part rustic butcher shop - part Meatopia IV Slaughter of the Innocents - part Sunday dinner of Oysters & Champagne. We also love this comparison of his work with some of the said Dutch paintings.

Guido Mocafico