There was Top Chef know-it-all Tom Colicchio proudly wiping sweat off his own famed chrome dome as he kept the food coming for the blessed at a not-so-shabby polo estate. There was Ming Tsai, the Bostonian who doubles as a modern-day Confucius of Chinese cooking, giving knife lessons within the chi-chi environs of Sandy Lane Resort. And there, oh, was Canada’s own Mark McEwan mincing lamb. To the idyll island of Barbados we went the other week, both eaters and voyeurs, to hang with some of the most seasoned practitioners of the culinary craft. Food. Wine. Rum. So went the sell for this particular Continue reading >>>

The following Life Report was submitted in response to my column of Oct. 28, in which I asked readers over 70 to write autobiographical essays evaluating their own lives.Final Grade: FFamilyNeil was born in 1940 into a Bostonian Jewish family (1st generation American), replete with all the Jewish baggage. He spent his youth in a small anti-Semitic Catholic blue-collar community in rural Massachusetts, and bears both the physical and emotional scars from that experience. As a consequence, he disavowed Judaism the moment he reluctantly finished reciting his haftarah and became an atheist, agnostic Continue reading >>>