Dana McMahan:
Food writing isn't always (or even often) about lounging in a robe eating macarons, but sometimes it is!
Dana McMahan:
You eat a lot of fancy food as a food writer, like snails in a bowl from a back alley in Morocco
Dana McMahan:
To write about bourbon you have to taste a lot of bourbon. So rough.
Dana McMahan:
The chef at the Sofitel Fès Palais Jamaï showed me how to make pigeon pastilla
Dana McMahan:
This Cupcake Wars contestant insisted I try a cupcake when I stopped in while researching a city guide
Dana McMahan:
Sometimes a food writer has to eat fried food.
Dana McMahan:
Luckily this dessert-judging gig (40 types!) came with Alka Seltzer
Dana McMahan:
90 minutes, 18 dishes. Judging a reader recipe contest for Kentucky Monthly magazine
Dana McMahan:
Admittedly, pink champagne to start lunch at the Hôtel Plaza Athénée, Paris, makes some of the less-savory aspects of the job worth it
Dana McMahan:
Making chocolate in Paris evidently requires a surgically sterile environment. No tourist germs!
Dana McMahan:
No table, no problem. Chowing down on some beignets d'oignon in a Parisian doorway at a festival
Dana McMahan:
Getting acquainted with future bacon that I'll be making at home for a story
Dana McMahan:
Getting some hands-on instruction on Thai food in Chiang Mai. Eat six full dishes in one sweltering day? No problem.
Dana McMahan:
I used to be a vegetarian but you can't butcher a duck and enjoy its foie if you don't eat meat (Kitchen at Camont, Gascony, France)
Dana McMahan:
Making couscous the hard way in Marrakech