About this episode

Jennifer Hope Choi shares her unique approach to planning food-centric travel itineraries and discusses her experiences in the culinary world.

Jennifer Hope Choi plans every trip the same way: open a Google doc, start with food, and build outward from there. As a former Bon Appétit editor, 13-year restaurant industry veteran, and author of a travel memoir, she has strong opinions about Michelin guides (skip ‘em), low-rated restaurants (sometimes worth it), and why you should always follow your optician's food recs. She also edited Afar’s debut Travel to Eat series, which includes three stories: Jeju black pork and a life-changing soup, Sherpa cuisine in the Rockies, and why Portland, Maine, might be America’s best bakery town. Meet today's guest Jennifer Hope Choi is a senior editor at Afar and the architect of its Travel to Eat series. A former Bon Appétit editor and 13-year restaurant industry veteran, she is also an award-winning writer and author of the travel memoir the Wanderer’s Curse. Her work spans food and culture, and the messy, joyful overlap between the two. In this episode How Jen’s latchkey childhood, early Food Network shows, and her Korean grandmother’s pancakes shaped a lifelong obsession with eating Why the Google doc comes first: Jen’s method for building food-forward itineraries from Reddit threads…

People in this episode

Host: Afar

Guest: Jennifer Hope Choi

Topics covered

• food
• travel
• itineraries
• restaurant recommendations
• cultural experiences

Keywords

• food travel
• itinerary planning
• Michelin stars
• restaurant industry
• cultural cuisine

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Bon Appétit

Books & works: the Wanderer’s Curse

Places: Jeju, Portland, Maine, Rockies

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