The drinks menu is easy—anything from scotch on the rocks to wine to martinis to Mint Juleps. And we know what brand mad men and women smoke, at least for now—Lucky Strike. But what do mad men and women eat? When they dine out in season four, it’s Chicken Kiev. And when they’re staying in—well, it’s easy to see why they don’t eat in very often.
In the first episode of the new season, Dan’s housekeeper told him that she had made pork chops—surely enough to drive a man not only to drink but to thoughts of an earlier season, when Betty, jumping up from the table to fetch his dinner, perkily asked, “Hot or cold”? Did we ever see Betty eat, even when she was pregnant? Most evenings she was brooding at the kitchen table, nursing a glass of wine. As little Bobby says, “Mommy doesn’t eat.” I can recall only two noteworthy exceptions: the vision of Betty—in the same episode as Bobby’s observation—devouring a chicken leg after her one-night stand with a stranger and her tryst in a sweet shop over a dish of ice cream with future- second-husband and Freudian-father-figure Henry Francis.
Last year I traveled quite a lot and had memorable meals in Houston, Providence, Block Island, Bristol (Rhode Island), and Los Angeles. When it comes to food, America seems on fire. Locavore is the new black. Eating seasonally keeps us connected with nature and ourselves. "Flavor profile" is now used in ordinary conversation. It's all good.
Best Hotel Bar: The Whiskey Bar at 
I got startled the other day while I was baking and accidentally knocked the bright orange box of baking soda to the ground, spilling the powder out into a small white mound. Dexter bounded into the kitchen and began to lick up my mess, when suddenly his tongue stopped short and he looked up at me with this “what the fuck is that?” look on his face. I was transported back to a childhood game my mother and I used to play.
When it comes to serving wine with seafood, we want the wine to marry with the delicate flavors of the fish. In other words, the wine or the fish should not upstage each other in any way. Remaining complementary is key.