A Time To Wine

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Back in the day, there was a bar on Greenwich Avenue called “The Bar.” It was truly a neighbourhood dive, with a great jukebox and a man called Johnny with a long ZZ Top-style beard behind the bar. Open until 4am, it attracted all kinds: nurses getting off their shifts, servers, other bartenders, writers, artists…

The Art of Hospitality

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This summer got me thinking seriously about restaurant hospitality. I spent a grueling four months as the wine director, sommelier and special events guru at the Hamptons outpost of a New York City restaurant that has been around for three decades and I noticed that the time-honoured tradition of hospitality isn’t quite… ‘hospitable’ … but…

Of Avatars Past

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New York…my city, my home, my sanctuary. It’s where I’ve lived since 1982. 36 years, the better part of my life. One of the reasons I love it is because here, I can be who I want to be. It is here that I have reinvented myself time and time again: going from journalist to…

The Quality of Life

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Of late, I’ve been quite preoccupied with the idea of quality of life and what it really means to me. I’ve always been a hard worker, whether it was in school or later when I started working…somehow, I was happy to put in long hours, trying to go the extra mile, keeping ahead of the…

For the Love of a Prince

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I had all intentions of watching the royal wedding this past weekend. But I slept through the alarm, woke up late and had to rush off to work. Later that Saturday night as I served a delicious 2015 Puligny-Montrachet from Jean Chartron, I was asked by the gentleman who was tasting the wine if I’d…

The Wine of Memories

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“Drink wine…Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life…” so said Omar Khayyam in his Rubaiyyat in the 11th century. Fast forward a thousand years: I was about ten years old when I had my very first sip of red wine…it was a Chateau Mouton Rothschild Grand Cru Classe, 1959. I don’t remember…

A Writer’s Mecca

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On a recent visit to Paris, I went on a pilgrimage to what I think is the mecca for writers…: the Bar Hemingway in the Ritz Hotel on the Place Vendome. It’s a small bar all the way in the back of the hotel, a bit of a walk through the long, luxurious corridors lined…

The Name Game…Kim Akhtar vs. Maha Akhtar

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Despite having lived in New York since 1982, my career as an author was launched in Spain a decade ago. It was 2008 and I remember clearly sitting in a marketing meeting with my publisher who suggested that I use Maha Akhtar as my nom de plume. ‘It’s so much more exotic,’ she said,‘and it…