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Croatia Dispatch: Oysters Lead Lives of Excitement and Danger. Especially in the Balkans.

MALI STON, Croatia — “An oyster leads a dreadful but exciting life,” M.F.K. Fisher observed in her classic book about them, “full of stress, passion and danger.” The oyster, in other words, fits right in with the beleaguered Balkans. In his 62 years in this tumultuous region, the life of Bode Sare has been at…

Off the Menu: Seafood With Korean Touches Comes to Park Slope, Brooklyn

Headliner Haenyeo The turnaround was barely a month: By the time Jenny Kwak knew she wouldn’t renew the lease on Do Hwa, her 20-year-old Korean restaurant in the West Village, she and her husband, Terrence Segura, already had a new place in Park Slope, Brooklyn, in the works. The restaurant, named for the intrepid women…

Front Burner: Aged Rye Whiskey From Utah Ski Country

You might groan at the name, A Midwinter Night’s Dram, but pour some anyway. This rye whiskey is strong and spicy on the palate, with aromas of cinnamon, cloves, honey and vanilla. It’s made by High West, a distillery in Utah’s Park City ski country. To produce it, the company ages its blended Rendezvous Rye…

Front Burner: Southeast Asian Drinks, on the Go

Vietnamese coffee is one exception to my usual practice of not sweetening my coffee (the other is Turkish or Greek). In Vietnam, the typically dark pour-over brew is mellowed with sweetened condensed milk. Now Copper Cow Coffee — a California company started by Debbie Wei Mullin, who went back to Saigon, her mother’s hometown, to…

Front Burner: Bad Weather Leads to a New Olive Oil

Extreme weather conditions led the California Olive Ranch in Chico, Calif., to take the unusual step of making a line of California extra-virgin olive oils blended with oils from other countries. The Destination Series — Everyday, Mild & Buttery and Rich & Robust — was created to convey the same flavor profiles as the company’s…

Front Burner: How to Improve Upon Burrata? Add Truffle

Restaurant Review: Hwaban Is the Modern Korean Restaurant Where You’d Take Your Mother

Americans who weren’t born into Korean cuisine have discovered it in many ways and many locales over the past decade or two. Bulgogi folded into tortillas has been handed out through the window of a roving truck. Smoked kimchi has been draped over pulled pork between halves of a cheese-glazed doughnut to make an outdoor…