Chicago is widely known as one of the best food cities in the world. There are 16 restaurants with Michelin stars, including the three-star Smyth. Here are some great places to eat, based on my latest visit in August. THE PUBLICAN The Publican, located in the Fulton Market/West Loop area blew me away with some of the best, and most interesting, food I’ve had anywhere. The ham chop is a double pork chop cooked sous vide with fresh hay and then finished in the oven. The hay gives the meat a slightly grassy taste, and it comes out with the Read more
baseball
Baseball spring training is officially underway, and that means even more reasons to visit the Tampa Bay/St. Pete region, where you’ll find the spring training homes of the New York Yankees, Toronto Blue Jays and Philadelphia Phillies, as well as the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Yankees train in Tampa, the Phillies in Clearwater, the Pirates in Bradenton, and the Jays in Dunedin. I’ve been a regular visitor to the area since I began covering the Blue Jays for the Toronto Star in the early 1990s, and have probably been 15 times or more by now. Here’s a list of some of Read more
Their timing was fabulous. Tourism folks from Meet Boston and VISIT FLORIDA, along with Elite Sports Tours, gathered in Toronto this week and treated a few lucky media and travel people to box seats for the Toronto Blue Jays. As a former baseball writer for the Toronto Star who covered the team for six years, attending at least 600-700 games, I always love a night at the ballpark. To be at games when the Jays are in the thick of a pennant race, like they are now, is doubly exciting. The home side didn’t fare well in the Boston game, Read more
Many Canadians are avoiding trips to the U.S. right now. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t tons of new things to see do and places to explore. The U.S. is always unveiling new experiences and destinations, and Brand USA invites visitors to explore them all. Looking ahead to 2025 and into early 2026, travellers can expect a wave of new additions, major milestones, and exciting developments across the country. “There are so many reasons to visit the USA and even more reasons to return,” said Fred Dixon, president and CEO of Brand USA. “The joy of travelling to the U.S. Read more
It might have been 1962. Perhaps 1963. It was a simpler time. And I wore, to paraphrase Billy Joel, a much younger man’s clothes. My family lived in a small, suburban town in the San Francisco Bay Area called Castro Valley. And we were baseball fans. Football was catching on, and a few people liked the NBA at the time. But in the early 1960s, Americans were obsessed with baseball. We carried transistor radios to hear the ballgame announcers, and we tore into the local newspaper the next day to read the box scores. In my case, the local paper Read more
