Latest news with #Trinidadian
Winnipeg Free Press
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Alexis's beguiling stories feel like a search for home
André Alexis has never let his novels worry too much about reality — witness, for example, the talking dogs in his 2015 masterpiece Fifteen Dogs. In his most recent novel, 2021's Ring, Aphrodite's ring allows the wearer to wish three changes in her beloved. The foremothers of one of the protagonists, Gwen, used the ring to change their men. Should she? Intriguing love relationships and philosophizing about love follow. His new story collection Other Worlds is more puzzling. That the soul of Tam Modeste, an old Trinidadian buyeis (a Carib shaman), enters a dying 11-year-old boy in Petrolia, Ont., seems like the Toronto-based Alexis's attempt to make a gut-level connection with his lost Trinidadian past — a past that recedes the more he tries to grasp it. Almost a novella within the collection, Contrition: An Isekai is the most captivating story of the nine pieces in the collection. Waking up in Paul Williams, Tam hates the sound of English (except for Ogden Nash). Paul's parents, though celebrating their dead son's revival, are troubled by this new, not-so-huggable version, less so the hugging mother than the father, who finds it harder to hide his promiscuity from a buyeis than from an adolescent. In Alexis's hands, the dual soul becomes a way of expressing an estrangement from Canada, although eventually the boy becomes more Paul than Tam. Jamie Hogge photo André Alexis Even stranger is The Bridle Path, in which the lawyer telling the story wants very badly to fit in with an über-wealthy group around his client Edward Bryson. 'It felt,' the lawyer says, 'as if I'd arrived somewhere I belonged.' Thus, when Bryson's wife Miranda explains that the main meat dish at the party is a boy, the lawyer isn't sure whether to take her literally, metaphorically or ironically. Is cannibalism a shibboleth to keep out the unsophisticated? The lawyer doesn't want to commit a faux pas that might nudge him out of the group. Alexis, however, hints that that he isn't quite as tight with Bryson as he imagines: one of the parties at which he feels honoured to be a guest is 'for tradespeople' who have helped Bryson. Despite the humour — the lawyer, for example, feels 'chastised' when, after he shows dismay at the meat dish, Bryson calls him an 'accountant' — the story is too macabre to enjoy, and Alexis's ending never answers the lawyer's confusion. Without the specific critiques in Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal (to which Alexis alludes), it's difficult to discern the target of the satire. Is it rich people generally? If so, that seems unfair. Or is Alexis telling a lawyer joke, mocking the narrator for ultimately fitting in so well as a factotum to the wealthy, the equivalent of today's Todd Blanche to Donald Trump? Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. Other stories go in a variety of directions; one concerns another buyeis, and one another son who, much like Paul, speculates about his unfaithful Trinidadian father. In the final piece An Elegy (an essay, not a story), Alexis explicitly states that his writing is a 'search for home' which, he soon adds, is 'Trinidad, circa 1957' — in other words, the country and year in which he was born. He concludes that his father wanted to escape his home territory, Belmont in Port of Spain. Other Worlds Alexis also reveals that for a year in his youth, he traded the name he didn't like — André — for a name he did: Paul. Here and elsewhere, Alexis's work has the air of a puzzle. If you can answer the questions posed in Other Worlds — 'What is a rabbit when tied to a sofa?' or 'When is a lake most likely to yield?' — then you're ready for Alexis. (Spoiler alert: the answers are 'Western' and 'midnight.') Reinhold Kramer is a Brandon University English professor. His most recent book is Are We Postmodern Yet? And Were We Ever?.
IOL News
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- IOL News
From rap royalty to super mom: Nicki Minaj's balancing act
Trinidadian rapper Nicki Minaj reveals her journey through fame and family. Image: Instagram Nicki Minaj is the queen of multiple thrones - rap, entrepreneurship and motherhood. The multifaceted mogul has proven time and time again that she is a force to be reckoned with. With a career spanning over a decade, she is known for her many hits and catchy rap flows. The Grammy-nominated rapper has had quite a remarkable career, and she later paused to focus on being a mother. In a recent interview with 'Vogue Italia', Minaj opened up about navigating motherhood and fame, a chapter she's embraced later in her career. After years of dominating the music industry, Minaj took a step back to focus on being a mother to her four-year-old son, whose name has never been made public but is affectionately known as 'Papa Bear'. She shares her son with her husband, Kenneth 'Zoo' Petty. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Next Stay Close ✕ The 42-year-old rap icon revealed that she prioritised her career and supporting her family before starting one of her own, which led her to delay motherhood until later in life. She said, 'As a woman, I put off becoming a mother. A lot of women in the industry, especially older than me, never had children. Some don't regret it, but others do. I put it off. 'And I didn't go to every Thanksgiving, every Christmas, or birthday party because I had to work to support my family. I think the price was not having a 'normal' life. 'Things are different now, because I can give my son things I never had, but there are things I want to make sure he has, and I still need to figure out how to give them to him.' She added that while her successful career has granted her the ability to provide for her son, as a celebrity mother, she still faces challenges when it comes to protecting her son's privacy, as she consistently has to weigh the importance of spending quality time with him against the risk of him being photographed. 'When we go out, for example, I have to worry about someone photographing it. So every day I have to decide: is it more important to go for a ride with my son or to avoid him being photographed?' Nicki Minaj and her four-year-old son 'Papa Bear'. Image: Instagram The Trinidadian rapper also opened up about the criticism that comes with being in the limelight and how it has affected her over the years in the music industry. In April, she was named 'Best Female Rapper of All-Time' by 'Billboard' based on a comprehensive set of criteria, including chart performance, cultural impact, lyrical skill, longevity, as well as flow.
Time Out
27-05-2025
- General
- Time Out
New York apparently isn't America's most diverse food city—here's what beat it
By now, you'd think New York had an iron grip on the title of most diverse food city in America. After all, where else can you grab halal cart chicken, Neapolitan pizza, Tibetan momos and Trinidadian doubles all before noon? But according to a new ranking from culinary school Escoffier, the crown belongs to San Francisco. Yep—Gotham got gobbled! The study analyzed restaurant data across U.S. cities with populations over 500,000, evaluating 46 cuisines and factoring in both population and restaurant density. The final results were crunched using the Shannon Diversity Index—math speak for 'how much global flavor can you access nearby.' San Francisco came out sizzling with a perfect 100 score. With about 2,700 restaurants packed into just 47 square miles, the Bay Area beauty serves up more culinary variety per capita and square foot than anywhere else in the country. Think dim sum in Richmond, Afghan fare in the Tenderloin and Michelin-starred sushi, all within walking distance (and often in fog). New York City, meanwhile, came in second with a still-impressive 92.58. We have more restaurants—around 7,000—but they're spread out across five boroughs and hundreds of neighborhoods. That gives us street cred, but fewer points for density and accessibility. Rounding out the top five were Seattle (91.69), Washington, D.C. (83.08) and Los Angeles (82.62). All saw high marks for cuisine variety and ease of access, especially compared to sprawling cities with more culinary monocultures. And speaking of culinary monotony: Detroit landed at the bottom of the list, with nearly two-thirds of its restaurants serving only American food. No shade to burgers and wings, but it's slim pickings if you're craving, say, jollof rice or laksa. Interestingly, California dominated the top ranks with six cities in the upper tier, reinforcing its rep as a flavor-forward state.
Eater
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Eater
A Tale of Three Dallas Tasting Menus at Michelin-Recognized Restaurants in DFW
A trio of Michelin-recommended Dallas restaurants — the Heritage Table in Frisco, Monarch, and Quarter Acre — launched tasting menus in 2025. Coincidence? Maybe not. Tasting menus have long been a staple at Michelin-starred restaurants, signifying a higher level of service, food curation, and creativity that seems to appeal to the secret Michelin inspectors who award its coveted stars. Fitting into the fine dining category is not a requirement, however. Michelin, the tire company and international dining guide publisher, remains notoriously mum about its rating process and contends that its awards are based only on food and not on service or decor. In Dallas, tasting menus have long been the playground of a certain kind of restaurant — an expensive one. Dean Fearing has served one at Fearing's in the Ritz-Carlton since it opened in 2007. The Mansion Restaurant, with its parade of well-known chefs, has long offered a tasting menu experience as well. Local in Deep Ellum was, for years, the only smaller, less pedigreed restaurant in town offering a tasting. But in the past few years, that has changed. A vegan tasting menu popped up at Maiden in Fort Worth, of all places. El Carlo Elegante created what it calls an 'experience menu' to highlight its best dishes. Rye in Lower Greenville launched an experimental tasting menu on which it somehow put kangaroo, buckle, and Trinidadian green curry together in one meal. Monarch, Quarter Acre, and the Heritage Table also threw their hats into the tasting menu ring. As D magazine dining critic Brian Reinhart wrote in a March 2025 column, tasting menus in DFW seem more popular than ever, and all wildly different. Diners and people in the restaurant industry were stunned, then, when Michelin only awarded a star to one restaurant in Dallas, Fort Worth, and the entire North Texas region: the omakase restaurant Tatsu. It led many commenters to examine why more places didn't measure up to its standards. The uptick in tasting menus now could be the Michelin boomerang effect, which has inspired some goal-driven chefs to go for a star. It could be an omakase effect, where owners are seeing seasonally shifting, chef-driven menus as their chance to take the reins and get diners to try things outside of their comfort zones. Or it could be a sign of changing appetites in Dallas diners, who may feel that a flat fee for a meal that says everything you need to know about the restaurant sounds just right. The last time a chef created a new genre of food in North Texas was probably in the 1980s, when Dean Fearing and Stephan Pyles became driving forces behind Southwestern cuisine. Chef Rich Vana at the Heritage Table in Frisco, Texas, decided to give coining a new genre of food a go when he curated a tasting menu around what he calls 'Blackland Prairie' cuisine — food from the Blackland Prairie of Texas, a strip that stretches down from North to Central Texas and is full of cropland and grazing land for animals. On Heritage's winter tasting menu from February 2025, Vana featured sourdough crackers and bread alongside butter infused with the extremely long green stems of the Greer Farms carrots and roasted garlic. (Two other butters feature beef tallow and salted sorghum with caramel.) Nearly every ingredient on the menu has a farm or ranch designation next to it: Diners know the red kuri squash in the soup served with Texas redfish comes from Comeback Creek Farm, the greens in another course come from Jubilant Fields, and the beets are from Stout Creek. The only things Vana doesn't source locally are onions and garlic, which do not grow abundantly in this region. 'What I want to do is take these nearby ingredients and apply some fundamental tenets,' Vana says. 'What are my farmers bringing me? How can I make it delicious now? And how do I make it delicious later?' Chef Rich Vana at the Heritage Table decided to give coining a new genre of food a go when he curated a tasting menu around what he calls 'Blackland Prairie' cuisine. For Vana, adding a tasting menu at the Heritage Table wasn't about appealing to Michelin, although it certainly couldn't hurt, he says. It was about sharpening his focus and further honing the type of food his restaurant has always served. 'What we wanted to do was figure out what it means to be 'Blackland Prairie cuisine,' and that name wasn't there when we started,' Vana says. The idea goes back to the restaurant's opening in 2017, when Vana wanted to create parameters around his menu. Sustainability is a priority for the restaurant, in which processes like pickling, fermenting, and using every part of the vegetable are vital. Sourcing local food was another hallmark. The fourth course — Windy Meadows duck pot pie served atop sweet potato mash with marinated chestnut mushrooms — represents what Vana wants to achieve: a dish that combines simple ingredients from a specific Texas region to add up to a complex, satisfying whole. The menu ends with some substantial proteins, including a pork chop from Knob Hill and a small wagyu strip from River Creek. Monarch, meanwhile, rolled out its new winter tasting menu in January 2025. Maple Hospitality Group's managing partner and chef Danny Grant and Monarch's executive chef Jason Rohan had their eye on a Michelin star this time around. 'Getting recommended last year gave us something to push toward,' Rohan says. Of the three tasting menus, Monarch subscribes to a more classical school of thought about food and service — and to that of chef Grant, the youngest chef to run a restaurant awarded two Michelin stars (at Chicago's now-closed French restaurant Ria, which was awarded stars in 2011 and 2012). Monarch's spring tasting menu follows a similar ethos, staying within traditional fine dining expectations, except for a few dishes that Rohan and the kitchen developed that color outside the lines. The first selection of bites feel emblematic of Grant's approach. Bruschetta gets topped with fava bean hummus and whipped feta that has a hint of Meyer lemon juice and zest. The idea originated when Monarch's pastry chef, Mariella Bueza, suggested making mini-briochettes with truffles baked inside. After Rohan tried to simplify the process, Bueza suggested baking the one-bite-sized toast with garlic butter. Rohan thought a single grilled lamb chop, which accompanies the bread, would pair well with fava beans as a Mediterranean-style combination. 'We make it with basil and olive oil, to keep in mind that we are an Italian restaurant, and add spinach to brighten it up, plus a little avocado to make it creamier,' Rohan says. The rest of the six-course meal veers toward classic choices — steak, branzino, scallops, foie gras, an on-menu rigatoni that Monarch diners know and love. Dishes are executed with precision and service is immaculate; its decor and sweeping views of Dallas from high in a Downtown skyscraper are predictably breathtaking. Other than a playful dessert called the Pearl (a Madagascar vanilla mousse, raspberry puree, and hazelnut sponge cake served atop a foam cloud that the diner cracks open), the food itself feels somewhat prescriptive. This is a tasting menu informed by an old-school set of rules that dictate what fine dining is, and it doesn't quite fit the mold-breaking format that many chefs in DFW are playing into. Down at Quarter Acre, chef Toby Archibald uses his new tasting menu to explore his personal history, touching on Texas favorites while showcasing family recipes and ingredients he grew up eating in New Zealand and the Asian influences on the cuisines there. According to Archibald, the team had already planned to launch a tasting menu in 2025, well before the restaurant landed a Michelin guide designation, but it took longer than he expected. 'Year one, opening the restaurant, was manic,' he says. 'Year two was solidifying and making sure we came up for a breather, to be honest. The goal for year three was to get better... This gives longtime guests something to be excited about. It is the next evolution.' The Quarter Acre tasting is a mix of long-running menu items, dishes Archibald is developing to serve as daily specials, and dishes that let him be himself on the plate, even when that means being a little maximalist. From the diner's point of view, there is no 'set' menu, and no two nights are guaranteed to be the same. Interestingly, there is no printed menu for the tasting, either. Instead, staff ask diners to trust the chef. 'It's taking things and perhaps pushing the boundaries a little on what guests are used to. Saying, 'Hey, you might not have ordered this on the a la carte menu, but try it for us,'' Archibald says. Diners won't leave this meal overfilled. It features appetizer-sized dishes like oysters with a passionfruit foam, smoked beef tartare that has been on the menu since opening day, cabbage served three ways (one is liquified), the debut of a carrot dish with scallops, and wagyu beef served alongside sweet potato and charred lemon. 'If we get to the end of the year and we don't win a Michelin star, I'm not going to say [the tasting menu] was a waste of time. It wasn't,' Archibald says. 'We already think we're really good, and we like the level we're at.' 'But if it leads to Michelin, awesome,' he adds. Sign up for our newsletter.
Boston Globe
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Nahid Rachlin, novelist who explored the Iranian psyche, dies at 85
Advertisement 'There is a subtle shift in 'Foreigner' that is fascinating to watch,' Anne Tyler, who won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, wrote in a review for The New York Times in 1979, 'a nearly imperceptible alteration of vision as Feri begins to lose her westernized viewpoint.' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'What is apparent to Feri at the start -- the misery and backwardness of Iranian life -- becomes less apparent,' Tyler continued. 'Is it that America is stable, orderly, peaceful, while Iran is turbulent and irrational? Or is it that America is merely sterile while Iran is passionate and openhearted?' In a 1990 lecture, Trinidadian writer V.S. Naipaul, who received the Nobel Prize in 2001, noted that 'Foreigner,' 'in its subdued, unpolitical way, foreshadowed the hysteria that was to come' for Iran -- the popular uprisings that forced out the repressive Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who was backed by the United States, and ushered in a theocratic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Advertisement Ms. Rachlin grew up steeped in those contradictions. In her hometown, Ahvaz, Iran, the local cinema featured American films even as the mosque across the street 'warned against sinful pleasures,' she wrote in a memoir, 'Persian Girls' (2006). Her own home 'was chaotic, filled with a clashing and confusing mixture of traditional Iranian/Muslim customs and values, and Western ones,' she wrote. 'None of us prayed, followed the hijab, or fasted.' But her parents insisted on arranged marriages for their children and reserved higher education for their sons. Ms. Rachlin's second novel, 'Married to a Stranger' (1983), explored post-revolutionary Iran. Reviewing it in the Times, Barbara Thompson said it depicted, 'better than most factual accounts, what was happening in Iran that made the Ayatollah's theocracy possible.' Nahid Bozorgmehri was born June 6, 1939, in Ahvaz, the seventh of 10 children of Mohtaram (Nourowzian) and Manoochehr Bozorgmehri. Her father was a prominent lawyer and judge. Three of her siblings died in childhood. At 6 months, Nahid was given by her mother to her Aunt Maryam, her mother's widowed sister, who longed for a child after years of infertility. But when Nahid was 9 -- the age at which girls in Iran could legally marry -- her father, most likely concerned that her more traditional aunt would follow that custom, retrieved her. (Perhaps he understood the consequences, having married Nahid's mother when she was 9 years old and he was 34.) The separation devastated Nahid. Feeling 'kidnapped,' Ms. Rachlin wrote in a 2002 essay for The New York Times Magazine, she had a strained relationship with her birth mother and would never call her Mother. Advertisement A childhood photo of Ms. Rachlin, then Nahid Bozorgmehri (far left), with her parents and siblings in Iran. VIA RACHLIN FAMILY/NYT Over time, she grew close to her older sister Pari, who fought their father over her pursuit of acting and her resistance to arranged marriage -- battles she lost. Determined to avoid such a fate, Nahid implored her father to send her to America to attend college, like her brothers. She enlisted her brother Parviz to persuade him: She was first in her high school class, and her writing showed promise. Her father adamantly refused. But as political tensions escalated -- both Nahid's outspoken feminist teacher and the bookseller who sometimes slipped her banned literature had disappeared -- her father, who had resigned his judgeship after interference from the government, feared a servant or neighbor might tattle about Nahid's stories and her 'white jacket' books to the Savak, the shah's notorious secret police. When Parviz found her a women's college near St. Louis, where he was studying medicine, their father allowed Nahid to apply, hoping his headstrong daughter would cause less trouble abroad -- though not without stipulating that she return home after graduation to marry. While attending Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Mo., on a full scholarship, Ms. Rachlin discovered that though she had escaped the 'prison' of her home, as she wrote in her memoir, she felt utterly isolated in America. 'Late at night I turned to my writing, my long-lasting friend,' she wrote. She had quickly developed fluency in English -- though she had taken only hasty lessons in Iran before her departure -- and had begun writing in her adopted tongue about the difficulty of feeling neither Iranian nor American. 'Writing in English,' she said, 'gave me a freedom I didn't feel writing in Farsi.' Advertisement She majored in psychology and, after graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1961, resolved not to return to Iran. She curtly informed her father in a letter; he would not speak to her for 12 years. With only $755, she took a Greyhound bus to New York City, where she picked up odd jobs -- babysitting, waitressing -- and, to maintain her student visa, enrolled at the New School, where she met Howie Rachlin. They married in 1964. Their daughter, Leila, was born in 1965. In addition to her, Ms. Rachlin leaves a grandson. Rachlin died in 2021. After a few years in Cambridge, where Howie Rachlin studied for a doctorate in psychology at Harvard, and then in Stony Brook, N.Y., where he taught, they moved to Stanford, Calif., in the mid-1970s. There, on a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, she worked on 'Foreigner.' Her novel would never find a home in Iran. Censors blocked its publication in Farsi, arguing that Nahid Rachlin's descriptions of dirty streets and hole-in-the-wall hotels suggested a failure of the shah's modernization plans. Her literary agent, Cole Hildebrand, said as far as he knows, none of her books was ever translated into Farsi. In 1981, she received devastating news: Her sister Pari had died after a fall down a flight of stairs. For decades, Ms. Rachlin could not bear to write about the tragedy; she did not turn to the subject until her memoir, in 2006. 'Yes, dearest Pari,' the last line of that work reads, 'it is to bring you back to life that I write this book.' Advertisement Her other works, all of which explore Iranian social and political life, include two short-story collections, 'Veils' (1992) and 'A Way Home' (2018); and three novels, 'The Heart's Desire' (1995), 'Jumping Over Fire' (2006), and 'Mirage' (2024). Her last novel, 'Given Away,' which will be published next year, is the story of an Iranian child bride. It draws from the life of her birth mother, who gave birth to her first child at 14. The mother-daughter connection featured prominently in Ms. Rachlin's work and in her life. She dreamed of living near her Aunt Maryam, whom she always called Mother, but Maryam felt that life in America would be too jarring and preferred to stay in Iran. With her own daughter, however, Ms. Rachlin found the tight mother-daughter bond that had always eluded her. 'Even in our rare disagreements,' Leila Rachlin wrote in an email, 'she would gently reassure me afterward, 'We're still best friends, right?'' This article originally appeared in
