Norman’s Orlando

SOUTHERN LIVING MAGAZINE

The venerable Southern Living Magazine just released the 2024 Best New Restaurants in Every Southern State. Lisa Cericola is the journalist who wrote this engaging article. Their choice for the entire state of Florida is “NORMAN’S‘. I was taking completely by surprise to be candid. It is not like other…

Norman’s Orlando

SOUTHERN LIVING MAGAZINE

The venerable Southern Living Magazine just released the 2024 Best New Restaurants in Every Southern State. Lisa Cericola is the journalist who wrote this engaging article. Their choice for the entire state of Florida is “NORMAN’S‘. I was taking completely by surprise to be candid. It is not like other…

Food Culture

ON TOAST

ON TOAST Few things makes me take notice I’m in a different town than the one we live in than the sound of a freight train lowing in the distance. The horn, the cadence of the wheels, the bumping mechanical rumble of the boxcars all takes me on a journey…

Folks & Times

BOQUERIA MARKET, BARCELONA MEMORY 2005

BOQUERIA MARKET: BARCELONA Saturday, September 10, 2005 Saturdays in markets all over the world bustle with energy. At Barcelona’s famed Boqueria market on a sun drenched September morning Janet and I felt as alive and excited as we might have walking into Woodstock in 1969. Magazine pictures can only give…

Folks & Times

DR. JOHN, THE NIGHT TRIPPER

I was a fan of this legendary New Orleans artist from his breakout albums ‘Gris Gris’ in 1968. I likely was turned onto it by a guy I came to identify as my chosen older brother. He preceded me in birth by four critical years. When he turned me on…

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@NormanVanAken

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#fusion #newworldcuisine

The Typewriter

“If the map of the world were a tablecloth, and I could choose a place at that table, I would sit at the Southern tip of Florida, at the nexus of North America and the Caribbean. My plate would touch Cuba, the Florida Keys, the Yucatan, the West Indies, the Bahamas, and South America. And, if time could tell, I would listen to the tales of voyagers, discoverers, traders and mystics who, in searching for “the Indies”, the Great Kahn and the riches of China, discovered something much more valuable and enduring, A New World of Culinary Treasures. Almost instantly, the cuisines of the Old World began to merge with foods of the new one; This evolutionary and inexorable fusion lies at the heart of New World Cuisine.”

— Norman Van Aken, July, 1993
© 2024 Norman Van Aken. All rights Reserved.