Hello, reader. I know...it's been radio silence over here for a time. This year has been pretty nuts. As you may have sussed out from LA on 20's Instagram account, I spent a month living in the Marais in Paris, where my husband's company relocated for March and April. About a month after returning, we went on a trip with friends to Tokyo and Kyoto, followed by a week in Vietnam, starting in Hanoi and traveling south to Ho Chi Min, stopping in Hue. That was June. Last Thursday, I got back from a whirlwind week in India. Bangalore, then Mumbai, then Jaipur, Agra, and finally Delhi. What we saw, experienced, and ate around the world this year was truly incredible. I never imagined I would be visiting so many countries in the span of 6 months! But this year just happened that way. It wasn't exactly planned, but I definitely wouldn't change how it turned out.

Before I start blogging about the incredible flavors of French, Japanese, Vietnamese and Indian cuisines, and where you can find them on a budget in Los Angeles--which you certainly can--I want to send out into the world this letter that I wrote earlier in the year to the man who in many ways set me on this course, in the hopes that it might find him, and that others might connect with him, too. Anthony Bourdain is a pretty special food pioneer. I think the rest of my feelings on the matter can be summed up below.