All stories about "Top Picks"

As we mentioned last summer, Paris provides free Wi-Fi access from more than 260 public parks, gardens, and monuments. A beautiful idea, but those of us with real work to do need a table and a beer. Helping us out are a number of cafés and bistros that serve free Wi-Fi along with their liquid offerings. And profiling these joints is a nifty little website that rounds up more than 140 hotspots in Paris and plots them on an easy-to-use map. Cafés Wifi selects their monthly favorites -- those cafés that provide a free, fast, and always working connection, along with pleasant working atmosphere -- and reports on the price, the clientele, and the number of electrical outlets. It's a freelancer's wet dream. This very article, including the photo, was posted from #4, la Fée Verte.

There's a reason why New Yorkers are still spending their sad little dollars in Paris: the food here is better. Backing us up on that one is Restaurant Magazine, with their just-released update of the World's 50 Best Restaurants. The City of (Culinary De)Light captured more of the 2008 top spots (8) than any other town. As for NYC: only five of their restaurants made the cut, and four feature imported French chefs. While nay-sayers have long decried France as losing its culinary edge, les trois couleurs took home more rankings (11) than any other country, including Spain (7) and the UK (6). The World's 50 Best list was formulated by a jury of 651 well-respected food professionals. Restaurant's selection of Paris addresses, with accompanying description from the magazine, is waiting after the jump.

Maybe it's the salt-and-pepper hair, the cigarette perpetually perched between his lips, or his exceptional appreciation for food and travel. Whatever the reason (and trust me, this is no daddy complex), I have long harbored a deep and profound fascination with Anthony Bourdain. The face of his No Reservations TV show, not to mention scribe of such foodie frenzy-inducing tomes as Kitchen Confidential and The Nasty Bits (and occasional advertiser on this website), Bourdain has become something of an icon younger generations of gourmands. While he spends the majority of his time on the road generating material for his show, he still calls the Big Apple home. Here's a selection of his NYC favorites culled from Fodor's and the 92nd Street Y Blog.

When looking for fresh reasons to reject potential hookups, never rule out food as a means of ruling out. Nothing reveals more about a person than what they put in their mouth. Newly arrived in the U.S., Australian magazine publisher and writer Babe Scott is on an anthropological expedition to see if American men's food and restaurant choices give clues as to their romantic and companionship potential. Having amassed a wealth of research in New York, she's now turned to LA, conducting her field work via her website, where she invites interested men to take her out for a meal. Her findings -- to be mercifully anonymous -- will be compiled in a book, but for now, she's happy to share some observations and restaurant recommendations gleaned from her study.

A few weeks ago, the WaPo, as we affectionately call our local rag, came up with a list of activities in the District that will help us jaded old-timers rediscover the heart of our city. I've hand-picked a few from their list and added more of my own. Who said DC ain't got no soul.

In their March 2008 issue, Bon Appetit takes a look at "the modern Southern cuisine movement" in Atlanta. This style of cooking re-imagines soul food and traditional Southern staples with innovative fusions and today's trendiest ingredients from truffles to sushi grade fish. As with all true foodie revolutionaries, Atlanta's nouveau Southern chefs pride themselves on using the freshest possible produce. Bon Appetit says mod Southern cuisine in Atlanta started with South City Kitchen and Horseradish Grill, but the movement has taken off of late. Here's a map of their Atlanta choices for haute comfort food in stylish surrounds.

From the publishers behind Markets of Paris and Literary Paris (as well as many more gorgeous Francophile-friendly guides) comes Paris Chic & Trendy, a guide to up-and-coming designers' studios, hip boutiques, and vintage shops. Written by Adrienne Ribes-Tiphaine, a writer for French Vogue and Elle, and featuring stunning photography by Sandrine Alouf, this is one shopping guide to Paris that would ooze chic, if chic ever condescended to ooze.

Always willing to strip in the name of research, the girl reporters at French Elle have put together a handy list of Paris massage parlors charging less than €70. Good news for stressed Parisians on a budget, or anyone else wanting to unwind in a booming local massage market where prices are getting out of hand.

Le Fooding, a contraction of the words "food" and "feeling," has for nearly a decade been stirring up the Paris scene. Highlighting out-of-the-ordinary restaurants in categories like "feeling" and "mini-prix," the movement has undoubtedly expanded the boundaries of the local food universe. Their annual awards are unorthodox, closely watched, and summarized and mapped for your convenience after the jump. You can also find coverage of last year's awards in here.

The New York Times' travel section published a cute little article recently about the Pacific Palisades, which they referred to as "a scenic Los Angeles enclave, without glitter." Their tour of the picturesque community wedged between Santa Monica and Malibu includes art museums, state parks, and meditation shrines, but neglects certain key details. Below, a few of their Palisades picks, plus a few of my own. After all, the NYT is great and everything, but they can't tell you where to find the only fully stocked bar in the luxurious 90272 zip code.

Jonathan Gold, LA Weekly's food critic a l'extraordinaire, recently answered a letter from a reader searching for good places to eat in Van Nuys. Gold doesn't exactly expose a secret culinary paradise in his letter, but he does clue the supplicant -- along with the rest of us -- into some lovely little finds in the San Fernando wilderness. And as a bonus, his picks hit on cuisines from around the globe, most of which are being hawked at below-average prices. Below, a guide to Gold's Van Nuys dining meccas. Know of someplace awesome he didn't mention? Add it in the comments or the tipline.

Just in case you aren't getting enough of a Sydney fix here, we see via Jaunted that Times Online put out a new comprehensive guide, 100 Ways to Discover Sydney. As one would guess, they list one hundred restaurants, bars, museums, shops and sites, and as expected with any list like this, the result is overwhelming, boring, and marginally useful. That said, about a third of the list, that third being the restaurant recommendations, isn't entirely forgettable. The 31-venue list consists of recs from some of the city's top chefs, and they list everything from their favorite places for a hangover cure, to the best restaurant views, excellent tapas, and high-end, high-price dining.

You want pancetta, but you can only find speck. You can't afford the Michelin-starred eateries, but you'd love some decent noodles. You want to cook ghevar, but you don't think Spar stocks ghee. Who do you turn to? The Hungry in Berlin site is run by a quartet of bloggers who act as agony aunts to local foodies and aim to root out the city's "well hidden culinary secrets." -- the pick of the specialist shops, the warehouses full of bok choi, and the restaurants the Rough Guide never found. After the jump, your guides and their top tips for eating and cooking creatively in the hauptstadt.

You guys seemed to dig our previous LA deli list, so here's more grist for the pretentious-sandwich mill. Most of the entries are based on the parts of LA Magazine's Top 10 list that we didn't get to last time, and then there are a few more that were unaccountably left out of the list. And then there's one place included purely as a hateful provocation. Be the better person. Don't rise to the bait.

Christmas Day in London can be lonely for the tourist or otherwise orphaned, with the added insult of nary a bus, Tube, or running train in sight. But with a little planning, and some extra cash for that £4 December 25 London Black Cab supplement, you don't have to lock yourself in your hotel room and devour the contents of the minibar, or even succumb to the Christmas meal offered at your own hotel. Time Out London has smartly assembled a long list of restaurants that will be open on Christmas Day. Here's a gastropub-centric sampling, plus a touristy but scenic river cruise lunch if you feel like setting sail for the afternoon in the company of roast turkey and mince pie. Booking now!

I recently went to Montrose, a suburb of Glendale, which is a town just east of Los Angeles. It was so incredibly charming I was immediately ready to drop everything, move there, and live out the white picket fence dream. Shortly after my dreams of suburban bliss began, LA Magazine came out with a list of the best things about Montrose. There's a lot to love. I've whittled the list down to food-related establishments and added one that, in a gross oversight, didn't make the list. If you've got your own Montrose favorites, let us know in the comments or via the tipline.

Earlier this month, the print edition of French Elle ran a nice little page on "cavistes new look," which is franglais for new generation wine shops in Paris. At the following user-friendly modern wine purveyors, wine is generally packaged for young, thirsty, upbeat amateurs, often classified by occasion, with bottles displayed like objects of lust in design-conscious settings.