Who am I?
I’m Krista. My bed is currently in Chicago. I like food, and I tend to fly around a lot.

My love of food began with bologna (Boar’s Head, of course) and Little Debbies on the sunny shores of New York’s Irish Riviera. This was followed by many years on Long Island, where every meal seemed to involve white wine “spritzas” and fried “galamard.” (Don’t worry, I personally didn’t have my first “spritza” until I was about 24, and I now know that “galamard” actually starts with a c and ends with an i.)

I ended up in Indiana for college (I had never eaten mushrooms before), and I perfected (hah!) my Deutsch over Stiegl during a year-long stint as an Austauschstudentin (exchange student) in Innsbruck, Austria (spaetzle!). Afterwards, I developed an appreciation of (obsession with?) the hot dog–charred, please–in Chicago. Somewhere along the line, the rest of my family moved to South Florida. I like grits and lots of them. Arnold Palmers too.

My job sent me for extended chunks of time to Germany (brezen, schinken), Sweden (salmon! and the Systembolaget) and London. (Other places too, but for non-extended periods of time.) I lived in London from March of 2004 to August of 2010 and left my heart there. I fell in love with a city that I don’t ever want to be separated from.

I started my London restaurant review blog about three months after moving to the UK in 2004. I posted my first restaurant “review” on June 26th, 2004; it was The Providores in Marylebone, which remains one of my favorite places in London to this day. You could say it was my inspiration.

Why are you putting all this out there?
My goal in creating this blog is to motivate myself to explore the cities I visit, eat in restaurants that normal people eat in, and give myself something to do in my spare time. Oh yes, and to reassure my parents that I am still alive.

How much do you know?
Never overestimate the power of my blog. Full disclosure: I did study journalism in university, and when I was in my teens and early 20s, I did work in the food service industry. Those days are long gone and I can barely remember how to write a compelling lead and I never want to clean out a walk-in again. (Especially after midnight. Cleaning out a walk-in in the wee hours of the morning really sucks.) This blog is a hobby and a way to pass the time. I added ads in July of 2010 to help me break even after years as a Typepad subscriber, a site redesign and (painful) migration to WordPress in December of 2010, and to pay for the occasional beer. I’m pretty open about my costs and plan to do the same with revenue once I get my act together. Read more over here.

Some disclosure (Borrowed from Seth Godin)
On occasion, I’m delighted to accept samples of stuff of small value. That being said, there’s no correlation between mentioning stuff and whether or not I received it via my blog. I would change this policy immediately if the Mexican Tourist Board were to send me to Mexico for two (or more) weeks to write about their food. (Same applies to the Japanese Tourist Board. Or the Korean Tourist Board.)

My goal in creating this blog is to spread my love of food and my love of travel. At the end of the day though, I’m an amateur, not a professional. I do not work in the food industry.

If any of this changes, I promise to let you know.

If you’d like to get in touch because you’re a fan or because you’d like to talk about advertising or other forms of sponsorship, please drop me a note.

A note about comments on my blog
Sometimes, strange people write strange things on my blog. This makes me wonder, “Who has this much time?”

If I think a person has submitted a comment to Passportdelicious.com that is hurtful, totally random or just plain weird, I reserve the right to not publish the comment. Also, if a comment appears to be anonymous (i.e., the commenter has obviously made up an e-mail address), I reserve the right to not publish that comment either. I use the “reasonable person” rule. If you don’t know what that is, you can read more on Wikipedia.

Peace. And happy eating!