About

After a rather circuitous career path, I’m finally doing just what I want: writing about characters through the lenses of food, wine and travel, and helping special hospitality brands and restaurants to grow.

I grew up in a family where the next meal was an ever-shifting but constant lodestar, where the pleasures of the table were paramount. Though initially I resisted focusing on food, my unconventional route’s led me to see the New York restaurant world from many angles: watching as my family opened two wine-focused hubs; years of waitressing while I went on auditions as an actor; working as a publicist at a firm for restaurants and chefs; consulting on projects and dining out thoughtfully and religiously. Wanderlust and an obsession with culinary creativity and authenticity lure me away from my native New York more and more.

In 2011, a stint at the French Culinary Institute inspired me to start The Lovage, a romantic ode in the form of a blog to my lifelong love affair with food. I went on to write for WSJ. Magazine, T, Food & Wine, Departures, Cherry Bombe, Conde Nast Traveler, Vogue.com et al.

SAVOR, the book I co-authored with the late chef Fatima Ali, was released in October 2022, to praise. SAVOR received a glowing review in the New York Times, the James Beard Award for Literary Writing, and was #3 on Oprah Daily’s Best Memoirs of 2022.

I am also the Communications Director for Troutbeck, an estate hotel in Amenia, New York, with a unique history as frequent host to Naturalists Thoreau, Emerson and Borroughs, and Civil Rights activists and Harlem Renaissance stars W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, among others. I oversee their storytelling through press, newsletters, social media and much more. It’s an honor and a pleasure.

If you’ve enjoyed your visit, I am very glad.

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The Lovage is Tarajia Morrell’s website and journal.