Travel 'experts', whether they are travel writers, guidebook authors, travel bloggers, tour guides, travel agents, hoteliers etc, are also 'real' travellers in my mind. Yet publishers and travel sites are frequently pitting the two against each other. Sure, the travel experts sometimes get special treatment and they can rarely shut themselves off from the act of reviewing, even when they're on holidays, but the fact is that they do take holidays and do travel like 'normal' people too. I book my flights and hotels online. I have to negotiate local transport like you do. I eat as many bad meals as I do good ones, and I also get allocated my share of crappy hotel rooms too. Yet increasingly the opinions of the experts - the people who stay in hundreds of hotel rooms a year, catch scores of flights, and talk to thousands of other travel experts and travellers - that is, the people who make it their business to accumulate vast travel experience and knowledge and develop skills at discernment - seem to be increasingly undervalued and overlooked in favor of the opinions of 'real' people. One example is the hotel reviews in Budget Travel (a magazine I love, by the way), such as this one which states that "Online reviews generally praise the hotel as an affordable gem with a fun, unique theme" and "Reader Dawn recommends Franklin Feel the Sound, where she stayed in June 2009. She writes that the Franklin exceeded her expectations and was excellent value". Frankly, unless I know who these online reviewers were and have more information about them and Dawn, I don't care what they think. I want to know how much hotel experience they've had, how many hotels in Rome they've checked into and inspected, and how many hotels they've stayed at fullstop, so I can then determine what their idea of "affordable" or "unique" is, and how different their expectations may be to that of other travellers. You see, travel experts know these things. What do you think?

The atmosphere in Damascus is electric now, and the streets of the Old City more alive than we've seen them before - and we've been regular visitors since 1998. Summer traditionally sees Syrian expats from around the world returning home to spend time with their families while Damascus has long attracted Gulf Arab tourists escaping the sweltering summer temperatures of the Arabian Peninsula - while it's warm here now (low to mid 30s Celcius), the Gulf is scorching (average mid 40s Celcius), so Syria is a cool escape in comparison. But we're seeing travellers from all over the globe getting lost in the Old City's labyrinthine streets at the moment, including Europeans, Australians and Americans. By the look of their travelling gear - harem pants and hippy attire dominate backpacker wardrobes here - they were expecting a cheap destination. But Damascus now boasts an array of beautiful boutique hotels, an ever-growing number of fine restaurants, a handful of hip bars and stylish cafes, a lively arts and cultural scene, and an increasingly chic shopping area in the new city. We're reporting on all of these for magazines over the next week or two, so I'll try and share a few of our discoveries with you as we go.

Pictured? That's Naranj, a relatively 'new' restaurant by Damascene standards, which was very good - the buzzy atmosphere indicative of that found in the whole city at the moment. Although Naranj is not the best, and don't listen to anyone who tells you otherwise - that's a title reserved for Al Halabi at The Four Seasons Hotel, and I'll tell you why in detail very soon.

As I'm a tad too busy to blog at the moment and have limited internet access (I've done a quick trip to Perth for my mother's birthday and Mother's Day and to see my sister and her family), why don't you drop over to my husband Terry's blog Wide angles, wine and wanderlust and check out his latest posts on restaurant reviewing (and how we deal with less than satisfactory experiences), the art of photographing chefs, and his various reflections on ragu, the real name for 'bolognese', for starters, in its most authentic form, it's made with tagliatelle, not spaghetti.

Pictured? Not ragu of course, but another divine dish from chef Rebecca Bridges at EVOO at Sky City in Darwin - a restaurant that was a joy to review and a chef who was a delight to interview and photograph.

Technicalities aside (see my previous post on Dubai as 'salad bowl' rather than 'melting pot') I was pleased to read The Dubai Melting Pot Is In the Kitchen Too in the New York Times. After an abundance of Dubai-bashing in the media recently, it was a relief to see a story by a writer who actually enjoyed himself in Dubai, and to read a well-researched piece of travel and food writing that gave such a scrumptious insight into the place. However, often it's the focused, one-subject stories that are more revealing than the all-encompassing pieces that try to do everything and don't end up covering anything particularly well at all. While cuisine, cooking and a culture's eating habits tell a lot about a place, in this case what's heartening is the fact that the story was centered, that it stayed on topic, that it rang true, and that it dug a little (although perhaps not as deep as it could have), rather than staggered all about the place, scratching here and there at the surface, and scraping together nothing but castles in the sand. During his three-day "odyssey across the culinary landscape of Dubai" writer Seth Sherwood samples an array of restaurants featuring cuisine from North Africa to the Sub-Continent, crediting Dubai’s cosmopolitan population for this culinary diversity, and writing "For devotees of food from the Arabian-Islamic world, Dubai may offer the grandest and most concentrated smorgasbord on the planet." Okay, so they're not really 'Arabian' (he probably means Arabic), but we'll forgive him because at least he was there. You see, I still can't get over Brisbane writer Elizabeth Farrelly's nonsensical piece in which she admitted that she had never been there but strangely for six months had "wanted to write about Dubai as a ruin". In stark contrast Sherwood's piece is grounded in reality: "Though the international economic crisis has raged like a sandstorm through Dubai’s office towers, financial markets and construction sites, a January visit found the sprawling restaurant scene remarkably intact." He concludes: "The upshot is a citywide food bazaar in which restaurants, high- and low-end, serve up tapaslike mezes, aubergine par excellence, fluffy couscous, tangy yogurts, endless kebabs, meats stewed with fruit, fiery arrak liqueur and honey-drenched desserts. All you need is taxi fare and a love of spices." I couldn't agree more. Although I don't always agree with his choices. Sherwood covers everything from the chic Moroccan restaurant Almaz by Momo (pictured) to the gritty Pakistani worker's eatery, Ravi, an expat favorite. The challenge of doing a story like this is that the writer only has three days to eat his way around the city and has to rely on his research abilities as much as his skills at discernment whereas we have had 11 years of dining in Dubai, with plenty of time for repeat visits. Another reason I love guidebook writer - 6 weeks in a city allows you plenty of time to return to places, to wander by on different nights, and to talk to locals. But once again - at least he was there.

By Terry Carter*
Our third memorable meal turned out to be at Michelin-starred Ristorante Il Pagliaccio. We had wanted to eat here for a while, having heard great things about the chef and glowing recommendations about the inventiveness of the menu of Anthony Genovese. Visiting for lunch, we were the only patrons there, yet we hadn't been able to get a table for two nights. Manager Daniele Montano explained that they open for lunch to keep people like us happy (he guessed we were ‘food tourists’), as well as the businessmen and politicians out to impress. To be honest, there were so many highlights to this meal it’s hard to pick out some favorites. The gnocchi with oysters and caviar was sublime. And we had the best prepared pigeon, served with peas, pea puree and mushrooms, that we'd ever had in our lives. The wines were perfectly matched and the service was warm and generous. Il Pagliaccio might translate to the weeping clown, but this meal made us weep tears of delight. Although we were a little melancholy for more after we left…

Great meals have a flow about them and great restaurants exude a certain confidence. The wines match the food well, the waiting staff work seamlessly together, and the kitchen brings out fresh ingredients cooked with care and often plenty of flair. But great meals don’t have to be as intricate and delicate as dining at Il Pagliaccio where a new wine and new taste sensations were presented with every course. They can be as simple and rustic as La Taverna dei Fori Imperiali, or more classical and refined like L'Arcangelo. When we go out to eat we’re happy with any of these three types of experiences. And when a meal clicks, it makes all the ones that don’t feel that way seem like wasted opportunities - something that really irks us when we’re working on a guidebook and blow a tonne of money on a restaurant that we ultimately can’t recommend. But while we are researching stories, to have three memorable meals in just as many days, with such a gamut of experiences, is one of the pure joys of travelling. Don’t you think? It’s one of the reasons we do what we do!

Terry Carter* is my partner and co-author.

By Terry Carter*
La Taverna dei Fori Imperiali** was casually recommended to us by our guide, Petulia, from Context while we were on our way to visit some bespoke shops, and it was another memorable stop. A modest, old-fashioned trattoria, we were instantly taken with the casual nature of the staff. ‘Dad’, who appears to do the cooking, walked through the restaurant wearing the kind of apron that generally makes the rest of the family giggle, but the food was delicious, as was the wine selection. We ordered off-menu as this generally translates to the ‘specials’. In good Italian restaurants ‘specials’ don’t mean the stuff from the back of the walk-in refrigerator that’s well past its prime, it means the dishes that are made from what was bought fresh from the market that day. We had a beautiful freshly-made caponata (a 'salad' comprised of cooked eggplant, olives, pine nuts, celery, more than a little sugar, vinegar and olive oil, with some wonderful buffalo mozzarella on the side), followed by some handmade pastas, of which a veal ragout with late-season truffles was an aromatic delight. Even a neighbouring table’s comments*** that they had to keep drinking wine to "drown out the garlic taste" of the same dish* couldn’t deter us from fighting over whether our ‘half-half’**** rule applied.

* Photographer-writer Terry Carter is my husband and co-author
** at Via Madonna dei Monte 16
*** Notes for our neighbouring table (while desperately not trying to sound like a food snob): it was truffle, not garlic that was giving off the strong aroma (costs much more, smells very different); ‘al-dente’ means ‘with bite’, this is how pasta is cooked, although the ‘bite’ varies depending whether the pasta is secca (dried) or fresca (fresh); and ‘Dante’ was a writer, so asking if a pasta is ‘chewy’ because it’s cooked ‘Dante’ is like asking to be sent to the Inferno.
**** our ‘half-half’ rule is what we use when we have two dishes we both really want to try. We eat half and then swap plates. Conditions apply and there is often a little cheating. As when one person is faking that their dish is ‘just OK’, but is secretly having a food orgasm. This is generally easily discovered by noting the facial expressions of the cheating diner.

By Terry Carter*
Given that we were not on the travel guidebook treadmill when we were in Rome recently (we were researching stories for travel magazines instead), we easily fell back into the pattern that we used to follow when we didn’t write restaurant reviews for a living. We decided to do what we love to do – eat at whatever restaurant takes our fancy rather than what fulfills editorial desires. (More on that in another post coming soon.) Our friends and people we meet on the road think that this means we’d drop into Michelin star establishments for breakfast. But that’s not the case. Dining at Michelin-starred restaurants can be stifling, stiff and often disappointing experiences (more on that soon also). We love to mix it up and we’re just as happy with a bowl of great pasta as we are with a tian of whatever served with an ingredient that I’d need to look up in a food dictionary and topped with foam of cloud essence. You get the idea… So, here are our three favorite restaurants in Rome...

* Travel writer-photographer Terry Carter is my husband and co-author.

By Terry Carter*
On our first day in Rome we dumped our bags and quickly headed out to lunch at L'Arcangelo, a classically understated yet elegant ristorante, where the quietly charming owner-sommelier Arcangelo Dandini exudes the confidence of someone who knows that the food and wine are exemplary. For example, an octopus salad with potatoes, capers and artichokes was perfection on a plate. The balance of the flavours and the amount of each ingredient were impeccable. Sometimes you’d take a mouthful of a dish and you’d just know that these ingredients were made for eachother, making me wonder why I didn’t cook more simply when we’re staying in apartments. Our rigatoni alla matriciana was one of the best pasta dishes we’d ever sampled and if the head chef is from India he’s had excellent guidance from Arcangelo, who is responsible for many of the recipes and much of what’s on the menu. The wines recommended (including the owners’ own lovely bianco) were beautifully matched and the meal flowed seamlessly, leaving us floating off giddily for a well-earned siesta. Now that’s our idea of fine dining.

* Travel writer-photographer Terry Carter is my husband and co-author (although that's my lazy photography, pictured).