Something Worth Reading on a Tuesday Morning

There’s a version of food and travel writing that exists to make you feel like you’re doing it wrong.

Wrong restaurant. Wrong hotel. Wrong city. Wrong budget. Wrong lifestyle.

This isn’t that.

This is Ungarnished is for the person who has found something worth eating in a dive bar and something deeply disappointing in a place that should have known better.

Who has checked into a beautiful hotel room and felt nothing, and stayed somewhere simple and felt completely at home.

Who travels not for the highlight reel but because something in them needs to see what’s around the next corner.

You don’t need a bigger budget or a better itinerary. You need a better lens.

The Lens

For twelve years I was a private luxury yacht chef. I cooked for billionaires in ports most people can’t find on a map, for people who noticed everything and forgave nothing.

What that taught me is that excellence has nothing to do with price. I’ve had $10 bowls of soup that changed my afternoon and $200 tasting menus I’ve completely forgotten.

The difference is never the ingredient. It’s whether someone gave a damn before you walked through the door.

I use that lens everywhere now. Restaurants, hotels, airlines, airports, road trips, dive bars. If something is good, I’ll tell you exactly why. If it’s a beautifully decorated disappointment, I’ll tell you that too.

My husband Cade is a First Officer on a 150-foot private superyacht with a degree in hospitality. Between his operational precision and my galley years, we have a very low tolerance for “good enough.”

Chase, our Jack Russell Terrier, has higher standards than both of us combined.

What You’ll Find Here

Every piece has four things in it.

Something true — not about the restaurant or the hotel, but about being human. The thing that makes you feel like someone else has been in that exact moment and understood it.

A personal story — why I was there, what I brought with me, what the experience cost or gave me.

What the place actually delivered, without the filter.

One piece of credentialed knowledge from twelve years in the galley that you can actually use the next time you walk into somewhere new.

Who This Is For

You’ve probably lived somewhere unexpected. You travel because something in you needs to keep moving, not because you need the photo. You want to be told the truth about a place, not the curated version, not the PR version.

But more than that, you want to read something and recognize yourself in it. Feel like someone else has been in that room, at that table, in that moment, and came back with something worth saying about it.

That’s who I’m writing for. And if that sounds like you, you’re in the right place.

R. Michael is a former luxury yacht chef, a food and travel writer, and a reliable source of opinions nobody asked for.