Kate Krader (@kkrader on Twitter) is Food & Wine's restaurant editor. When she tells us where to find our culinary heart's desire, we listen up.

The Great GoogaMooga festival hits Brooklyn this weekend, which means it’s the unofficial start of Foodie Music Festival season. (Also on the list: Lollapalooza, Outside Lands, Austin City Limits, the recent Jazz Fest and the just announced Music City Eats in Nashville in September, which - full disclosure - Food & Wine will sponsor.)

Coincidentally or not, a lot of restaurants seem to be in a kind of sound system arms race to see who can be the noisiest. When the hot new restaurant app is a decibel reader, you know places are getting loud. Those spots that look like they just stopped being a warehouse yesterday - concrete everywhere, tablecloths nowhere - mean that the sound level could well approximate a construction site.

Since it’s not hard to find a noisy restaurant, let’s focus on the ones that are doing something interesting with their outsize sound.
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World-renowned chef, author and Emmy winning television personality Anthony Bourdain visits Libya in the next episode of "Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown," airing Sunday, May 19, at 9 p.m. ET. Follow the show on Twitter and Facebook.

Fried dough is arguably a universal language. There are about as many ways to enjoy sfinz - a spongy, light (albeit fried) pastry eaten across the Middle East and North Africa - as there are variations and even spellings.

In Libya, it's sfinz. In Morocco, it's sfenj. In Tunisia, yoyos; and in Italy, sfinge. (Leptis Magna, on the coast of Libya, was once a highly prominent city of the Roman Empire; it's also an UNESCO World Heritage site.)

This week, Anthony Bourdain travels to the North African country that is still trying to find its footing after long-term ruler Moammar Gadhafi was overthrown by an uprising in 2011.
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Ray Isle (@islewine on Twitter) is Food & Wine's executive wine editor. We trust his every cork pop and decant – and the man can sniff out a bargain to boot. Take it away, Ray.

Everyone knows Pinot Grigio, the northern Italian white wine beloved for its...hmmmm... That’s hard to pin down. Sometimes it seems as though Pinot Grigio is mostly beloved for its lack of presence; a sort of pleasant blandness, like iceberg lettuce or Kenny G's music.
 
So, given that, what happened to Pinot Bianco? Somewhere along the road to grape-variety fame, Grigio’s paler-skinned cousin wandered off into the bushes and got lost. That doesn’t mean there aren’t people making Pinot Bianco; in fact there are many of them, and the wines are often very good. And more to the point, on average they are unquestionably better than most Pinot Grigios.
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World-renowned chef, author and Emmy winning television personality Anthony Bourdain visits Tangier, Morocco in the next episode of "Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown," airing Sunday, May 12, at 9 p.m. ET. Follow the show on Twitter and Facebook.

There are two things you can be sure of when it comes to your taste buds in Morocco.

You'll drink enough sugary mint tea to send your dentist into a spin. And, after a couple of days, you'll be sick to your back teeth of tagine (if you have any left).

What's a hapless (and hungry) traveler to do?

As most locals will tell you, the best Moroccan food is found at home, not in restaurants.

Unless you can wrangle an invite to a local's home, your best bet is to dive into the maze-like medinas and head to the food souks.

Read the full story - 10 street foods to try in Morocco - on CNN Travel.

Kate Krader (@kkrader on Twitter) is Food & Wine's restaurant editor. When she tells us where to find our culinary heart's desire, we listen up.

Not that anyone has anything against flowers, but there are a lot of them out there on Mother’s Day. In fact, About Flowers, an online flower resource created by the Society of American Florists, reports that 38 percent of U.S. adults bought flowers or plants for their mothers on the big day.

Which is why it seems like a good thing to mix it up this year. So many terrific cakes need a good home this Mother’s Day. Here are some excellent options for a wide assortment of moms.

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Details.com editor James Oliver Cury tackles controversial food-and-drink-themed etiquette issues every week.

May is filled with opportunities to feast, starting with Cinco De Mayo and ending with Memorial Day weekend, the semi-official start of grilling season. It should be a happy, face-stuffing time as we say hello once again to seasonal staples.

But with this upswing in communal eating often comes heated debates about culinary gaffes, as in: You’re doing it wrong!

Here are four food fights in the making - assuming there’s a food snob in the room.
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World-renowned chef, author and Emmy winning television personality Anthony Bourdain visits Tangier, Morocco in the next episode of "Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown," airing Sunday, May 12, at 9 p.m. ET. Follow the show on Twitter and Facebook.

One of the signature photos people always take home with them from Morocco is of heaping piles of spices in a variety of enticing colorful displays. These setups aspire to overwhelm visitors with the enchantment of a new and undiscovered place – and to encourage wide-eyed tourists to part with their dollars.

Diane Rice of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, captured a singular image of one of those remarkably shaped groupings of spice cones, a monument to Morocco's exotic qualities.
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Editor's note: The Southern Foodways Alliance delves deep in the history, tradition, heroes and plain old deliciousness of barbecue across the United States. SFA filmmaker Joe York wrote this remembrance of pitmaster Ricky Parker after attending Parker's funeral on Wednesday, May 1, in Lexington, Tennessee.

They buried Ricky Parker yesterday. A few miles down the road from the cinder block pits where he cooked whole hogs for more than half his life, from the sliding glass window where he sold sandwiches, from the creosote-stained door where he hung the “SOLD OUT” sign every afternoon to let the latecomers know not to bother, they gathered to say they were sorry, to say goodbye, to say that they didn’t know what to say.

They dressed him as he dressed himself. In blue Dickies, a tan work shirt with a pack of Swisher Sweets peeking from the breast pocket, and his burgundy and brown ball cap resting on the ledge of coffin, he went to his reward. The only thing missing was his greasy apron. I imagine it hangs on a nail somewhere back by the pits where he left it.
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Ray Isle (@islewine on Twitter) is Food & Wine's executive wine editor. We trust his every cork pop and decant – and the man can sniff out a bargain to boot. Take it away, Ray.

When it comes to pink wine, there’s one basic thing to know: White Zinfandel is not the same thing as dry rosé. White Zin - and its various blush-wine brethren - is somewhat sweet; when you think of a White Zin, think of the pink hue of cotton candy, and you won’t be far off, tastewise. Dry rosé, on the other hand, is crisp, zesty and not sweet at all.

Unfortunately, the massive popularity of White Zin over the years did a number on people’s perception of rosés in general, sort of the way Jar Jar Binks corrupted the aesthetic legitimacy of the entire Star Wars universe. Thankfully, just as the doofus horror of J.J.B. has ebbed over time, so has the permeating sense that all rosés are sweet.

In fact, dry rosés are an ideal springtime wine. As far as I’m concerned, they’re meant to be drunk outdoors - whether at a picnic, al fresco at a restaurant, or simply on a porch or in a backyard. The longer, sunnier days ask for something in the glass that you can see through; and the light, berry-to-watermelon fruit notes of most rosés taste like springtime too. So, with that in mind, here are a few great bottles to look for.
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