Jennifer V. Cole

Writer and Editor

Sicily, Italy

Writer and EditorFood, Drink, Travel, Lifestyle

Jennifer V. Cole

Writer and Editor

Sicily, Italy

Writer and EditorFood, Drink, Travel, Lifestyle

In the Shadow of the Volcano
Catania, Sicily’s broodingly beautiful second city, is more than a gateway to the rest of the island—it’s an enigmatic, lava-paved home to baroque masterpieces, visceral religious fêtes and one of the world’s greatest fish markets
Prior
Finishing the Dish
What started as a search for a standout flavor became one chef’s journey to honor friendship and navigate grief.
Blackberry Magazine
Follow That Fork: A Food-First Travel Guide
We asked four food-loving travel writers for insider intel on their most mouthwatering getaways. Here, their guide to eight delicious destinations you’ll want to put on your bucket list.
All Recipes
COVID-Travel: Dispatches from Around the World
Here’s what they had to say. Contact Indagare for the latest intel on destinations, hotels and restaurants with social-distancing protocols and the safest possible sanitization measures in place, should you be considering travel at this time. Mara Hoberman is a culture writer and art critic based in Paris with her husband and two small children.
Indagare
Italian Idyll
Seeking an under-the-radar Italian hideaway, where slowing down and soaking in your surroundings (and the curative waters) are the order of the day? Look no further than Ischia, the volcanic island 20 miles off the coast of Naples.
Indagare
20 Places We’re Dreaming About in 2020
Note from the Editors: When we first compiled this list of 20 places to take a big trip in 2020, we had no idea what the year had in store. Now, many of the events we looked forward to have been cancelled or postponed, restaurants and businesses have closed or pivoted, and travel restrictions have confined us to our homes and communities.
Thrillist
Get a Taste of the Good Life on This Stunning, Old-School Italian Island
A timeless island is being re-energized by a new generation. Note: The US State Department has issued a Level 3 travel advisory to reconsider travel to Italy, and the European Union is currently banning travelers from the US. For more information about Sicily’s response to COVID-19, click here. For now, use this guide as inspiration to satisfy your wanderlust safely from home.
Thrillist
Cosa cucinano gli stranieri in Italia e in quarantena
La quarantena ha reso ancora più chiara la differenza fra noi e gli stranieri in cucina. Anche quando gli stranieri sono qui da anni e cucinano con ottimi ingredienti italiani, siamo sempre lì con il ditino puntato a dire "come si dovrebbe cucinare" e cosa no. "Mi hanno detto che cucino con ingredienti italiani ma non cucino cibo italiano.
Vice
Sicily in 7 Days
From the snowy peak of Mount Etna to sandy beaches framed by azure waters and rolling farmland, Sicily is a land of contrasts—Italy to the nth degree. Jennifer V. Cole offers a food lover’s guide to the Mediterranean’s largest island.
Indagare
Endless Summer
What happens when you uproot to chase the sun around the world?
Food & Wine
America’s Finger-Lickin’ Barbecue
Leave the cooking to the pros this summer.
Endless Vacation
St. Croix
Digby Stridiron’s West Indian restaurant, Braata, is the new heart of Caribbean Cooking.
Food & Wine
Obsessions: Flavor Savers
Quart containers are chefs’ best friends, keeping secret sauces and seasonings close at hand. Let’s peel back the lid to see what’s inside.
Food & Wine
Why home cooks still print recipes
For both practical and personal reasons, paper is one of our favorite tools in the kitchen. Today, when nearly every recipe you can imagine has been digitized and stored in your favorite app or the cloud, home cooks continue to print them out and buy or use cookbooks in the kitchen. In fact, almost every food website or cooking blog includes a prominent print button.
The Garage
Chasing the Gator: Isaac Toups and the New Cajun Cooking
Cajun country is the last bastion of true American regional cooking, and no one knows it better than Isaac Toups. Now the chef of the acclaimed Toups' Meatery and Toups South in New Orleans, he grew up deep in the Atchafalaya Basin of Louisiana, where his ancestors settled 300 years ago. There, hunting and fishing trips provide the ingredients for communal gatherings, and these shrimp and crawfish
Little, Brown and Company
How a Simple Pasta Dish Set One Writer on a Life-Changing Journey
I grew up at the knees of some of the South’s great biscuit makers, but a Sicilian taught me how to cook. My senior year at Auburn University, serendipity (and a mothering Turkish woman) introduced me to Flavia Mammana, a visiting mathematics scholar from Catania who was working on her doctorate.
Food & Wine

About

Jennifer V. Cole

Italian

French

German

Wine

Travel

Recipe Development

Recipe Testing

Mississippi-born Jennifer V. Cole is a freelance writer and editor as well as a private travel consultant. Her work appears in Food & Wine, Garden & Gun, Eater, Fast Company, Coastal Living, Travel + Leisure, Esquire, Punch, Modern Farmer, and more. She was Deputy Editor of Southern Living, where she covered the South for nearly a decade. After going freelance, she circumnavigated the globe for about two years. These days she calls Sicily home.

Cole is co-author of Chasing the Gator (Little, Brown and Company) with chef Issac Toups, which was nominated for the 2019 IACP Julia Child First Book Award. She is an author of the Fodor's Sicily guidebook (out October 2022). She launched and was Editor-at-Large for Bake From Scratch, a luxury consumer publication dedicated to the world of bread, pastry, and confections. It was named the Hottest New Magazine by min in 2016, among 217 contenders. She guest edited the spring 2017 issue of Gravy, the James Beard Award-winning publication of the Southern Foodways Alliance, and edited the "American South" Wildsam Field Guide. Cole also does Italian-English translation work for Conde Nast publications, such as Architectural Digest and GQ.

After graduating with honors from Auburn University with a triple major in Economics, French, and German, she made her way to New York where she worked at TIME magazine, and subsequently as an editor for Travel + Leisure. She has climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, ridden elephant-back through the jungles of Thailand, and sailed on gulets over the Aegean Sea. She’s generally made it her mission to eat her way around the world—she’ll try anything once.

Cole served on the James Beard Foundation's Restaurant & Chef Committee for nine years (2012-2021). She has been named an Arkansas Traveler by the Governor and Secretary of State of Arkansas and received a proclamation from the Tennessee legislature for her work in food and music. She was the founding editor and producer of the Southern Living "Biscuits & Jam" video and concert music series. Her work has been recognized by min, Folio, and the Society of American Travel Writers.

Cole speaks Italian, French, and German—and enough Spanish and Dutch to get in trouble. She takes her bourbon neat.