Alexandra Hall
Alexandra Hall is a Boston-based lifestyle writer specializing in food and travel. She’ll cross continents for a first-rate bouillabaisse, a visionary resort, a soul-cleansing view, a stellar deal, or sometimes simply for the crossing itself.
She’s currently the Boston editor of Daily Candy, a free daily e-mail newsletter and website—the ultimate insider’s guide to what’s hot, new, and undiscovered in the city, from restaurants and fashion to beauty and travel. Previously she was the senior lifestyle and food editor at Boston Magazine, where she also oversaw and edited the magazine's annual "Best of Boston" issue for four years.
A graduate of Le Cordon Bleu culinary school in Paris, France, Alexandra currently writes for magazines including Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, Elle Décor, Allure, and Boston, as well as for newspapers including The New York Times and The Boston Globe. For two years she was the Boston editor for Lucky, has contributed regularly to InStyle and Condé Nast Traveler, and has covered food and shopping in Boston and New England for both Fodor’s travel guides and Moon Handbooks.
She and her wonderful husband, Michael Blanding, are currently hard at work co-authoring a guide to New England for Moon Handbooks. In spring of 2005, they welcomed their first son, Zachary Martin Hall Blanding, into the world.
Featured Stories
Bon Appetit
Boston Goes South Boston’s SoWa district: The Northeast’s next big dining hotspot? Hall explores the neighborhood’s finest, including: Pho Republique, Union Bar & Grille, Caffé Umbra, Flour Bakery + Café, The Red Fez, and Stella. Also: Chef Ken Oringer’s Toro as the one to watch. (July 2005)
Condé Nast Traveller
The Hot List 2004 "Who knew a reinvented oyster bar could become the pearl of Boston's nightlife? B&G Oysters Ltd., the South End's bar-restaurant hybrid of the moment attracts a discriminating crowd who enjoy slurping down oysters along with flutes of prosecco..." (May 2004)
Elle Decor
Insider's Guide To Boston A city proud of its traditions and history is energetically undertaking changes in both style and substance. (December/January 2005)
Boston Magazine
The Best of Boston 2004 This year we were forced to set our expectations higher, because the city had risen past them. (August 2004)
The Best of Boston 2003 This year, Boston's finest have settled in, not branched out, responding to ongoing economic challenges by focusing on their strengths. (August 2003)
Tune In, Turn On, Spit Up Does Baby Einstein rot the brain? Is Elmo a corporate shill? Are Poppy Pig and Mrs. Pepper crack cocaine for the toddler set? For anxious parents, straight answers are hard to come by. (August 2006)
Freezing
Time A new company founded by women could help women do the
unthinkable: turn back their biological clocks. (Feburary 2006)
Suite Dreams
Charismatic hotelier Robin Brown pushes Boston to the next level of luxury.
(December 2005)
Elements
of Style Add the raw, natural beauty of Martha's Vineyard
to the colorful entertaining style of a fashion accessories designer,
and what have you got? A great summer dinner in a fantasy setting. (June
2005)
The
Tao of Schlow Celebs buzz about his restaurants. But Michael
Schlow just wants to talk about the food. (June 2005)
Bad
Girls The number of female juvenile delinquents in Massachusetts
has more than tripled in just the last 10 years. and as more and more
girls get locked up, the overburdened system that is supposed to deal
with them is hurtling toward chaos. (April 2005)
The
Gala Food Spectacular When it comes to eating, there's no
time like the present. So we've selected 25 places we know are fantastic
right this very minute. (January 2005)
Merry
+ Bright Celebrating the holiday season doesn't have to be
high pressure. Curt Carpenter and Natalie van Dijk Carpenter, owners of
the South End home furnishings emporium Lekker, join forces with chef
pal and neighbor Barbara Lynch to throw together a festive and unfussy
holiday dinner. (December 2004)
Country Style Whether on his PBS cooking show or in his magazine, Cook's Illustrated, Christopher Kimball has perfected the art of getting food exactly right. But when relaxing with his family at their Vermont farmhouse, he entertains friends in laid-back summer style. (June 2004)
The New Brahmins Boston's powerful, wealthy, and generous first families made this city one of the most educated and cultured in the country. So what are their descendants doing with the famous names and family fortunes they inherited? (May 2004)
Eating Park Square The city's new restaurant row covers almost every link of the food chain: national conglomerates and local haute cuisine, with humble hosts and big-name pomp, serving city dwellers and tourists alike. But can you get a good meal there? (November 2003)
The Mating Habits of the Suburban High School Teenager They hook up online. They hook up in real life. With prom season looming, meet your kids — they might know more about sex than you do. (May 2003)
The Quick Fix From Botox to microdermabrasion, the new brigade of fast, relatively cheap, and pain-free cosmetic procedures claims it can both erase the years and perfect us in a lunch hour. But does it really make a difference? (February 2003)
Girls With Guns Forget lipstick, Fendi bags, and Wonderbras. A local group of young women has elected the .22-caliber Smith & Wesson as its most powerful accessory. Is this simply more progun lunacy, or could it possibly be the next face of feminism? (January 2003)
Strangers Among Us Boston's Muslims have long struggled to adapt to their surroundings without compromising their religion. Now, thrust into the spotlight by events not of their own making, they are taking the next step: trying to be understood. (February 2002)
We'll Always Have Paris France's sexiest city is a mix of modern cool and historical style. Now, with weekend airfares at bargain prices, the romance of the City of Light is closer than ever. (Februrary 2002)
Social Climbing Can big bucks and big names really gentrify the former Combat Zone? It doesn't matter: The Ladder District's current clash of high and low culture carries its own enviable status. (November 2001)
Boston Globe
Euro Euphoria: Designer outlets bring Italy's coveted style and high prices within reach Instead of the made-for-outlet clothing found in even upscale US outlets , here you get the real thing: exquisitely made designer pieces, intended for upscale boutiques, but that just happen to have a button missing or a scuff on the inside pocket. (with Kari Molvar, July 25, 2004)
At Chez Shack, fine food meets island attitude "I'm sorry I've been so busy tonight," says our perpetually smiling, spiky-haired waiter as he sets down yet another round of the high-octane house punch. "I usually have time to sit and talk." That we didn't expect (or ask) him to do so doesn't matter any more than that we had never met him. A certain kind of refined informality is the paradox that pretty much sums things up at Chez Shack... (April 28, 2004)
In Old Montreal, nouveau is low-key, hip, and happy Is it possible to see, be seen, and feel genuinely serene all at the same time? Montreal's Le Saint-Suplice Hotel raises hopes. (January 18, 2004)
Buenos Aires, now a bargain Argentine capital is hip, vibrant, and affordable. (January 7, 2004)
Cambodia:
Below the Surface Far from the tourist buses, the real beauty
of this troubled country is finally emerging. (August 23, 2003)
Sidebar: Serenity Instead of Crowds Beat the rush at Angkor
Wat
Ms. Magazine
Do the eyes have it? Review of Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery by Virginia L. Blum (University of California Press) "It’s official: The cultural obsession with plastic surgery has migrated from Hollywood to the mainstream, middle-class culture. We are a makeover-mad world, argues Virginia L. Blum in Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery, and we need to face it. And face it Blum does—and then some..." (December 2003)
New York Times Book Review
Review of Whitebread Protestants: Food and Religion in American Culture, by Daniel Sack "Just because a culture centers on Jell-O salad and casseroles does not mean it has no flavor, Daniel Sack asserts in ''Whitebread Protestants,'' a discussion of how food has defined much of American Protestantism..." (March 11, 2001)
Review of Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, by Anne Lamott "Lamott is a narrator who has relished and soaked up the details of her existence, equally of mirth and devastation . . . and spilled them onto her pages." (March 7, 1999)
Review of Holy Hunger, by Margaret Bullitt-Jonas "Insightful and instructive . . . However, Bullitt-Jonas's endless referrals to the misery of her condition, not to mention her sentimental and overblown language . . . ultimately limit how much the book can teach us." (January 10, 1999)
Review of Questions of Heaven: The Chinese Journeys of an American Buddhist, by Gretel Ehrlich "Ehrlich's highly personal travelogue centers on her attempt to find what remains of [the] once-flourishing spiritual culture in the sacred mountains of western China. . . . [Ehrlich] intersperses her personal narrative with bits of the intellectual, political, historical, and spiritual." (May 18, 1997)
Review of Honest to Jesus: Jesus for a New Millennium, by Robert W. Funk "With historical data in one hand and theories about relativism in the other, Robert W. Funk is a scholarly curmudgeon poised to incite a contemporary reformation: the cultural transformation of Jesus the icon into Jesus the iconoclast." (March 2, 1997)
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