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Kuvy Ax

@kuvyax

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Taking giant bites out of life 😄 More adventures at @goodfoodadventurers. Learn more at

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I'm going to Tuscany next month on an "everything-you-imagined-Italy-could-be" trip, and there's room for a few more.

My friend Patty Moss runs Pack A Fork, a company that runs unique small-group culinary and cultural adventures. I've signed on for her Gems of Tuscany trip, Oct 24–Nov 3. This one is capped at 7 guests, so it's a small group led by Patty, not a packed tour bus. We'll be guided by a certified Italian guide/driver WHO IS ALSO A SOMMELIER! 🤩

Home base is Terre di Baccio agriturismo, a 16th-century villa near Greve in Chianti. It's also a working vineyard, farm and olive oil mill, set on 50 acres of hillside olive groves (!)

Join us for:
🍄 Hunting truffles in the woods outside San Miniato with a third-generation truffle hunter and his dog, then lunch at his home
🍝 A hands-on pasta class in San Gimignano at one of the highest-rated cooking classes in Tuscany
🥩 Dinner at Officina della Bistecca, Dario Cecchini's place in Panzano (he's the butcher from Chef's Table)
🍷 Lunch and tastings at Castello di Verrazzano, a Renaissance castle and winery
🐐 A cashmere goat farm (yes, really!)
🎨 Three nights in Florence to finish: Michelangelo's David, the Duomo, and the artisan workshops of the Oltrarno, where (as if that weren't enough) we'll make our own prints from original copperplate etchings.

The villa has 2-BD apartments with their own living room and kitchenette, so it's a good trip to bring a friend (or two) or your partner.

I spent my teen years in Europe and have been back to Italy/Sicily a few times recently, but haven't spent enough time in Tuscany, and these unique foodie experiences are difficult to find and coordinate. Patty's been doing this for YEARS and knows all the local guides, best places to eat, ways to really immerse in food culture, etc. CANNOT WAIT.

Want to come along? Check out this tour at packafork.com, visit terredibaccio.com, and message me, or Patty at info@packafork.com with q's. 🍷 🍄 🍝 🍂

📸 @terredibaccio taken in Agriturismo Terre di Baccio by @kuvyax

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11 days ago

3 weeks in Avon! I had big plans to work a little and play a lot. I mostly worked a lot. 😏 But a few different friends came up and got me off the laptop and into the outdoors: Julie Zagars stopped by on her way to Phoenix; Steve and Melinda were staying in Breckenridge and made the drive to Avon twice — once for us to see their son Gavin’s awesome band Cactus Cat play at the lake; once for a fun Avon day biking along the Eagle River, ending up at a bakery for treats then Vin 48 for dinner; then BFF Kat came up for Labor Day weekend! Fancy dinners, drinks, sunbathing by the pool, clothes shopping, and grilled salmon by the river! 🥳

I also hiked the Avon Overlook, somehow missed the path to go back down, and decided “well hey since I’m up here, I might as well climb to that mountain top over there” – it had a telegraph pole and some fence posts (and some rusty barbed wire 🥹) so I figured there’d be a path down from there. Nope! So I decided to just make my own way down… it got steeper and steeper and more and more slippery, with me basically crawling down the mountain holding onto sage bushes, knowing every step meant I was committing to going farther down this side of the mountain. At one point I dislodged a rock that went crashing down for what seemed like hours 😳 and thought, OK, I REALLY need to figure out where I am. So I asked ChatGPT. 😂 It told me to upload screenshots of my blue dot on the map and had just figured out that I should NOT to keep going down but retrace my steps back up — and then the message came up that I had hit my ChatGPT usage limit. 😂😂😂

Well, at least I managed to squeeze in an adventure… ⛰️ taken in Avon, Colorado by @kuvyax

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14 days ago

“If I’m an advocate for anything, it’s to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food, it’s a plus for everybody.”
- Anthony Bourdain
💗 taken in The World by @kuvyax

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a month ago

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2 months ago

Life is short. Celebrate it. Celebrate your people. Make an excuse to get everyone together. Order the good thing. Eat the cake. 🥂🎂

And thank you to everyone who helped make my birthday so much fun—whether you came to eat with me, raised a glass, sent a message, or somehow managed to do all three. I feel very, very lucky. ❤️

#celebrateeverything #birthdayweek #grateful #friendship by @kuvyax

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2 months ago

I was heartbroken for weeks going through the process of selling my condo in Gunbarrel. It was the first place I’d ever bought, and I bought it to raise my toddler son—it was right off of bike paths and a park with a playground and had a fantastic swimming pool, kiddie pool and huge hot tub that was wonderful to sit in with the snow falling down.

So many big things happened while I lived there (my son‘s first steps, countless dinners there with friends and family, running out of the door and out to the gorgeous bike path through the trees and then around the Twin Lakes…) and even after I moved out and rented it out, it always felt like my security blanket. 😢 But it just didn’t make financial sense anymore to continue to own it and rent it out. So dear friend @catmccainburgess of @burgessgrouprealty worked her magic and helped me sell it in just a few weeks 🙏🏼

My heart was heavy at the closing, until the Escrow Officer said that the young buyer had been there that morning to sign the papers before me—and had cried when she was done because she was so excited to be buying her first home.

It made it all feel better to think that the same place that had been a huge beginning for me was now going to be hers. 🏡🏘️🏡

I’ll miss you, Powderhorn, and everything you meant to me. 💓

#grateful #movingon #memories taken in Gunbarrel, Boulder, Colorado by @kuvyax

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2 months ago

Looking back through my June camera roll while putting this post together, I realized something.

I thought it was going to be full of restaurants and great food (which… fair 😂).

Instead, it’s full of people.

Birthday dinners. Friends around my table. Rooftop yoga. My mom’s birthday in the mountains. Summer evenings with friends. One last pool day before saying goodbye to my condo. And yes… a bear wandering through the alley behind my house. 😂 🐻

The more I looked, the more I realized June wasn’t really about the meals. It was about everything I was building around them.

Most of all, the relationships in my life. Getting stronger. Growing ROOT. Getting my finances where I want them. Letting go of a few things that honestly weren’t healthy anymore. Making space for whatever comes next ✨

Looking back, I realized something else.

I’ve spent a lot of my life creating a life I’m actually excited to wake up to.

I think this next chapter is less about building it… and more about being present enough to really experience it while I’m living it.✨🙏🏼✨

#grateful #friends #family by @kuvyax

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3 months ago

Wendi and Ed were officially - WED. 😄

Five delicious days stretched before me, with art galleries to visit and no schedule beyond deciding what interesting thing to look at next.

Sunday I mostly recovered, venturing out only for one more meal at The Drunken Munkey: Short Rib Eggs Benedict with an Indian twist. 👏🏼

Monday started at the Frick Collection, my favorite museum of the whole month. The collection is incredible, but what I loved most was that they actually tell you the stories behind the paintings.

Lunch was at Lox Café inside the Jewish Museum: a ridiculously overstuffed lox bagel, matzo ball soup, and an iced vodka shot.

Then on to the Neue Galerie—an entire museum dedicated primarily to Gustav Klimt, my favorite artist. By pure luck, it was also the final day of the Egon Schiele exhibition before it closed for the summer.

That evening I headed uptown for Ed and Wendi’s Memorial Day party. It was so nice seeing them finally relaxed. No ceremony. No speeches. Just happy. 💘

The next day I spent almost the entire day at The Met. 🎉

Twenty minutes with one painting. Ten seconds with the next. Then wandering into galleries I normally would have walked right past, simply because I finally had the time.

On the way back I made one last stop at Szechuan Gourmet. I’d discovered it by accident years ago, loved it enough to seek it out again in Mexico City, and had to come back to the New York original. Sadly, it wasn’t quite as great as I’d remembered. 🥴

Aaaand… my last day in NYC was spent mostly in bed. After a month of planes, trains, double-decker buses, taxis, subways, and more steps than my watch had ever counted, the vertigo I’d been trying to ignore had finally caught up with me. I was honestly a little nervous about getting through two buses and a flight home the next day, but thankfully I’d already squeezed in almost everything I’d wanted to do. 🥳🤸🏽‍♂️✨ taken in NYC by @kuvyax

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3 months ago

Finally: wedding day. At 10am I was standing on the steps of Macy’s waiting for them to open.

The dress I’d carried through 3 weeks in Mexico wasn’t going to work. I’d known it the moment I unpacked it in NYC. Ed’s wedding deserved something special, and that one just wasn’t it. So I’d spent an afternoon at Bloomingdale’s trying on 30+ dresses, bought one I loved, then spent the next 24 hours second-guessing it. By wedding day morning I was back at square one.

When the Macy’s doors opened, the staff was lined up clapping to loud music — not the calming entrance you hope for when you have a wedding in a few hours. I rushed upstairs, grabbed more dresses than I could carry and tripped over them on the way to the fitting rooms. The first one I tried on was “the one” — but of course I still tried on all the others!

I made it to hair and makeup just in time.

Ed is my best friend. We’ve known each other for nearly 40 years (!) He’d asked me to be his best woman, which meant weeks of writing and practicing a speech to introduce him to a room who mostly knew Wendi but had never really heard his story.

The wedding was at St. Bartholomew’s on Park Avenue, a stunning chapel inside a grand historic cathedral. Every time I glanced over at Ed during the ceremony, he was either crying or on the verge of it. Then when it was over, he stepped up onto the chancel, turned to face the room, and threw his arms into the air as if he’d just won the World Cup. 🙌🏼

That’s Ed. 💗

At the reception I told the room who he is. About arriving in Dijon in 1983 to pick grapes, 3 weeks after the harvest had ended 😂, and meeting Wendi in the youth hostel. About the “fancy dress” party — where (American) Wendi showed up in a lovely gown, while Ed (very British) answered the door as Dopey the Dwarf. And about the eight-hour WhatsApp call decades later, when a friendship that had lasted most of their lives finally tipped into something neither of them could ignore. 💖

Lots of laughter. Lots of nodding.😅

I headed back to the hotel in the rain, still wearing the dress I’d spent 3 days worrying about. There was finally nothing left to do but enjoy the feeling of having done right by Ed. 🥹 taken in St Bartholomew's Church by @kuvyax

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3 months ago

When I arrived in New York City late that afternoon, it was blue skies and that kind of heat where you rush from the sidewalk into the cool of a hotel just to get out of it. I’d barely made it up to my room when a black storm started rolling in.

The sky flashed with lightning as the rain came down in sheets. Below, the intersection turned into a river almost immediately. Not draining — rising. Cars stalled and left in place with hazard lights flashing. Fire trucks, sirens blaring, pushing through like ships. A bicycle trying to make its way through, almost toppled by the wake of a Tesla. A mom and dad wading across holding their kids’ hands, laughing but looking nervous. Storefronts flooding, bags and boxes drifting out into the street.

The next morning, Thursday, no sign of the flood except for boxes and bags of trash stuck in odd places.

I unpacked the dress I’d carried through three weeks in Mexico and immediately knew it wasn’t going to work. Too casual for this wedding. That resulted in hours at Bloomingdale’s trying on 30+ dresses. Bought one I loved — and then spent the next 24 hours second-guessing it, too.

That night I discovered the Drunken Munkey two blocks from my hotel — a British Indian restaurant like the ones I used to love growing up in England. Chili Cheese Toast, Railway Chicken Curry, Dark Chocolate Cricket Ball (!) for dessert. Disco lights, a fireworks cake for someone’s birthday. I went back twice more before I left NYC!

Friday was the first time I got to see my best friend Ed and the rest of the wedding group. 🎉 Nail salon first — proper British men getting their very first manicures, slightly out of their depth but loving every second of it. Then the wedding rehearsal in a gorgeous chapel tucked inside St. Bartholomew’s Cathedral. 💘Love and hugs and excitement. 💞💘🎉Then pizza at Wendi’s place, because that’s how rehearsal dinners go when your people are fun.🎉

I fell asleep that night with the Macy’s website open on my phone and my alarm set for early the next day… WEDDING DAY!

#nyc #wedding #WED taken in New York City by @kuvyax

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3 months ago

Last day in Mexico City — last day in Mexico!

Pastries from a neighborhood bakery, eaten on the sidewalk waiting for an Uber. Then a few hours wandering the Museo Nacional de Antropología — a monumental concrete structure where scale is the first thing you notice. A vast courtyard dominated by El Paraguas: a single carved column supporting a massive cantilevered canopy, water cascading down its sides. Giant carved stone heads. The Aztec Sun Stone.

Then the smaller things. Turquoise masks, intricate jewelry, tools, weapons — row after row, all made long before making things was easy.

For my last meal in Mexico, Milpa Taqueria. Crackling pressed pork, softshell crab, striped seabass, charcoal-roasted totomoxtle, annatto seed dip, grilled watercress.

Early flight to NYC in the morning ✈️One week left in this month-long adventure — and the best part, my best friend’s wedding, is next! 💞🎉

#mexicocity #foodtravel #museoantropologia taken in Mexico City by @kuvyax

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3 months ago

Arrived back into Mexico City on Sunday afternoon. My Airbnb was $124/night, an amazing deal for staying inside someone’s art collection! Gorgeous hand-painted tiles, original paintings, canopy bed, and an enormous patio filled with cactus and flowering plants, all overlooking the city.

Monday in Mexico City started at Ciclo Mexicano, an organic café, market, and corn mill right across from my Airbnb that specializes in masa in every form — so naturally I ate corn in every form. An omelette stuffed with guisado (a slow-cooked meat stew), fresh corn tortillas, gorditas to take home, and an atole on the side, a warm drink made from masa, cinnamon, and raw cane sugar that dates back to the Aztecs.

Then the Turibus — $18 for a hop-on hop-off double-decker tour that lets you sit on the top deck and actually absorb the city without having to battle the traffic and crowded sidewalks yourself. You get the parks, architecture, monuments, and neighborhoods rolling by while staying above the bustle of it all. The only downside is ducking the occasional tree branch at eye level — and I mean that literally 🤦‍♀️

I got off at Museo Soumaya, which is free, yet houses Rodin, Van Gogh, Monet, Dalí, and the last mural Diego Rivera ever painted. Six floors inside a building covered in 16,000 mirrored hexagonal tiles, with no stairs and no walls — just sweeping open walkways that carry you from one floor of art to the next, all the way up to a top floor bathed in natural light.

That night, tacos al pastor and chicharrón at Taquería Orinoco in Roma Norte. Claude told me to get there before 7 p.m., and sure enough, by the time I left there was a line down the block.

My next stop also had a line – Bar Mauro, recently ranked #2 on North America’s 50 Best Bars. I had their famous Mango Salad cocktail (Patrón Cristalino, mango, tomato water, and vanilla). It arrives looking like a perfectly clear glass of water and then somehow tastes sweet, savory, and floral all at once.

After nearly 3 weeks in Mexico, I went to bed excited for one last day here, excited for NYC and my best friend’s wedding, and a little sad that this chapter of the trip was over.

#foodtravel #visitmexico taken in Mexico City by @kuvyax

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4 months ago