I eat out six nights a week, always meeting two or three friends for reviewing dinners. So I can't quite say when eating at the bar finally crept into my consciousness. Maybe it was in September, when  Manhattan's Le Bernardin, staid and very properly French, installed a lounge ... More

So many posh hotels these days make a big deal of all the ways in which they cater to pets—the in-room “Best Friends” menu featuring burgers and bone-shaped biscuits at L’Ermitage in Beverly Hills, the poolside pet massage at Las Ventanas al Paraíso in Cabo among them. But make no ... More

Unless I change my name from Joshua David Stein to something like Sterling, Blaine or Hunter—or maybe all three at once—there are limits to how close I can come to resembling a true Southern Gentleman. I’m not talking about Rhett Butler, but the modern version: Today’s Southern Gentleman is a ... More

When I received a bottle of a newly launched wine called Fichimori and was told to serve it “well-chilled,” I was skeptical to say the least. An Italian red, served cold?! I’d always been under the impression that red wine should be enjoyed just below room temperature and just above ... More

Shaye Moon spent more on her tail than she did on her wedding dress—and she doesn’t regret it a bit. “I’m wearing it more,” the 36-year-old says of the silicone contraption, which she straps on to splash around in a swimming pool near her Florida home. And she isn’t the ... More

You rarely get the call more than a day ahead, and that time in Beverly Hills was no exception. My friend Jerry, a fellow journalist and serious backgammon player, had been trying to get me into a hush-hush game of underground poker—high-class surroundings and real money on the table. Finally ... More

Have you ever heard about that über-fancy ski resort in North Korea? Yes, you read correctly—the secretive and poverty-stricken country opened a multi-million dollar luxury ski resort in 2013, despite the fact that the population of skiers in North Korea is around .02 percent. North Korea's ... More

As monetary settlements called "pet trusts" grow in popularity, animal companions of the wealthy can continue living large even after their owners are long gone. "People develop a really strong bond with the animals they share their lives with," says Worcester, Massachusetts, attorney Tracy Craig, who sets up ... More

The nonprofit Omega Institute, two hours north of Manhattan in Rhinebeck, New York, bills itself as a "university of life," offering instruction in everything from yoga and meditation to tantric sex and flying trapeze. Twenty-three thousand people come to the bucolic 200-acre campus each year and enter an ... More