With Ino

Hi, I'm Ino. Niagara Falls is one of the most visited places in North America, and the food situation in the immediate tourist zone reflects that. Prices are high, quality is unreliable, and the restaurants near the falls exist primarily to capture people who haven't thought too far ahead about where to eat. If you're staying near the falls and plan to eat every meal within walking distance of the water, you will spend a lot and enjoy it less than you should. The smarter move — particularly if you're arriving by car — is to eat well before you get there. Niagara-on-the-Lake, about 25 minutes north of Niagara Falls along the Niagara Parkway, is one of the best dining areas in Ontario. It is also the heart of the Niagara wine region, and the restaurants attached to the wineries here operate at a level that has nothing to do with tourist convenience. This is where we stopped, and the meal we had at Peller Estates was better than anything we ate for the rest of the Niag...

Hi, I'm Ino. On the drive toward Niagara Falls, the highway passes through a stretch of Ontario where the landscape gradually shifts — flat farmland giving way to gently rolling terrain, and roadside signs pointing toward wineries. Niagara-on-the-Lake sits at the northern end of the Niagara Peninsula, sheltered between Lake Ontario and the Niagara Escarpment, and the combination of moderate temperatures and mineral-rich soil makes it one of the best wine regions in Canada. It is also home to the winery that most people outside Canada have heard of first: Inniskillin. If you've been on a Korean Air flight in the last decade and browsed the duty-free catalog, you know the name. The tall, narrow bottle with the gold label. The icewine. I had seen it on dozens of flights before ever setting foot in Canada, and now, with Niagara Falls visible in the distance, I turned off the highway to finally see where it comes from. The Building, and the Birds on the Wall The first thing ...

Hi, I'm Ino. After dinner at the Bavarian Inn in Frankenmuth, we crossed the border into Canada and drove east through Ontario toward Niagara Falls. Long-distance road trips have a particular kind of fatigue that builds slowly — not the sudden exhaustion of a short night, but a cumulative heaviness in the shoulders and lower back that accumulates over hours of sitting behind a wheel. Somewhere on the 401, with Niagara still a couple of hours away, that fatigue had arrived. What I wanted was hot Korean food. Not a gas station sandwich. Not a drive-through. Something with actual heat in the broth and actual chew in the rice cakes. I opened the map app and started searching. That's when I noticed a city called London on the route. London, Ontario London, Ontario is not a small town. It has a population of about 422,000 — Canada's 11th largest metropolitan area — and sits at the confluence of the Thames River and North Thames River in southwestern Ontario, roughly 20...

Hi, I'm Ino. After hours inside Bronner's , we walked back out into the August heat and drove a few minutes to the center of Frankenmuth. The Christmas store is on the southern edge of town. The heart of the place — the main street, the river, the covered bridge — is a short drive north. We were hungry, and dinner was already decided before we arrived. Frankenmuth, Michigan's Little Bavaria Frankenmuth was founded in 1845 by a group of Lutheran missionaries from Franconia, a region in Bavaria, Germany. They came to Michigan to work with the Ojibwe people and built their community in the German style they knew from home — half-timbered buildings, steep gabled roofs, flower boxes on the windowsills. The town kept that identity through the generations, and by the mid-20th century had leaned into it as a deliberate attraction. Today, Frankenmuth has a year-round population of about 5,000, but draws roughly three million visitors annually. It is one of Michigan's most-...