Shack Life Quarterly started as a way to write down what we actually cook and where we'd actually go back to. The name comes from Theo's dad, who fantasised about a food-and-travel magazine he called "Shack Life Quarterly" long before either of us thought to make it public, and from a black book of family recipes her mum compiled into a cookbook for Christmas one year. The original Shack Life Quarterly blog was our attempt to give both a home.
Fifteen years and a lot of restaurants later, the recipes side hasn't changed much: if it's in the index, we've made it on a weeknight or for people we like: nothing aspirational, nothing we haven't cooked twice.
The travel side has. We used to write up a place the moment we got back, which meant most places never got written up at all. Now we rate everywhere we go in Carnet (our own app for logging places on the ground, verdict first), and the ones worth a proper write-up graduate here. Curated by us, not automatic: a place gets loved in Carnet, lands in a queue, and one of us decides if it's earned a page. That's also why you'll sometimes see a place with no photo yet: we'd rather publish the write-up and get it live for you as soon as we can. And let's be honest, sometimes we just forget to take photos!
Nothing here is sponsored. Enjoy.