Dana McMahan

Dana McMahan is saying goodbye to her weekly Courier Journal dining column

What do you do with a boring, beige, 45-square-foot kitchen in a studio apartment? Well, if you’ve just come home from Milan, where your favorite afternoon was spent soaking up the Wes Anderson-designed Bar Luce at the Fondazione Prada, you go all in on pink and green and make it the kind of place you could totally invite a famous filmmaker to ...

Known around the world for a particular fried fast food, Kentucky also conjures visions of bourbon flowing and gleaming horses nibbling lush bluegrass. And yes, those scenes are accurate—other than the grass not actually being blue.
But the curious traveler who peeks beyond the postcard images will find a state (technically a commonwealth, though there’s no actual difference between the two) overflowing with geologic wonders and epic outdoor recreation with more miles of running water than an...

The room wasn’t very promising at first. With no windows, bleak drop ceilings, (admittedly cheerful) pink painted wall paneling, muddy gray-brown vinyl floor tiles, and some ‘80s style niche shelving, it didn’t exactly beckon.

It’s one of those things that we’ve all absorbed for so long we just accept it as truth: Plants are good for our indoor air quality. You’ve heard it countless times, right? Maybe even said it yourself when you’re buying yet another ZZ plant (... or maybe that's just us!).
But hey, we can’t be faulted. This tidbit of conventional wisdom is so ingrained in our collective conscience, why would we doubt it? Well, as it turns out, science.

When I was a child, my parents had to bribe me to eat meat. An aspiring vegetarian in a meat-and-potatoes household, I earned a quarter each time I took a bite instead of hiding it under the mashed potatoes. Fast-forward a few decades and I am now a person who has just paid the equivalent of $20 for a single bite ...

And just like that, travel is back.
If you, like 33 million other people, are headed to Paris this year, I’d like to share some favorites with a twist ― the high-lo...

This is the story of a region built upon river trade, a lush swathe of land that turned out to be a dream for distilling a luxurious golden-brown spirit.

When I moved to Paris for three months, I brought my American experience with me — including my lifelong approach to kitchens that would need serious adjustment for my rental studio, which clocks in at 320 square meters.

Paris is a playground for brilliant designers who are infusing small, chic hotels with color, whimsy, and global flavors. These spaces instigate dreaming - maybe of your own home's redesign, maybe of the life that could be your...

When long-time writer, designer and entrepreneur, Dana McMahan fell in love with an overgrown Queen Anne Victorian home dubbed "Sleeping Beauty," she quickly added home renovator and fairy godmother to her resume. Her elegant designs paired with the cl...

There's a new spin on the Motor City—and it's on two wheels. Long synonymous with American auto manufacturing (and its demise), Detroit is now home now to a scrappy start-up determined to bring handmade American bikes to the world.

In hindsight, it was pretty absurd: Fly to Paris on a couple weeks’ notice with my chef friend, stay in a 30-square-meter (about 322-square-feet) apartment, and host back-to-back dinner parties for local influencers. What could possibly go wrong? As it turns out, aside from doing dishes for days, everything went right!

I've been househunting and have lost count of the number of listings I've seen promising income from short-term rentals.

“I'm having the most amazing dream that I'm in the most beautiful place on earth.”

I captioned a photo my husband had taken of me in the thousand-year-old medina of Marrakech, posted it to Instagram, closed my flip phone, and then my eyes.