ABOUT SALT & WIND TRAVEL
Hello, Ciao, Hola, Aloha, Salut! We’re here to help you taste the world!
At Salt & Wind Travel we’ve spend the past 9 years on a mission to help food lovers like you dive deeper into some of the world’s top food and travel destinations such as California, Hawai’i, Italy, Mexico, and France. As food and travel lovers ourselves, we understand that desire to feel more connected to where food comes from and to experience it all for yourself first hand.
Here you’ll find inspiration for your next trip including over 1,000 professionally developed and tested recipes, travel tips from experts, travel guides, and where we can help you craft custom itinerary planning.
About Salt & Wind Travel
Why “Salt & Wind?” Because we’re all about food and travel and you need salt for food to taste its best and wind to get an airplane off the ground!
Founded by food and travel expert, Aida Mollenkamp in 2015, the company is based in California and helmed by Aida Mollenkamp and Kristen Kellogg.
After years of being asked for travel tips, vetted recipes, and itinerary ideas, we made it official. We know how frustrating it can be to to plan a trip and spend loads of money only to end up having a touristy experience so we’re here to solve for that.
Our deep expertise in a few locations — California, Mexico, Italy, France, and Spain — means our recommendations are quality. Our team of food and travel experts has years of experience traveling the world, living in the places where we work, and an extensive background in trustworthy, vetted content creation. In almost a decade, we’ve helped hundreds of guests travel deeper. Let us help you too!
Salt & Wind Travel Founders
Aida Mollenkamp, Founder and Editor-In-Chief
Aida is a food and travel expert, a cookbook author, a trained chef, a wine expert, a Food Network personality, and founder of the travel services company, Salt & Wind Travel. She has made her career in food travel media and hospitality and has crisscrossed the globe to search out the best food destinations.
Aida honed her love for hospitality by working at places as varied as a gourmet bistro in her hometown to California Pizza Kitchen and the Hotel Bel Air. After graduating from the Cornell Hotel School and Le Cordon Bleu Paris, she joined CHOW Magazine where she ran the test kitchen and was Food Editor.
Aida then moved to television, hosting the Food Network show, Ask Aida, FoodCrafters on the Cooking Channel, In The Pantry on Yahoo!, and the TasteMade series, Off Menu. Her cookbook, Keys To The Kitchen, is a go-to for home cooks who want to become more adventurous cooks.
Aida speaks four languages, has honed her wine expertise and passed the WSET level 2 exam in wines, and has lived across the United States as well as in France and Italy. A native Californian, Aida currently resides in Mammoth Lakes and is inspired by places that have the same creative spirit of the Golden State.
For more on Aida, visit aidamollenkamp.com or find her on Instagram
Kristen Kellogg, Partner and Creative Director
Kristen is the founder and creative director of Border Free Media, a creative agency and education platform, a certified health coach at Mapped Wellness, and a partner at Salt & Wind Travel.
As a filmmaker, digital storyteller, and travel expert Kristen has spent her career crafting creative content for her clients around the globe. Kristen is known for her work both behind the camera and on camera with clients including Hotel Tonight, Rosetta Stone, Visit California, and Visit Los Cabos.
Prior to her creative endeavors, Kristen earned a bachelor’s Degree in Communication Studies from San Jose State University. She lived on Nantucket where she learned the ins and outs of high-end hospitality while working in food and beverage operations.
Kristen has lived in California and Mexico and has traveled extensively through Hawai’i and Italy. She melds her love for adventure travel, food, and hospitality to bring a unique perspective to itinerary planning. Kristen is a certified Integrative Nutrition Health Coach, has passed her Level 1 Exam at the School of Applied Functional Medicine where she is working toward her Applied Functional Medicine for Coaching™ certification. This life experience means she is an expert at helping travel clients have a balanced trip that is interesting yet relaxing.
Kristen lived in Mexico City for five years and now splits her time between the United States and Todos Santos, Mexico. When she’s not on the road, Kristen finds inspiration by exploring the tastes and sights of her own backyard. Find Kristen on social at Instagram
Salt & Wind Travel Regular Contributors
Ligaya Malones, Hawai’i, Mexico, and California Contributor
Ligaya Malones writes about bright spots in food and travel from San Diego to abroad. Ligaya was raised in Hawai’i on the island of Kaua’i and now calls San Diego home. Her food and travel writing has appeared in publications such as Food52, Condé Nast Traveler, Lonely Planet, and Salt & Wind Travel. For Salt & Wind Travel, Ligaya writes travel tips and food stories about Hawai’i, Mexico, and California.
Rachel Vermiglio Smith, Italy Contributor & Travel Planner
Rachel is an Arizona-born, wanderer at heart who eventually settled down to live the pasta-eating dream in Florence, Italy. Since 2014, she has been working as an Italian culture decoder, writing articles and consulting on all things Italian. When not exploring new restaurants or geeking out over art history, she can be found strolling the Arno river with her bilingual California rescue dog, Stella.
Theresa Christine, Italy Contributor
Theresa is a travel writer based in Charlotte, North Carolina. She writes about lesser-known experiences or destinations, interesting locals doing extraordinary things, and design-centric places for publications like United Air’s Hemispheres, Meininger Hotels’ magazine, INSIDER, and more. She has a newsletter where she sends out unique stories from her travels, and you can find her tweeting at @itsmtheresac
Use Our Custom Travel Planning Services
You deserve to make the most of your vacation — our custom travel planning services help you focus on being in the moment. Be it custom food tours, exclusive restaurants reservations, hands-on cooking classes, or private wine tastings – if it’s related to food and travel, we’re here to help you make it happen. To get started, check out our full list of travel planning services!
Salt & Wind Travel Philosophy
Here at Salt & Wind we are dedicated to inspiring food lovers to taste the world. As a women-owned small business, we aim to support fellow independent, small business. And, while doing so, we work to promote sustainable food and travel, support small businesses, and help preserve cultural individuality.
Join Our Community
Become a part of the Salt & Wind community (aka Salt & Wind Society) by joining our free Facebook Group or signing up for our newsletter.
Contribute To Salt & Wind Travel
The online magazine, Salt & Wind, is built for and by a community of food and travel lovers. We’re always ISO amazing photographers, writers, and recipe developers. To pitch us, please review our Editorial Guidelines then reach out at edit [at] saltandwind [dot] com.
Brand Collaborations
From sponsored content to creative collaborations and IRL events, we work with brands in a variety of capacities. For our Media Kit or to discuss further, reach out to us at partnerships[at] saltandwind [dot] com.
Press & Media
The Salt & Wind Travel team has been featured on a variety of media outlets from television to magazines, including Brides, Conde Nast Traveler, Shape, Sunset Magazine, TripSavvy, and Well + Good. If you want to learn more, email us at travel [at] saltandwind [dot] com
Disclosure
The information presented on Salt & Wind Travel is for general information purposes only. While we attempt to keep information up to date and correct, we make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to any of the information, products, or services contained on the website for any purpose.