As the editor in chief of Bon Appétit, Adam Rapoport travels the world eating food. For his magazine’s June/July issue, he headed west to Los Angeles, where he and a few of his team members rented an Airbnb to serve as the backdrop for a story about summer grilling.

Just before he left, we caught up with him in his office at Condé Nast’s headquarters inside One World Trade Center to hear about how he nerds out over packing, his in-flight routines, and of course, his favorite travel food. As it turns out, sometimes, the best meal is a club sandwich and a Coke ordered from room service.

“I should travel more work-wise, just to be up on what’s going on out there.”

I don’t travel for work excessively, but enough, if that makes sense. Like, enough that I enjoy it. We do a food festival in Vegas every April, we do other festivals in Portland and Chicago in September. The last few years I’ve been going to South by Southwest in March, and then there’s the occasional L.A. trip. I should travel more work-wise, just to be up on what’s going on out there. I know everyone says you can work remotely and all that, but the reality is it’s not the same as being in the office. If your job is to communicate with people and brainstorm and collaborate, you kind of have to do that in person. I have a wife and a 9-year-old son. When you have a kid, all of a sudden you’re on their schedule, so there’s always a spring break at the end of March and we’ve gone skiing out of Jackson Hole the last few years and that’s been fun. Last Christmas we went to Jamaica for ten days. In summer we have a little cabin out on the North Fork so we spend a lot of weekends out there, and then we always try to do some sort of August escape trip.

“It all comes down to shoes.”

For Los Angeles, I fly out Thursday afternoon and I’ll fly back Monday morning. I packed the Carry On, and I couldn’t even imagine bringing more than that. I’m kind of all carry on now. Can I nerd out and go deep on this? It all comes down to shoes. If you can minimize your shoe packing, you can travel light. So for this trip, I’ve got a pair of Nike Flyknit running shoes that are super lightweight and compress really nicely, so you kind of just jam those in there. And then I’m going to wear my basic white Common Projects sneakers onboard the plane, which I can wear with jeans, I can wear them with a suit—they’re kind of like that all purpose shoe, especially in LA where everyone just wears sneakers everywhere. So that way I’m only packing one pair of super lightweight shoes. And then you’re just packing clothes, and if it’s not winter time then you can just basically fold a bunch of stuff and really compress it down and get it in there. And then maybe I’ll bring a backpack onboard that I’ll put my book and magazines in and all that sort of stuff.

“A lot of guys are very uniform oriented; we like to know what we’re going to wear and then we can just have variations on that.”

So right now – this is a little nerdy – I’m basically all navy everything. Literally I think every item of clothing with the exception of my swim suit is navy, and I think all of it is cotton, so it’s all like everything goes with everything. It’s all packable and if it’s a little wrinkled it doesn’t matter, from the T-shirts to the button-down shirts. Tomorrow for the plane I’ll wear this cotton suit from UNIS, that fashion label down on Elizabeth Street, with a T-shirt. And then in there I’ve probably got four more T-shirts, a couple Engineered Garments and Schnaydermans button-down shirts, a Dorman jacket, and a couple pairs of shorts (also navy). A lot of guys are very uniform oriented; we like to know what we’re going to wear and then we just have variations on that. And we always laughed about this when I worked at GQ, so often when we do go shopping, we end up buying a different version of something we already own. We just never get out of that lane, which I’m not endorsing, I’m just merely saying it’s how things often are.

“The other way of doing it is when you’re packing, to pack explicitly in outfits.”

So that’s one strategy, but the other way of doing it is to pack explicitly in outfits, like I’m going to wear this Thursday night for dinner, this Friday night, this Saturday night, which makes sense if you’re going to a place like L.A. or some other city, Chicago or wherever. It doesn’t necessarily make sense if you go to Jamaica, for instance, and then you just end up wearing the same two T-shirts and bathing suit the entire time and you’re like wow, I didn‘t even get to 70 percent of the things I packed. And that happens a lot in those sort of beachy vacations. You just settle into your three most favorite comfortable things and ignore everything else, and that’s how you know it’s a good trip.

“There’s something indulgent about going to Hudson News and spending six dollars on the new copy of Golf Digest.”

I have the worst attention span ever since having this job and being on my iPhone all day every day, I’ve recently just finally now been able to get in the groove reading. So I have Michael Chabon’s new novel Moonglow. The last book I read I actually read on my phone. I read Powerhouse: The Untold Story of Hollywood’s Creative Artists Agency‎, that oral history of CAA. It’s a 700-page book and I read the entire thing on my phone, which is convenient because it’s always where you are, but it’s also just really lame that you’re staring at your phone. Even when you’re “reading” you’re still staring at your phone and that was a little depressing. With print, it kind of feels like you’re taking a break. At the airport I always buy whatever the latest issue of Golf Digest is because I like to golf and that’s my kind of travel magazine. Like, I’m on a plane, reading about playing golf, and I’m like, ‘ooh, I might go play golf, maybe’. It is a Condé Nast title and I could get it for free right here in the building, but there’s something indulgent about going to Hudson News and spending six dollars on the new copy. That and a pack of gum and a bottle of water or whatever. Rituals are nice.

“You stay in the room, order a club sandwich and a Coke, and watch a movie.”

Room service breakfast is important. I like a big pot of coffee for two even though it’s just me, traveling for work. I always like hot whole milk on the side because I want my coffee to stay really hot. Then what I also love, let’s say you’re in Paris or Rome or some nonsense and you’ve been there for five days, you’ve been traveling all about, it’s so nice on the sixth day to say, like, ‘you know what? I’m not going out tonight.’ You stay in the room, order a club sandwich and a Coke and watch a movie, and that’s like the best thing in the world. Club sandwich, fries, Coca-Cola, and all of a sudden you’re transported back to your comfortable place. That makes me real happy.

“We’d always make sure to get to the airport a couple hours early at Newark and go to Gallagher’s Steakhouse and have a proper sit down dinner.”

When I was at GQ I’d go to Europe twice a year for fashion shows, and Michael Hainey, the deputy editor, and I, would always fly to Milan together. We’d always make sure to get to Newark Airport a couple hours early and go to Gallagher’s Steakhouse and have a proper sit down dinner before you get on the plane, although I wouldn’t eat anything that heavy, I’d get like a baked potato with some fixings and a salad and a vodka soda or two. So by the time I got on the plane I was full, I was a little bit buzzed, and I was like ready to just pass out, because you want to get enough sleep as possible once you’re on the plane. You don’t want to be the guy who’s ordering the full meal and Port wine and everything, because the next thing you know there’s three hours left before you land.

“I’m not going to watch the Academy Award winners on the plane.”

I’ll always watch whatever Ryan Reynolds romcom there is on the plane. Or The Fast and the Furious, like four, five, six, or seven. I don’t want to watch a good movie if I’m on a plane. I want to cry at something really sappy, or watch a Will Ferrell comedy. You always want to have the excuse, “I was on a plane, what else was I going to do?” I’m not going to watch the Academy Award winners on the plane. Once I was coming back from South by Southwest and I sat next to Jake Gyllenhaal randomly, and he pressured me into watching Spotlight instead of Fast and the Furious 7 because he was like, “Well, I don’t know. If it were me I’d pick the better film.” And I was like, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.”  He was like, “I like good movies so I’d probably watch Spotlight,” and I was like, “Oh, yeah, me too. I’m going to watch Spotlight.” Damn it! But then when I went to London a couple weeks later and I watched Fast and the Furious—they had it at the hotel and it was awesome. Spotlight was great, but no one was driving from one skyscraper to another in a car 100 stories above the desert in Spotlight.

“Why can’t we just go back to the Saint Cecilia and hang out in the courtyard and have drinks?”

I think the Hotel Saint Cecilia in Austin, Texas is just awesome. I stayed there at South by Southwest last year—we were out, and we were talking like “oh, should we go to this place, should we go to that place?” And I was like, “Why can’t we just go back to the Saint Cecilia and hang out in the courtyard and have drinks?” It’s just so cozy and welcoming and you’re just in a groove as soon as you get there—you literally don’t want to leave. I know it’s a cliché, but it’s always nice to go in the Chateau Marmont in L.A. I haven’t stayed at the Chiltern Firehouse in London, but I had drinks there a few times. That bar is amazing, it’s an insanely beautiful place. My wife and I spent our wedding night at The Carlyle here in New York and classics are classic for a reason—it’s kind of hard to fault The Carlyle.

Adam Rapoport travels with the Carry On in Green.