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Russian tennis player Anna Kournikova has sold her 6,630-square-foot home on Miami Beach’s exclusive guard-gated Sunset Island for $7.4 million. Lauren Schuker has details on The News Hub

Russian tennis player Anna Kournikova has sold her 6,630-square-foot home on Miami Beach’s exclusive guard-gated Sunset Island for $7.4 million.

Ms. Kournikova, who won Grand Slam doubles titles in Australia in 1999 and 2002, paid $5 million for the seven-bedroom waterfront home in 2000, the same year she placed in the top 10 of the Women’s Tennis Association rankings. Most recently, Ms. Kournikova appeared as a trainer on the television show “The Biggest Loser.”

The property has about 150 feet of frontage on the Intracoastal Waterway, as well as a large dock that can accommodate a boat. In addition to the house, the property includes a two-story guesthouse, covered entertaining area and a coral-rock pool deck that surrounds a pool and Jacuzzi.

The tennis champion, who has been in a relationship with pop star Enrique Iglesias for about a decade, first listed the ivy-covered Mediterranean-style house last May, asking $9.4 million.

Coldwell Banker’s “The Jills,” Jill Eber and Jill Hertzberg, represented both Ms. Kournikova and the buyer; Ms. Eber declined to identify the buyer but said he or she was from South America.

Nobu Matsuhisa Buys In Los Angeles for $4.9 Million

Celebrity chef and restaurateur Nobu Matsuhisa has purchased an apartment in Los Angeles for $4.9 million. It was not officially listed for sale.

The 3,446-square-foot furnished apartment is on the 30th floor of the Century building and includes a 252-square-foot terrace and a private elevator. With three bedrooms and 4½ bathrooms, the apartment, designed by Marmol Radziner, has views of the ocean and the Hollywood Hills. There are wide-plank wood floors, a master suite with two bathrooms and a large great room with a polished silver travertine fireplace.

The 42-story Century building, which was designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, has four acres of landscaped private gardens. Candy Spelling, the widow of TV producer Aaron Spelling, purchased the building’s two-story penthouse for $35 million in December 2010.

Mr. Matsuhisa, who is originally from Japan, owns a restaurant company that includes the high-end Asian-fusion chain Nobu, which has dozens of locations world-wide.

Mr. Matsuhisa purchased the apartment through a trust from Related Cos., the developer and manager of the Century.

Home on Kauai’s Anini Beach Hits the Market Asking $24 Million

A 9,000-square-foot home beachfront home on Kauai has gone on the market for $24 million. The seller is Bill Jurika, a San Francisco-based private investment banker. Lauren Schuker has details on The News Hub.

A beachfront home on Kauai has gone on the market for $24 million. The seller is Bill Jurika, a San Francisco-based private investment banker.

Mr. Jurika built the house with his wife, Michelle, and it was completed around 2005. The 9,000-square-foot home has four bedrooms and 6½ bathrooms and is on 1.3 acres, including 400 feet of beachfront along Anini beach. The Balinese-influenced home is built of concrete, wood-covered reinforced steel and coral stone imported from the Philippines, where Mr. Jurika grew up. The home has several covered verandas and Brazilian teak wood floors.

Mr. Jurika says he is selling partly because he and his wife have separated and are using it less than they used to. “It’s a dream home, you can’t replace it,” he says. “No matter what somebody paid me for it, it’s still going to be hard to leave it.”

Matt Beall of Hawaii Life Real Estate Brokers has the listing.

—Lauren A. E. Schuker and Candace Jackson—Email: privateproperties@wsj.com

A quirky and complex investment class called master limited partnerships has been one of the market’s best performers of late. The widely followed Alerian MLP index of 50 energy MLPs returned 14% in 2011, including dividends, versus 2.1% for the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index.

While MLPs can be risky, there is reason to believe they still hold appeal.

MLPs are partnerships that trade like stocks and pass their income directly to investors.

The yields, paid in the form of “distributions” rather than dividends, can be juicy. The Alerian index yields about 6%—triple that of the S&P 500 and about double what investors can get from 10-year, A-rated corporate bonds.

While the income from MLPs is taxable at rates up to 35%, investors often can defer taxes on the bulk of it. That is because MLPs distribute not only cash income but also paper write-offs for their asset depreciation. Investors pay current taxes only on the income that exceeds depreciation. The rest—often 80% or more of the total—serves to reduce the investor’s “cost basis,” and is taxed only when the investment is sold.

Regular dividends, by contrast, are taxed in the year they are received, currently at a top rate of 15%.

MLPs have their complications. Some, such as pipeline MLPs, can draw income from many different states. A wealthy investor with a portfolio of MLPs can end up having to fill out many extra forms.

Also, MLP positions held in retirement accounts can produce something called “unrelated business taxable income.” Large amounts of that can require investors to file additional tax returns and make extra payments.

There are fewer than 100 MLPs that trade on major exchanges, and together they have a stock-market value smaller than that of Exxon Mobil. Many operate in the stable “midstream” part of the energy business, merely collecting a toll for transporting and storing oil and gas. That typically is steadier than exploration or refining operations.

John Edwards, an analyst at investment bank Morgan Keegan, estimates that the amount that MLPs will pay to investors as income will rise 5% to 8% this year. With investors having snapped up many of the larger MLPs last year, he thinks the best opportunities lie in smaller players. Among them: EV Energy Partners, which yields 4.6%; Crosstex Energy, 7.6%; and Genesis Energy, 6.3%. He predicts that each of these three will offer double-digit total returns over the next 12 months.

Jerry Swank, founder of Swank Capital, an MLP investment firm, favors players in the natural-gas-liquids business. He likes Enterprise Products Partners, which yields 5.1%; Oneok (an MLP-owning corporation), 2.9%; and Targa Resources Partners, 6.1%. Even though natural-gas prices are slumping, drilling for gas also yields valuable liquids such as butane and propane. That keeps production high, says Mr. Swank.

MLPs come with risks. Because they often borrow money to pay for new projects, a sharp rise in interest rates could eat into their income.

The biggest threat might be a plunge in energy prices, which could lead to less demand for pipeline services. But as this column discussed a month ago, U.S. production is booming as new technologies unlock vast deposits of oil and gas trapped in porous shale, and oil prices remain strong.

There are pros and cons for investors looking for MLP exposure via mutual funds. The pros: Funds provide easy diversification without requiring extra paperwork come tax time, even in retirement accounts.

The cons vary by vehicle. Exchange-traded notes like JP Morgan Alerian MLP Index (annual expenses: 0.85%) use derivatives to mimic MLP performance. But investors must pay regular taxes on the income they receive, and because the notes are issued by financial firms, investors could lose if the issuer goes belly up.

Exchange-traded funds, such as Alerian MLP (also 0.85% in expenses), preserve the tax breaks on income, but must themselves pay corporate taxes—a drag on returns in good years. In 2011, while the underlying index returned 17%, the ETF returned 10%. (When the index falls, the ETF does better because its tax bill shrinks.)

Traditional mutual funds like Cushing MLP Premier and Steelpath MLP Income have upfront sales charges that can top 5%, on top of ongoing expenses. Kinder Morgan Management and Enbridge Energy Management are what is known as I-shares. They distribute shares rather than cash, so investors don’t get spendable income, but pay taxes only when they sell.

Sure, MLPs are high-maintenance, but for many investors they are worth the bother. If getting a tax-advantaged 6% in income were simple these days, the opportunity probably wouldn’t last for long.

—Jack Hough is a columnist at SmartMoney.com ref. Email: jack.hough@dowjones.com

By DENNIS NISHI

Growing up with military family members who regularly chatted about jets inspired Celeste Ward Gventer to study aeronautical engineering at Stanford University. But she ended up becoming a defense analyst, serving two stints in Iraq—one helping to build the Iraqi Ministry of Defense. She eventually became a deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Dept. of Defence before becoming a senior defense analyst at Rand Corp. in February. She’s now studying the effects of repeated deployments on soldiers. Writer Dennis Nishi spoke with Ms. Ward Gventer about her career. Edited excerpts follow.

Full name: Celeste Ward Gventer

Age: 38

Hometown: Albuquerque, N.M.

Current position: Senior defense analyst, Rand Corp.

Education: Bachelor’s in Political Science, Stanford University; Master’s of Public Policy, Harvard University Kennedy School of Government

Years in the industry: 13

How I got to here in 10 words or less: I knew what I wanted and worked towards those goals.

Q. Why did you change major to political science?

A. I took a course called technology and national security—because all the coolest airplanes were on the military side. I got hooked. It was interesting to think about the broader implications of technology and what it meant to global politics and to national security.

Q. How did you get your foot in the door in Washington?

A. After graduating, I took a job with a small consulting firm called DFI International in 1999. I ended up doing consulting for the Defense Department. Not long afterward, a friend who was the strategic-forces analyst at the Congressional Budget Office said he was going to move on. He told me I should take his job. I was this newly minted public-policy master. I thought he was crazy. [But] I got the job.

Q. What did you do there?

A. I provided nonpartisan analysis for the Congress on programs that dealt with United States nuclear forces and some non-proliferation issues. I [did] a cost estimate of the Bush administration missile-defense program in 2001. The deadline was very tight and there was going to be a big press conference on Sept. 10, 2001. We were trying to get everything right. Then the press conference got delayed. The next day nobody was interested in missile defense anymore.

Q. Do defense analysts typically have military backgrounds?

A. There are a number of analysts who are former officers. Many come from the academic world and have Ph.D.s. I fall under the category of policy wonks interested in the professional analysis and conduct of policy making.

Q. How did you end up in Iraq?

A. It’s not something that ever occurred to me until a friend called me in 2003. A friend said he was going to Iraq, and they needed to find people to build a ministry of defense. I realized it was a tremendous opportunity and a chance to be part of something important by taking what I’ve done and making it useful.

Q. Building an institution from scratch sounds daunting. Were you given any kind of guidance?

A. No. It was pretty open-ended. The original plan was much longer term. After the determination was later made that we would hand over power to the Iraqis by June of 2004, we were given six or seven months. We worked furiously so that we’d have something to hand over to them that would be functional. I did everything from recruit Iraqi employees to help design the organization and the training program with the national defense university.

Q. What led you to return?

A. I really wanted to go back because I thought 2006 would be a big year. I wanted to help. I interviewed with General [Peter] Chiarelli [commander of the multinational corps in Iraq]. He hired me as an aide… at the operational level.

I’d give him an analysis of what I thought was going on. Sometimes, I’d offer an alternative analysis. I did one piece about breaking up the ministry of the interior.

Q. Where did you go from there?

A. After getting back, I did consulting work in India until early 2007, when I got a call from a friend asking if I was up for being a deputy assistant secretary of defense. I thought it was a joke. [But] my name was in the mix for a position that had been created out of a reorganization. It was for “stability operations capability.” They provide policy input and advice on the capabilities necessary for stability operations and other irregular warfare. I tried to take what we learned in Iraq and translate that into what the military should look like in the future.

Q. Why did you leave that to go into the private sector?

A. Usually when the administration leaves, so do the politicos. I had been around the think-tank world and wanted to do some serious analysis. I had a lot of respect for Rand, so I applied and got a job there earlier this year.

Q. What are you working on now?

A. I’m leading a study on rapid-deployment tempo on soldiers to try to better understand what happens to soldiers and their families, units and the army with repeated deployments with short time at home. I’d been around a lot of soldiers, and my husband is one. It’s about real people, and I’m happy to have the opportunity to work on topics I care about.

Write to Dennis Nishi at cjeditor@dowjones.com

The pocket-size USB flash drive has become nearly ubiquitous in the PC world, for moving files among machines and for adding extra storage. But it can’t be used with most tablets because they lack standard USB ports.

A new kind of USB flash drive called AirStash works as usual with PCs and Macs, but it can also transfer and stream files to popular mobile devices without standard USB ports, such as iPads, Kindle Fires and other devices. WSJ’s Walt Mossberg explains how it works and its shortcomings.

Now, there’s a special, modified, pocket flash drive that works as usual with PCs and Macs, but can transfer and stream files to popular mobile devices without standard USB ports, such as Apple‘s iPad and iPhone, Amazon’s Kindle Fire and many other Android devices. Its secret: It has built-in Wi-Fi to beam the files to and from tablets and smartphones wirelessly. It can even stream files like videos to many devices simultaneously.

It’s called the AirStash and is made by a tiny company called Wearable Inc., and distributed by Maxell Corp. It’s available at Amazon.com and a few other retailers for $150 for an 8 gigabyte model, which can increase the storage capacity of a base iPad by 50%. An AirStash model with 16 gigabytes is $180.

The AirStash is a clever device that solves a genuine problem, though not without some issues. In my tests, it worked as advertised, without crashing or exhibiting bugs. But it’s pricey and has one big drawback: When a device is connected to the AirStash via Wi-Fi, it can’t be connected to the Internet. The company plans a fix for that as early as next month.

Walt Mossberg reviews a special flash drive that can transfer and stream files to popular mobile devices without standard USB ports.

The AirStash looks like other USB flash drives, except a bit wider. Its storage is provided by a removable SD memory card that pops into the bottom edge. You can substitute your own larger card. In fact, you can swap in the memory card from your camera and beam your photos.

Wearable Inc.

The AirStash drive with removable SD memory card

This product is aimed at the iPad and iPhone, and the company has a free app for those products that makes it easy to manage and view the files on the drive. But its wireless file transfers also work, via the Web browser, on non-Apple devices, even computers. And the company plans an Android version of the app.

A typical way to use the AirStash would be to first plug it into your computer like any flash drive and copy onto it photos, documents, videos, podcasts or songs. Then remove it from the computer and press a small button on the front of the AirStash that turns on its Wi-Fi network. Next, you connect your iPad to this network, launch the AirStash app and all the files on the drive show up.

From the app, you can view documents, play songs, watch videos, view photos or listen to podcasts. On a non-Apple device, there’s no special app, but you can still access the content on the drive. You just link up to the AirStash Wi-Fi network, launch your Web browser and go to airstash.net. A page appears with a list of the drive’s contents.

AirStash performed some feats I found impressive. In one test, I was able, from about 75 feet away, to flawlessly watch three movies stored on the AirStash at the same time on three devices. I had “Inception” playing on an iPad; “The King’s Speech” playing on a Kindle Fire; and “Star Trek” playing on a Dell laptop. I stress, none of these movies was stored on the devices—all were stored on the AirStash.

In another test, I was able to watch a movie on an iPad, play a song on an Android-based Motorola Droid and read a PDF file on a Mac, simultaneously. Once again, all these files were stored on an AirStash drive 75 feet away.

The AirStash can beam material to as many as eight devices at once, except for video, where the limit is three devices. It can beam the same video to three devices at the same time. A parent could use one AirStash to provide different videos to each of three kids during a drive in the car.

Wearable, the maker of the AirStash, boasts it works in both directions: You can also write files to the AirStash from a device like an iPad. Technically, this is true. For instance, from the AirStash app, you can export photos stored on an iPad or iPhone to the drive.

But several iPad apps for viewing or editing documents, which the company says work with AirStash, require a geeky setup process, and I couldn’t get them to send edited documents back to the drive.

There are some other limitations. For instance, on non-Apple devices, the Web interface is rudimentary, and on the Kindle Fire, music can’t be streamed from the AirStash.

Finally, unlike most other flash drives, the AirStash has a battery to power its Wi-Fi. The company claims up to seven hours of continuous battery life between charges, and while I didn’t do a formal test, the battery life seemed good to me. You can recharge the device either through a standard USB wall charger, like those that come with cellphones, or by plugging it into the USB port of a computer. In the latter case, the Wi-Fi capability can’t be used while charging.

If you’re pining for easier file transfer or expanded storage on your iPad, iPhone or other mobile device without a standard USB port, the AirStash might be the ticket, albeit an expensive one.

—Find Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos at the All Things Digital website,walt.allthingsd.com. Email mossberg@wsj.com.

By JEFFREY ZASLOW

Wall Street Journal columnist Jeffrey Zaslow’s latest book, “The Magic Room: A Story About the Love We Wish for Our Daughters,” is set at a bridal store in Fowler, Mich., (pop. 1,100) that has outfitted generations of brides since 1934.

A half-century ago, long before the word “bridezilla” was part of our lexicon, saleswomen at Becker’s Bridal had a secret language they used to cope with unpleasant brides.

If they liked a bride, they’d refer to her as “girlie.” They’d say, “Girlie, that gown looks beautiful on you!” If a bride was difficult, they’d call her “sweetheart.” That was a code between co-workers. “Would you help this sweetheart find a veil?” one saleswoman would say to another.

Roxanne M. Maitner

Meredith Maitner of Grand Rapids, Mich., tried on a gown at Becker’s Bridal.

Since 1934, more than 100,000 girlies and sweethearts have come to Becker’s to find their wedding gowns, and in their journeys there, they formed a kind of sisterhood. All of them are linked not just to the eras in which they got married, but also to each other and to the wedding culture today.

Brides and bridal gowns have always offered a measure of our longings and aspirations. Just 51% of American adults are now married—a record low—according to a report issued last month by the Pew Research Center. Pew also reports that 39% of Americans believe marriage is “becoming obsolete.” And yet, in the story of this old bridal shop in a rural, one-stoplight town, it’s easy to see why, despite everything, wedding gowns remain a symbol of hope.

For 78 years, Becker’s Bridal on Fowler’s tired Main Street has been run by an unbroken family chain—a great-grandmother, grandmother, mother and daughter. Thanks to the Beckers, Fowler claims to have more wedding dresses per capita than any U.S. municipality; there are 1,100 residents and 2,500 bridal gowns stocked at the store.

The store is housed in a century-old structure that was once a bank, and after brides select the dress they think is “the one,” they step inside what used to be the old bank vault. A 10-by-8-foot space with mirrors carrying a bride’s image into infinity, it’s called “The Magic Room,” and with good reason. Brides and their parents routinely melt into tears here.

Fowler is a community where everyone knows each other. A good number of residents work at nearby auto plants. Many of their sons and daughters now serve in the military. Becker’s is the largest business in Fowler, and for decades, residents have been accustomed to bands of roaming bridesmaids on Main Street.

Becker’s was founded by Eva Becker, described by her family as a short, stocky no-nonsense pioneering businesswoman who for decades oversaw employees and customers with a firm hand. Her first dresses were fastened with a complicated line of hook-and-eye closures. But on out-of-town buying trips in the late 1930s, she began seeing more dresses with zippers, and she embraced the concept.

In the 1930s and 1940s, it usually took a Becker’s bride an hour to find a dress. Eva had little patience for indecision. She’d offer three choices, maybe four, after which she’d say something like, “Well I think the first one looks best. Don’t you?” The bride’s mother would answer, “Yes, the first one was lovely, wasn’t it?” And the sale was set.

Eva died in 1975, and her son and daughter-in-law took over. Brides started showing up with photos torn from bridal magazines. The process of trying on dresses could stretch to three hours.

By the 1990s, long shopping excursions with loved ones and bridesmaids had become a tradition. Now the search often stretches for weeks. “They just don’t want the fun to be over. It can be wearying,” says 46-year-old Shelley Becker Mueller, Eva’s granddaughter.

Even after Shelley and her daughter Alyssa, 25, have logged hours helping a bride, there’s always the risk that she’ll turn to the Internet to buy the dress for $50 cheaper.

Shelley’s mother, Sharon Becker, says when she ran the store in the 1970s, sales were sealed without much angst. “Mothers and daughters didn’t argue the way they do today….Back then, a bride was just tickled to get a dress.”

Kelly Lynne Photography

Frank and Eva Becker were married in 1922. Eva founded the bridal store in 1934.

Eleanor Klein began working at Becker’s in 1935, at age 15, and stayed on the job for 72 years. Eva, the founder, was her aunt. In the early days, brides had no jobs and no money. Parents paid for the dresses and made the decisions. By the time Eleanor retired in 2007, brides were often paying for dresses themselves. “These days, the brides tell their parents what they want instead of vice versa,” says Ms. Klein, now 90.

When Becker’s opened in 1934, dresses were expected to be multifunctional, rather than one-time-only fashion statements. Women would dye or hem them for other important occasions.

After World War II, shoulder pads got bigger—and so did wedding budgets. In the 1950s, Elizabeth Taylor, starring in “Father of the Bride,” and Grace Kelly, marrying a prince, helped usher in fairy-tale weddings.

Department stores had 85% of the wedding-gown business nationwide in the 1950s, but Becker’s stayed afloat through word-of-mouth in small Michigan towns. In the 1960s, thousands of mom-and-pop bridal shops opened up in suburban strip malls. Because Becker’s had established itself so long ago, its customers remained loyal. The next big challenge came in the 1990s, when the David’s Bridal chain began growing, selling gowns starting at $99. As a result of this and other pressures, the number of U.S. bridal shops fell from a peak of about 8,000 in 1990 to less than 5,000, according to the Bridal Association of America. Becker’s held on. Last year, Becker’s sold 1,650 dresses. The store has $1.8 million in annual sales, with 85% of that revenue needed to cover merchandise and salaries.

Brides today say they’re calmed by the personal touch they receive in the store’s softly lighted Magic Room. When Meredith Maitner, a 39-year-old first-time bride, arrived at Becker’s in 2010, she’d previously stopped at a bridal chain, and it was not an easy visit for her. “I had to share a pedestal with a girl half my size and half my age,” she said.

The dresses at Becker’s are mostly modest numbers; current prices range from $680 to $2,600. The average bride in the U.S. now spends $1,289 on a dress, up 20% since 1999, according to the American Wedding Study conducted last year by Brides magazine. Shelley Becker credits the increase to TV bridal shows, which focus on upper-end gowns.

Becker’s brides are told that sales are final, given the alterations required. That explains why there’s a room—beyond the view of buoyant brides—dubbed “The Dress Cemetery.” It’s a sad, crowded place where dresses are piled up after engagements are broken. Few brides ever return to claim them. Most of the dresses remain there forever; Shelley feels selling a gown with a sad history would be bad luck for another bride.

Write to Jeffrey Zaslow at jeffrey.zaslow@wsj.com

By ERIC RIPERT

When I was a little kid, I liked airplane food. It wasn’t hard back then—the food was pretty good, because the airlines were putting some effort into it. I even liked the little trays, how everything fit together.

Today a lot of people complain that the food is lousy on airplanes, the food is lousy in airports. In general, that’s true. I travel all the time, and I see lots of stale, bad-tasting, unhealthy food. But with a lot of trial and error, I’ve also figured out ways to eat well on the road. There’s always time to eat in airports, because flights are always being delayed.

Let’s start with New York, where I live. In the Delta terminal at LaGuardia Airport there’s a restaurant called Crust, which serves wines by the glass and pretty good pizza—thin crust, well seasoned, good-quality ingredients. The place has a modern design and cool light fixtures. You feel like you could be outside instead of in an airport, and the staff move fast but they don’t rush you.

At JFK, the American Airlines terminal has Bobby Van’s Steakhouse. You can sit there, have a decent steak and watch people go by with their luggage. And the Delta terminal now has a lot of little food stands spread all over. You can finally have something flavorful and healthy, and eat it while you’re waiting or take it on the plane.

Le Bernardin chef Eric Ripert dishes on his favorite places to eat in airports around the world, Sara Clemence reports on Lunch Break.

Miami—now, Miami is pretty dysfunctional as an airport, in my experience. It’s where you have the most delays. But there’s a restaurant there, La Carreta, that is part of a local chain and is where all the stewards and pilots go. They do fantastic yucca fries, and it’s so classic Cuban Miami.

Chicago’s O’Hare is home to the Billy Goat Tavern, where they serve tasty burgers and a real breakfast—eggs, sausage, omelets. It’s only been around for about 12 years, but it feels old, like they built the terminal around it.

The place I eat in Washington, D.C., in Reagan National Airport, has one disadvantage: It’s before security. Still, I like to stop for a quick bite at Matsutake Sushi. You would normally worry about eating raw fish in an airport, but these guys do it well—and make it in front of you.

I really enjoy the Wolfgang Puck experience when I’m in Los Angeles. I admire how consistent they are—it’s really good, every time. My go-to dish is the pizza with smoked salmon and wasabi cream.

“In Singapore and Hong Kong, I go to the airport ahead of time just to eat. ”

I love stopping in Denver. On the way home from skiing, you always get delayed by snow, but there is a Mexican place called Cantina Grill that I enjoy. It’s a little bit of a dive, but they make their own guacamole. Maybe that’s why you see the pilots and flight attendants going there.

I have my favorites abroad, too. In London there’s Caviar House & Prunier. It’s nice to have something sophisticated like oysters before you get on a plane. Or you can indulge in gravlax, Champagne, vodka—they also have great Spanish ham. I guess I am a creature of habit; it helps me not to feel lost. So after Prunier I go shopping for Scotch, then I get on the plane and fall sleep.

In Singapore and Hong Kong, I go to the airport ahead of time just to eat. The food is very sophisticated in Hong Kong, and I always go back to the same place: Pak Loh Chiu Chow Restaurant. It’s tiny and modern, and serves traditional cuisine. You can even get Peking duck. Singapore’s Changi Airport goes on and on forever. On the lower level are 30 or 40 different small, small restaurants, each specializing in one thing—one does only chili crab, one does only pork cutlets. You can get 20 little tiny plates to share with friends.

When I was a kid, you went to the airport, got your ticket and went to the plane. Now flying is a big process. But I think airports are getting better, because people have realized that you have a captive audience—a bored captive audience. Everyone is getting delayed for mechanical problems, for traffic, whatever, and they need to be entertained. And fed.

—As told to Sara Clemence

Mr. Ripert is chef and co-owner of Le Bernardin in New York, the author of four cookbooks and host of the PBS television series “Avec Eric.”