Eating - Around the World

"If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home. "
 James Michener

A food stall on the streets of Beijing

Today I would like to talk about food, in conjunction with travel. I have had some of my best meals while traveling. And some of my worst. When I am making plans to visit an area I have never been to, I love to research it first. Part of that research is looking at places to eat in the area. I usually make some notes of places to try. However, while actually traveling, I find that sometimes those places are not in the area of the city I am in, or are hard to find. So they don't always work out.

One of the easiest ways to find a good place to eat is to ask a local. They live there, and they eat there. So they know where the food is good. If you have a local guide who has given you a city tour, ask them. And then be open-minded. The food is going to be different from what you are used to. Recently we were in Split, Croatia. Our local guide told me of a restaurant he liked, and suggested I order the squid. Now I do order squid here in the states. It is calamari and it comes breaded, and is quite good. I ordered the squid in Split. It came in its own ink, and looked kind of like a pile of black rubber bands. I was hesitant, but I'm usually willing to try most anything. I have to say that I would put that meal at the top of my list for best meals. It was melt in your mouth, and very tasty.

On the other hand, I was in Paris many years ago, and was in the mood for something in the seafood category. The menu was in French, so I was studying it trying to figure out what everything was. A gentleman at the next table asked if he could help. I told him I was interested in some seafood and he made a suggestion. I ordered it. When it came I was a bit surprised. It was in a silver mountain of a dish, with different kinds of sea creatures sticking out of it. I was given an assortment of forks to pry the food out of the different shells. I ate quite a bit of it, some were tasty, some were not. However, for the next 2 days I spent more time in the bathroom then I did sightseeing. I was quite ill. That was not one of my better taste treats.



A plate of food - Singapore

Another favorite meal adventure took place in Singapore in 1979. I had read about the car parks. I don't think they actually have car parks today, although they have things that are similar. The car parks were actually places to park your car during the day while at work. At night the people drove their cars home and the car parks were taken over by food carts that were pulled in, and tables set up. The tables had numbers on them. You picked a table and then you went to the carts and ordered the food and had it sent to the table.

It was our first night in Singapore. My husband said he would stay at the table with our daughter and I could go order for us. He would pay when it was delivered. I thought, why not try a variety of things. I saw plates going by, and they were just small plates, so I figured if I ordered quite a few of those we could share and try everything. What I didn't know is that you had to specify the small plates. If you didn't then you automatically got large plates. I ordered about 15 plates of food, and then went back to the table. My husband was paying for food as it came, but we already had a table full of large plates of food. I was a little shocked. He asked why I had ordered so much, we could have fed a small army. I was a little embarrassed at the amount of food before us, and we didn't even make a dent in it. We left so much. But everything was good, and we did try a little bit of everything. We learned a lesson from that though, know what you are ordering.



Meal at farmhouse in hills of Croatia

One of the better meals that stands out in my mind is the teppanyaki meal in Japan. It was cooked on an iron grill in front of us, with about 10 courses, and they were all excellent. And another meal that was special was on a recent trip to Croatia. We had a meal at a farmhouse in the mountains.  It was a simple meal, and I'm not even sure what some of the foods were, but everything was simple and delicious. The pickled red cabbage was particularly good, something I didn't even know I would like, until I tried it.

Shrimp salad on Moorea

A few years ago we went to French Polynesia.  We visited the islands of Tahiti, Moorea and Bora Bora.  Meals were extremely expensive everywhere we went, and we were being as economical as possible, by doing breakfasts at our condo, and making sandwiches for lunches and taking them with us for the day.  But one of the days we were doing a car trip around the island of Moorea, and we decided we would do lunch on the trip, and then come back to the condo and have pizza, so our splurge for the day was at lunch time.  We found a cute little restaurant right on the beach and I ordered their shrimp salad.  It is a salad I wish I could order over and over again, it was definitly a favorite.  I took a picutre of it, it was quite beautiful, as well as tasty

Agreco Farms, Crete, Greece

Another meal that stands out for me, was on the island of Crete, Greece. We went to a farm in the hills where they grow everything they need. All of the meat was raised there, the grains for the bread, the fruit, the vegetables, even the wine was made there. They made their own feta cheese, and it was the best I ever tasted. They also made their own olive oil, and I purchased some of that and brought it home. We had about 10 courses there also, we learned not to eat too much of any course, to pace ourselves, because they kept bringing more food.  And we were sitting outside, under the grape vines, looking down on the city of Rethymnon and the bay. It was beautiful, and certainly tops the charts for the best meal while traveling.

Food from an open air market

The one thing to remember when looking for a place to eat, is to leave the hotel. You might get a decent meal at your hotel, but it will probably not be memorable. Hotel food is not even always representative of the area. Be adventurous. I admit that I have eaten food directly from vendors in marketplaces, which were maybe not the most hygienic, but the only time I actually got sick was from a high class restaurant in Paris. And some of that marketplace food was quite tasty, even if you aren't sure if it's hygienic, the local people eat there everyday.

Next time I will talk about chocolate and other specialties from around the world.