How Do You Eat While Traveling?
Hello and welcome back toWhat’s Cooking? , an open thread where you can share your brilliant thoughts, tips, recipes and opinions on all food related matters. This week I want to talk about travel and the role food plays in travel planning.
I think there are two types of travelers: those who eat so they have the energy to go to museums and the like, and those who plan their trips around food, snacks and cocktails. I bet you can guess who I am. Sure, I love a good piece of art or an impressive monument as much as the next traveler, but getting to know different places and cultures through food and drink is pretty much my favorite pastime. Naturally, I have a few questions for you.
- How do you plan your meals on vacation? Are you planning ahead and looking for reviews on the Internet? Or do you wait until you arrive, wander around and ask the locals? I usually pick one or two places to visit and leave the rest unplanned, so I can ask for advice and act impulsively.
- What is the most impressive food you have ever eaten abroad? I studied a semester in Italy when I was in college, and one day my friends and I ended up in a small town in Sicily. (We thought we were in Palermo, but we are not.) After questioning in our not-so-Italian language, we were told to have dinner at this restaurant a few doors from the bar we were hanging out at. menu, they somehow knew we were coming and they kept bringing course after course of the best seafood I’ve ever eaten and bottle after bottle of really good wine. All this somehow costs us 30 euros each.
- Which city is your favorite street food? I am absolutely in love with the Borough market in London where I had a very good duck and confit sandwich and a great sausage roll.
- What was the best cocktail you have ever tasted while traveling? America has the best cocktails, but the martini I drank at Satan’s Whiskers in London was technically perfect in every way. However, I was not very impressed with the famous American bar. (They put an ice cube in the drink compartment! It didn’t improve it!)
- Do you like museum cafes? Do you have a favorite? I love them! I don’t have a favorite, but there is something very pleasant in between wine exhibitions.
- Which city or country have your favorite glass of wine been poured? It was not just one glass, but I lived above a small wine shop when I was studying in Florence, and on the way to the apartment I took bottles. The old man who ran it sometimes gave me grapes. My favorite thing I have ever bought from him was a bottle of prosecco; My least favorite was the bottle of “fruit” grappa, which was very tough and had no noticeable fruity flavor.
- How do you feel about food on airplanes? Do you pack snacks or buy anything at the airport? I pack snacks and buy them from Trader Joe .
- What’s your favorite foreign snack? I’m obsessed with Tesco strawberry lace and Pringles shrimp cocktail. I also love these sweet peanut butter corn snacks I ate in Israel, but I can’t remember what they are called.
- Have you ever eaten fast food while in another country? I’ve always wanted to try KFC in Japan .
- Have any of you eaten at Noma or Sukiyabashi Jiro? I do not, and I do not know anyone who would do it. I just want to know if they are really as transcendental as they say.
As usual, feel free to comment or rant about anything even remotely related to food and drink abroad. After all, new food is at least half of the reason you should travel.