I have a best buddy in South Africa named Anne who is a restaurant critic and food writer of note. When I visit her there and when she visits me in California, we go on what we call our Thelma and Louise road trips.
We are not quite the Thelma and Louise of the eponymous movie. We don't drive a teal Thunderbird convertible. Neither of us packs a pistol. I'll be Louise for the purpose of this piece and Anne, who likes a leisurely pace and will add hours to the journey to avoid traffic, is Thelma. We always play music. Often loud. While neither of us is a waitress (as Louise was in the movie), both of us like to travel, we both write, and we both like adventures that involve eating delicious food.
The first time Anne came to stay, I pulled out all stops to create a seriously extensive travel itinerary. She was going to get to see every spot in the San Francisco Bay Area worth seeing, and then some.
Well, you'd have thought I was trying to force viper venom down her throat. "Please do not show me any sight, or any view that is not between one good place to eat and the next," she told me, sounding as firm as an early season watermelon.
What can I say? I had forgotten to take into account that Anne is a serious culinary traveler. As such, she wants culinary getaways.
I adapted our plans, of course, and made new ones. And when you think about it, what offers more scope than setting up a journey with a focus on good tastes?
The Choc-Nut Sundae Road Trip
When my daughter was young and we went on road trips, we would set ourselves the task of finding the best choc-nut sundae. I wasn't thinking in terms of culinary journeys at the time, just of morsels of delightful decadence we could bond around as we discussed and devoured our latest treat and gave our rating. Looking back, though, they did make every trip a culinary getaway of sorts.
Our sundae trips go to show how planning an itinerary with a culinary flavor offers all kinds of delicious possibilities. You might zero in on anything from farmer's markets to fruit picking, to trying the local specialty of each country you alight in, to hiring a self-catering apartment when on vacation and cooking local. If your budget is large and your time your own, you could travel the world eating at top restaurants. If you have a weekend, book in at a B&B and make notching up delicious aromas and flavors your mission.
When Anne came that first time, I'd been working on a Napa–based wine magazine that featured chefs and restaurants. I knew good ones in San Francisco and around the Bay Area.
Getting her to them became my mission.
I didn't fare too well. I tracked down a famous chef near Monterey and went to his restaurant for lunch. The steak tartare had chunks of raw onion the size of and texture of fingernail clippings. (See a steak tartare recipe from Saveur magazine here.) Nothing else was any better. When we inquired, we were told our chef ran the kitchen at night. It was clear he had not trained his daytime lackeys.
Hint: If you make a round-up of chefs your culinary getaway focus, be sure they're in the kitchen.
Is the Restaurant Open?
A couple of days before she left, I thought I'd take Anne to the Slanted Door, then still in San Francisco's Mission District. We got oh so near — but the street was blocked by armed cops. There were sharp-shooters on top of buildings. "Terrorist attack," I thought. But no, Bill Clinton was in town, eating at our restaurant, and they weren't letting anyone else in.
Hint: If you create your culinary getaway with a restaurant theme, make sure it's open.
We had some success in Calistoga and Napa and Anne was as gracious as Edwardian china. She said she loved all the compromise eateries we tried. It is, after all, hard to get total duds in the Bay Area.
Thelma Returns
The next time Anne came, I was better prepared. We would do Napa and Sonoma via visits to cooking schools.
Hint: Cooking schools and cooking classes are another good culinary getaway focus.
We'd fill in the gaps with recommended restaurants.
Anne told me before she came that every year, she likes to eat in one of the world's top restaurants. UK- based Restaurant Magazine provides the go-to list for this. At the time, Thomas Keller's French Laundry restaurant in the Napa Valley was a two-time winner (in 2003 and 2004), so that's where we went — and had the funniest time indulging in Keller's famed nine-course tasting menu created to "excite your mind, satisfy your appetite and pique your curiosity."
Eat the Radish — and the Soil
See Restaurant Magazine's World's 50 Best Restaurants for 2011.
French Laundry fell off the list this year and the 2011 Top Spot goes to Noma. To eat there, your culinary getaway will be Copenhagen, Denmark. Examples from an online blog of what a diner ate at Noma include a small flower pot of radishes where you eat both the radish and the earth it is growing in, and calf cheek cooked at 72 degrees in straw for 24 hours.
Which perhaps begins to explain why culinary travel is one of the biggest tourism growth areas. Culinary getaways provide novel, versatile — and unpredictable — travel options.
Two recent Thelma and Louise trips in South Africa have taken my friend Anne and me to an eclectic mix of culinary getaways.
Late last year, we drove about three hours inland from Durban to Nambiti Plains Private Game Lodge. We went on game drives and saw lions mating, rhinos grazing, elephants browsing and buffalos as well as giraffes, zebras and others not listed among the Big Five. Anne — aka Thelma — was happy to see them, given that they were between one good meal and the next.
The next day we backtracked about half the distance to Qambathi Mountain Lodge, which also has game and which prides itself on its decor and fine dining.
Another Thelma and Louise trip took us on a drive of a couple of hours inland from Durban to a spa that has a resident traditional healer and — our focus — a bistro. Read On the road from Durban: Fourdoun has spa, bistro and resident sangoma.
On our most recent trip, we ate so many meals in the line of duty that we ran out of tummy space and got blurred taste buds. But that's another story for a future column.
Meanwhile, please enjoy the range of accompanying pictures, all taken on Thelma and Louise trips. Read Culinary Travel 101: Easy Recipes for Mouthwatering Journeys for more inspiration. And when you plan your next getaway, be sure to make it delicious.
