A few years ago I was sent by my editor at Cosmopolitan in South Africa, where I was working at the time, on what seemed like a dream assignment. The magazine had teamed up with a travel company and would offer readers a trip to experience “the best” of what Thailand, Hong Kong and Singapore had to offer. I was to go with the firm’s rep to preview the sights, the sounds, the smells — and the tastes — for an article. A complete flavor package, if you will. “It’s a tough life but someone has to do it,” I told my friends as they drooled with envy.
I thought of this when sitting down to write my first column for this, the first issue of publisher V. Sheree Williams’ luscious magazine about cuisine and travel. Talk about the perfect pairing. Indeed, we are what (and how) we eat (and drink). So could there be a more palatable way to get to know a country, a city, a culture — our friends and family — than through our taste buds and culinary traditions? I don’t think so.
Imagine my surprise — getting back to that dream assignment to the exotic East — when the man I was to travel with for 10 days told me, within minutes of our first meeting at the airport in Johannesburg: “I leave my stomach at home when I travel.” He added, literally purring with self-satisfaction, that he had previously lived for two years in Hong Kong, “and I never ate Chinese food.” I was aghast. Poor man. What opportunities lost.
It was after our third French restaurant dinner in a row, this one at Gaddi's, the famous haute cuisine restaurant at Hong Kong’s Peninsula hotel, that I put my foot down. I said I would not write a story unless we went local. Don’t get me wrong; I like French food. But we weren’t in France.
From then on we ate memorable Chinese in Hong Kong, mouthwatering Thai in Thailand — and I've made a point of returning to Singapore several times to eat from the famed outdoor food stalls. If I had space, I could wax lyrical on flavors and spices and stories of culture and heritage served up on each plate.
Or I could tell you about eating the best pizza of my life at a tiny restaurant in Venice, Italy; and how I learned about saffron in Spain; and my jellied eel lunch on a Sunday in London’s Petticoat Lane; and the Swiss cheese fondue devoured while a gigantic storm raged over Lake Lucerne. That last one, I was with my daughter on a three-month backpacking trip around Europe we did together when she was 13.
Then there are those authentic Mexican meals sold from taco trucks in Oakland, California; and the black bean hummus at Pican, the new upscale Southern cuisine restaurant, also in Oakland — proving you can have culinary travels close to home.
Think about five of the favorite foods you grew up eating. What were they? Do you still eat them? And your favorite meal that your gran or your mum cooked for you. What was it? In my case, my dad — a Polish immigrant to South Africa — was the chief cook and bottle washer. I believe I love to cook because he did it with such passion.
Exploring how other cultures eat, drink and make merry, while traveling and even in restaurants close to home, opens up a whole new world. Of course eating fresh and local and preserving traditions are politically correct right now. But I vote we do it just because it’s delicious.
