When traveling or eating in a new place, neither experiment too much nor not at all

[Stinky The Clown]

If you do, you may end up sick in bed or ignorant.

I'd rather risk the illness than the ignorance.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

1. Sometimes you don't have the choice -

I was warned, the first time I went to Peru, very specifically - don't drink the water and don't eat anything you can't peel. I was young, but I wasn't stupid. I followed the instructions carefully, and that meant I ended up eating beautifully barbecued chunks of marinated beef that I thought were some kind of sirloin, but turned out to be cow hearts, anticuchos, and it was fabulous. I learned about marinated fish, loving the escabeche de corbina that was served so elegantly in the small dining room of the Hotel Simon Bolivar. I eschewed salads, but discovered chirimoya and palta and choclo.

I drank beer, because it was good and because you didn't need ice - it was chilled. And I even drank from the bottle when I could, not trusting that the glasses might not have been properly dried.

That's how careful I was.

I had been warned that because the viaduct system in Lima pre-dated Christ, there were microbes in the water supply that defied description, but there was a particular kind of dysentery that struck people sixty-seven days after they arrived in Peru. Sixty-seven days.

I laughed.

On my sixty-eighth day there, it hit. It still remains the singularly most disgusting illness I've ever had, the most shocking because it hit in a matter of feeling fine at 7 pm and being on my way to the clinico at 8 pm. To this day, I have no idea how long I was there or how long I was sick.

So, yeah, it's fun to explore the foods, and, what the hell - no matter how careful you are, something will get you. So you might as well go for it.

And I still fix a really great anticucho when I get a hankering for it ................

[Stinky The Clown]

2. You left the ignorance.

That's a good thing!

[pengillian101]

3. If you do, you may end up sick in bed or ignorant.

Or hungry!

Years ago while visiting a very small non-tourista Mexican village, our group went to a little restaurant for lunch. While one of us could actually read the menu and offered to translate it to the rest of us, I said no thanks. I'll just wing it and take my chances.

"Fruita" apparently is just a wiggly little bowl of jello. At least our waitress graciously didn't laugh out loud in my face, like my family did.

Ha - I was imagining a beautiful fruit plate :-)

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

4. I think it's kinda sad how all of America is reduced to Applebees, Olive Gardens, IHOPs, etc.

And that when a lot of people travel that is the only thing they will seek out. We always try to look for the local restaurant, but so many are being squeezed out by chains.

We have a particular soft spot for the Jersey Diner type of restaurant which can also be found in Connecticut.

[hippywife]

5. I agree.

I would much rather savor the local flavors. When I used to travel for business, my clients would take me to some really great local places. If I had someone higher up with me and we initiated the visit, it was usually Ruth's Chris. Not a bad restaurant by any means, but again, the same every where you go.

I did have a VP who had a soft spot for the local dives, tho. And we'd manage to hit them once in awhile.

:hi:

[pengillian101]

8. Oh, this is a fun reminiscening thread.

In my past life, I handled the executives' travel, food and etc. And also the company parties.

Our travel agent knew who all the go-to places. And she took me to them quite often, to sample the wares.

That was a fun part of that job. :hi:

[hippywife]

9. Yeah, past lives and all that. LOL

I really loved it at the time, although the travel was getting to be a bit tiring. But I had great clients who also became friends and love the challenge of the job.

When I got married, I decided I didn't want to be upwardly mobile anymore and settled in to country life.

Always good to see you, gilli! :hug:

[Retrograde]

11. I avoid chain restaurants when I travel

(and as much as I can here - although I'll make an exception for local ones with only a few branches in the immediate area). Occasionally I'll run into a place that's -to put it charitably - not very good, but most are many steps up from the bland homogeneity. What's the point in being somewhere else if you're going to do the same old, same old?

(We found a great lunch place in Milan by the simple expedient of tracing the crowd of business-dressed take-away eaters back to its source - what turned out to be a somewhat famous panzerotti shop off the main square. Good and cheap eats!)

[troubleinwinter]

6. I did eat the raw barnacles.

They weren't delicious, but I didn't get sick, and I can now say I have had raw barnacles, and needn't have them again.

[Warpy]

7. I love street food

and let my nose pick out what to eat. I always eat cooked food and drink bottled water when I'm in places where you can get sick from uncooked produce and tap water.

Sometimes the equipment looks a little dodgy, but I've never gotten sick from street food.

[troubleinwinter]

10. I traveled to China five years ago with a dear friend...

who is white American, but speaks fluent Mandarin.

He is gay, and I pointed out that because we are same middle age, people would take us to be married. He did not want to be unfairly mistaken as straight and came back a bit later and said he had a solution: "I will introduce you as 'mei-mei'!!" (meaning sister).

As if the people there didn't love him enough for speaking their language, they thought he was absolutely wonderful for taking his poor, dumb old sister on a trip.

We made friends with the doorman of our small hotel (friend and he are still in touch 5 years later). We asked him where HE liked to eat (not for a recommendation, but where HE ate). A little hole-in-the-wall nearby. Ohhhh... I can still smell the smells!!!! Inside, there was a HUGE gigantic cauldron of spiced thick broth that likely had not been dumped in 40 or 50 years over coal fire that never is allowed to go out. Whole fish wrapped in open woven reed mats, closed with a skewer, were simmered in it. We each had one (magic), and I asked him to translate some of the menu for other items as he'd done before. He said that it was hard to do, as they had such things as 'Happy Octopus Testicle' and 'Duck Head with Cook'. We ordered some mystery stuff, which was all wonderfully good.

At a next (formica) table were two Mongolian men and a Mongolian woman. All three had a rollickingly enjoyable happy dinner with a quart of beer and a quart of local distilled rice 'fire-water' EACH, while smoking non-filtered cigarettes DURING dinner between bites as they ate.

We went to gay bars in Beijing with a Chinese friend. Who knew?! I'm not gay, but it sure was FUN!!!

Boy, what I wouldn't give for one of those fish in the heavy, spiced 50 year old broth.

[Tesha]

12. ohhhh green with envy...

but I loved to hear about it.. thanks so much - do you write - you have a gift for imagery.

[Lorax]

13. I travel just to eat.

I have finally begun to admit that I travel just for the opportunity to eat new and different things. Meeting people and exploring cultures is up there too, but eating is tops for me. Whatever that says about me, I've made my peace with it.

We always ask the bus driver, taxi driver, etc., where THEY eat. We've had some of our best meals that way.