Let’s see: the entire SE Asia, S Asia, Middle East, SW Europe, Mexico, S America. I really do think that there are plenty of culinary highlights in each of these regions and I don’t mind hopping on a plane and just stay in any one of the countries for months and eat.
My favorite place to eat when traveling is on the street or in small mom and pops. Nothing beat the ambiance of eating with a bunch of locals and perhaps literally sitting on the street. E.g. eating tamale in the square just outside the Universidad de Guanajuato. For me, even though I appreciate the nuances, execution, and quality, I don’t tend to remember much about meals eaten at the gastronomic temples. I’d love to wake up, go to the boats, and just grab different types of noodles for a month.
I also “did” the floating market in Thailand. The floating market in south Vietnam is something else, though, and amazing nonetheless.
Seems that these days many people do research obsessively before the trip and usually just eat at those reviewd places. I mostly just look up local/regional specialities and when I get there I ask people who run my lodging where to eat them. Otherwise I take my chances checking out busy places.
Where is your next food goal? Curiously, I’m not crazy about Mexican cuisine. Probably because I haven’t been there or tried the real thing yet.
Mine is Singapore and Malaysia. I’ve been there numerous times due to having my mom’s side of the family there. Obviously, I go to visit family but the food is a close second! When I was younger, I didn’t appreciate the food as much, but from my teens on, I realized how much I love the style of food there. I prefer to stay away from the high-end and western restaurants and gravitate towards the hole in the wall places, neighborhood joints, neighborhood hawker centers, etc. Singaporeans and Malaysians love to eat, and food is a big part f the lifestyle there. When I’m with my family, we’ll have breakfast, lunch, tea with snacks, dinner, and then late night supper. There are so many different ethnicity there, and the food reflects all that.
We just got back from a week in Savannah, Hilton Head and Sea Island, Georgia and I gotta say that this So. Cal gal loved every moment of the food scene…great craft beer too!
They love their low country food and had a crab boil on a island with a grits bar and Southern music…
From Pimento Cheese grits everywhere, this was a thing that we very rarely see on a menu here.
Loved the abundance of grouper and scallops, pecans, grits and pie.
St. Simon Island with one of the best cafes was the Palmer Village Café, that was outstanding!
I see that the Lodge at Sea Island was voted #1 in hotel resorts in 2015 and its part of the Cloister resort.
My niece was married at the Lodge a couple of months ago and I gotta say this property is so spectacular.
So different from our beauty of California and can’t wait to go back to the South Carolina/Georgia coastline.
The food at the resort is fantastic too.
We used to have an apt in Rio and still visit every year. We hang out with the locals almost always. It’s just the best. And once you get a block off the beaches it’s local. Few English speakers. And incentive to learn a little Portuguese
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Seems that these days many people do research obsessively before the trip and usually just eat at those reviewd places. I mostly just look up local/regional specialities and when I get there I ask people who run my lodging where to eat them. Otherwise I take my chances checking out busy places. [/quote]
I do both. I think there is value in having some knowledge of what’s good around an area, so that if there isn’t new discovery after one gets to the destination, there’s always the fallback for assurance of decent quality. A lot of times where sites like these fall short is the local mom-and-pop joints because there isn’t a lot of intel. For that, its always good to ask the locals. Need to ask the locals who care about food though.
My next travel is a long long way away, but hopefully somewhere in Asia. I don’t know how Mexican is like where you are. Food in Mexico is very broad. Sure they have great tacos there, but they also got a bunch of other dishes that seem to migrate out of the country less often.
Sounds like a successful food trip! Hope there are many more happy returns for you. I had to g o o g l e pimento cheese grits. Learnt something unfamiliar from your post. Thanks!
There’s no “Mexican” here (in north western Europe). Just add a few corn kernels and it becomes “Mexican”. It gives me an incentive to travel to Mexico one day for the real thing.
Hope you can make it to (S.E.) Asia, and I also want to go there again. If I were to go it would be hard to choose between Malaysia and Vietnam. (But if Vietnam abolishes their absurd “passport surrender” policy, and visa -aka cash cow- the choice would be easier for me)
Loved the food in Georgia and pimento cheese grits were on most menus and damn, they are so delicious!
Palmers Cafe in St. Simon island had a sublime dish of 4 large sea scallops, on a bed of pimento cheese grits, toasted pecans nestled with some greens in a pear vinaigrette that was one of the best things I have had in a long time…
