Culinary travel is more than just restaurants.
While most culinary travelers will experience a destination’s food at a dining establishment, a culinary trip isn’t only about going to restaurants from the moment you wake up in the morning until your head hits the pillow at night. Besides restaurants, a culinary traveler’s agenda may also include:
- Food markets, farm markets, farm stands.
- Tours of artisanal farms, wineries, dairies.
- Tours of commercial kitchens, food-related factory tours.
- Food-focused specialty shops, ranging from gourmet shops to cookbook stores.
- Lectures or demonstrations conducted by a local chef.
- Organized food tours, or do-it-yourself food tours, such as following a wine, a beer trail, or a food-related trail.
- Cooking classes or schools.
- Food fairs, festivals and other special events.
A culinary trip can be entirely devoted to food and drink -- but it doesn’t have to be.
You can devise an entire foodie itinerary, or choose to devote anywhere from a whole day to just an hour to pursuits of the palate. For example, if you’ve got a free day on your trip to San Francisco, include a day trip to Napa Valley for wine tasting. A free morning in Hong Kong? Work in a dim sum cooking class at the Intercontinental Hong Kong in Kowloon. Bar hopping in New York City? Make it a point to stop in for a 2 a.m. kielbasa omelet with a side of potato pancakes at Veselka, a Ukrainian restaurant in the East Village.You can be a culinary travel generalist or a specialist.
One of the best ways to get to know the culture of a place is by experiencing its cuisine, which is the unique result of its climate, agriculture, relative wealth, and history. But not every culinary traveler is interested in a destination’s entire food scene. Some focus their itineraries exclusively on a particular beverage. There’s always wine and beer, but what about whiskey? Or coffee? Others are laser-focused on a particular category of food -- cheese or candy, for example. Or your focus may be a particular style of cooking. Perhaps it’s barbeque that gets you packing your bags. How to decide on your focus as a culinary traveler? Follow your own food passions.You can choose your own tolerance for culinary adventure.
Just as it’s important to know what your passions are, it’s also good to know your limits. The fact is, different cultures have their own definition of what food is and what it isn’t. One person’s dinner is another’s pet, or pest. You could be served cuy, which is guinea pig, in Peru, or cuchama, which are fried green caterpillars, in Mexico. So while there’s lots of room in culinary travel to be adventurous, try new things, and expand your horizons, don’t feel pressured to test your gag reflex. There’s almost nowhere that you’ll go where you can’t find an entry-level way into a cuisine so you can experience the food culture without getting nauseous. When you’re in Iceland, for example, you may know for a fact that hákarl -- shark meat that rots while buried in sand for up to 12 weeks -- isn’t finding its way onto your plate any time soon. But plokkfiskur -- a mild white fish and potato dish -- might be more to your liking; as might skyr, a dense Icelandic yogurt.Culinary travel can fit into any budget.
Sure, top restaurants serving the haughtiest haute cuisine are going to run you a pretty penny. Many travelers seek out the trendiest restaurants in town so they can dine on a celebrity chef’s meal while watching the beautiful people do the same. But that’s not the only way to have a culinary trip. In fact, some of the least expensive options in a given place are the most authentic, and will give you the best stories to tell once you get home. Street food -- food prepared in a mobile kitchen -- hardly ever costs more than a few dollars. It’s often a delicious and affordable way to get to know how locals eat. If you venture outside of tourist areas and sample a few popular local establishments, you’ll find that not only are they more affordable, but they get and keep their reputation for a reason: they serve good food.And although some gourmands will shudder, if you’re traveling abroad, it’s interesting to visit an outpost of an international chain, to compare what you see on the menu to what’s available at home. Yes, even McDonald’s tailors its menus to local palates. Indian chef Monica Bhide, author of the acclaimed cookbook Modern Spice, tells her friends visiting India to be sure to stop by McDonald’s to try their McAloo Tikki, a delicately-spiced potato patty served on a hamburger bun. It doesn’t have to be high-falutin’ to fit on to even the most discerning culinary travel itinerary.
