Swan Ouster Bar and it’s pretend gruffness way, and so-so seafood way over rated.
Forget about your cholesterol levels, how is your carbon footprint?
Sounds like you shouldn't have gone. Don't ever do that again!
1
i agree that in this time and age, it may be better for the NYT and other global publications to give voice to local food critics and have them reserve a highbrow spot (and more casual local favorite) and send in their reviews versus having food/travel critics fly thousands of miles. the local foodies can possibly give more insight/background to their culture as they are truly locavores.
2
I wish the picture from Medina/Fez with the people working in those vats had some caption that explained what they were doing? Best part of the article...
@Soccer mom
They are tanners, and the vats hold dyes of all colours.
But the stench of rotten meat is unbearable... Approach with a lavender-soaked handerkief around your nose! Worth the trip anyway, Fez is a magnificent city.
Those vats are dyes for dyeing leather goods.
How wonderful for you. Traveling the world, eating well. What grueling work and arduous schedule! Thank you so much for sharing
2
Such mixed feelings...I do love to eat new things when I travel, and learn the most and get the most pleasure from local cuisines...but...carbon footprint...I don't know...
1
Translated: I too have "eaten around the globe" and find that one of my favorite global delicacies is in Queensland, Australia. During my recent visit there I enjoyed this dish several times. It is kangaroo pouch lining with the fetal joey intact, sauteed in shep sourced butter. That dish, topped with mint jelly (like lamb chops), is amazingly tender and delicious and, because of the culling of kangaroos due to overpopulation, very inexpensive. Another favorite, enjoyed only in Tasmania, is boiled platypus beak and tail. It is very expensive due to the relative scarcity of that strange animal. Emu and Cassowary egg dishes are delicious, too.
Live local, eat global.
2
Wow. What a waste, of time, of money, of emissions (all those flights), and finally of valuable newspaper real estate to write up this nonsensical article. Here's the thing; who really cares? I don't, do you?
13
She goes to Naples and describes the locals as "chattering in Italian"....... I guess she expected them to speak Aussie English which. of all the accents in the English speaking world, is by far the worse on the ears. Listening to them chatter is like having my teeth drilled.
3
Respectfully, this is humblebragging at its worst. No reason to publish this story, it sheds light on nothing.
17
Disgusted by this self-pitying article. I have lived and worked around the world. You learn the language, best you can, and you ask the people who live there. They never let you down. Big Surprise!
Best meals you could not even imagine. Not in places favored by magazines by people like this idiot who just "dropped in" for a day to write a review.
Boy, do I miss Anthony Bourdain....at least he kept it real.
12
A story of excess: food, money, plane travel. Rodell sounds like she was miserable most of the time. Less is more.
10
This collection of bland, uninspiring collection of impressions is what happens when you send an Aussie around the world to comment on food. A lost cause.
7
@Orpheus Bund
Really, you could not have said it any better. This is a country that has a very small population and great natural resources, a country that has a history of prejudice and discrimination against non-WASPs that matches the U.S. , but without any of the contributions to civilization. Yes, the beaches are beautiful, the natural resources abundant, and yes they do have some great universities, but they are really crude uncouth people.
3
This is lame. Anthony did an excellent job on this. Just stream his shows and you will learn valuable lessons about the centrality of food in all cultures.
7
Having lived in Morocco, I know exactly where the author took her photo from.
The memory?
Being given mint leaves to hold under my nose, while touring the tanning factory below...
4
This article, . . . in my dreams.
Golly. Can’t enjoy the food, the city, the travel. And the whole shebang resting on the shoulders of a single eater? What’s the point? A magazine award no one will read nor care about? Let Michelin send it’s many judges out into the land every year. This one-woman ordeal doesn’t inspire and by the time I ever get to Bolivia I’ll find what’s fresh and good without leaning on a reviewer’s subjective, exhausted opinion. Sorry Besha, but I think you wasted 4 months and a lot of jet fuel.
6
You don't need to travel the world to get the same feeling. Just go to Singapore for one week and try to eat all the things you want to eat. Hawker stalls, food courts, Italian, Cantonese... pretty soon your body rebels. It can't handle what your mind wants. Humans weren't designed for such excess.
8
“But the thing I have always loved about classic restaurant criticism is how it allows readers to measure their own proclivities against the strengths and flaws and tastes of a tangible person.“
With respect — and recognizing that no one offered to pay me to do this assignment — I’m not sure proclivities was the word the writer wanted there. It doesn’t make sense. And tangible? Hmm.
7
The families "gobbling" pizza in a restaurant in Naples were "chattering in Italian?" How strange. And how wide-eyed and parochial an observation to make.
3
So, a lot of planes and some fever. Who would have guessed?
4
I loved eating out with my wife and friends. For me, a meal cannot be truly enjoyed absent good company with whom one can share the experience. Unfortunately, my wonderful wife died about five years ago. Since then I have had many opportunities to eat in excellent restaurants alone. Such meals are sterile affairs absent a large segment of their full potential. I find common meals in taco bars or at other’s houses with friends and family to be far richer experiences.
13
On the surface, this assignment sounds so enviable. But speeding through cities and towns, eating constantly, does not appeal to me at all. Give me one region and no more than three weeks to explore (I get homesick by 18 days). That’s my ideal travel itinerary. And the food? Every few days I will eat almost nothing, in order to remember how to enjoy eating.
14
Such are the arduous sacrifices to eat across the board out of your comfort zone.
Bacteria alive and well in our guts rebel at foreign invasion.
Once got amoebas in Colombia and really did not get over it for years.
Commentary here really good.
Be brave, go out there and keep looking for incredible food or inspiration for recipes.
5
Last year, my wife and I, vacationing without our kids for the first time since they were born, went to San Sebastián, Spain for a week on a gastronomic tour. We made reservations at 4 of the city’s most vaunted fine dining restaurants. Because of our travel schedule, our reservations were back to back.
We learned the hard way that being a professional restaurant critic must be physically brutal. The first night, we happily worked our way through a long, multi course meal. We made the mistake of eating lunch the following day, and just barely made it through the second extravaganza. The next day, we couldn’t eat anything through the day, and when we arrived for dinner #3, we had to let the waiter know that we wouldn’t be able to eat each course and not to take it personally. The following morning, bloated and sick, we cancelled our reservation for dinner #4 and didn’t eat a bite for the next 36 hours.
I have the most profound admiration for Ms. Rodell. How she did this for four months is beyond my imagination to understand. I look forward to reading her reviews, with a deep sense of gratitude that it wasn’t me tasked with this job.
25
@ Shiv New York
I wonder, if your wife and you would not have been better off by ordering fish dishes and/or tapas, instead of the full-course meals.
Better luck next time!
1
I love to eat. I like to travel. This schedule sounds too stressful to enjoy either. Maybe it is just me....
14
@gratis It isn't just you. For normal people it makes sense to pick a place or two and focus on it.
1
I love Ms. Rodell's reporting, but my tablet and laptop blovk the text of the Food Section articles a few seconds after opening them.
A journey over six continents? This must have included Antarctica too, where there is no indigenous cuisine (yet?).
A long survey of world cuisines should have also included the societies whose food is taboo in the West, e.g., cannibals. If such were not covered by Ms. Rodell on this tour, better luck next time. :-))
5
I love that sick with 104 fever then on a plane the next day part. I’m sure all the other passengers were equally delighted. People can be so thoughtless, to put it generously.
42
@Matthew, I think that a virus may be killed at a fever of 104 degrees. The fever is the body’s way of getting rid of it. So she may not have been contagious by the time she flew, but she was certainly reckless with her own health.
But a hospital stay for a fever? Really? I‘ve had a 104 degree fever and didn’t go to the doctor, much less a hospital. There’s an awful lot of drama in Ms. Rodell’s account, methinks.
2
104 fever on an adult is serious. The fact that you didn’t understand that when you were ill could have put your health at real risk.
4
@Passion for Peaches
"I think that a virus may be killed at a fever of 104 degrees. The fever is the body’s way of getting rid of it. "
Um, no.
Please sir, may I have some more? More stories about the meals please. This article ended too soon...
Will this journey be chronicled in a book perhaps?
9
This sounds hideous. Not the restaurants or locations but the actual effort, logistics and pain it took to accomplish this project. Food is both necessity and pleasure but this author's journey sounds like nothing more than an agonizing marathon. Oh, I'm also sure the folks on that flight you took with the 104-degree fever are ever-so-grateful you undertook this hellish adventure as well.
42
The comment by the nurse who said she wanted the writer's job stood out to me in this article. I find it astounding that certain people - especially ones who often work in more scientific fields - find it completely acceptable to ask a writer or someone else working in the arts how they can get their job. To me, the assumption is that anyone can write so it's just a matter of knowing where to apply.
I wonder how the nurse would like it if someone came up to her and said I want you job. Ms. Rodell earned her job, fair and square. Back off and let her and all the other professional writers around the world do their jobs. And if someone wants to be a professional writer, go to college, study English literature, read a lot and write even more. The same is true for a nurse or any other profession. Experience and education matters. Writers are no different.
12
@KR I think its more of a statement of jealousy than an actual threat. Like being a writer (or any other profession) is so much fun they'd like to have the same job.
21
@KR, it’s called making conversation, LR. Take a breath and chill.
3
We need to reduce our impact on the environment. The project described in this article sounds like a great place to start. The author's assignment is of little value to anyone; the author did not get to enjoy all the privileges of travel due to the demands of the assignment; and the cost of the assignment in dollars and pollution is absurd.
72
@Eilonwy While I do understand you comment about the environmental impact of the author's trip, I do think her assignment is of value to the people who read the magazines the author works for.
And as far as the cost of the trip, I feel that's up to the magazine to decide how best to spend its money. Thank you.
20
in the top pic - of a place the author presumably enjoyed more than the fancy alternative - I can't see whether the bowl of white lumps contains skinless almonds or whole garlic cloves.
I love my garlic with many foods - and am prolly gonna get me some tonight with some grilled Taiwanese sausage - on a stick interspersed with slices of raw garlic - yowza !
Now I'm remembering - last time we sat down in a Spanish restaurant and had garlic prawns - soaking in max fried garlic oil - that was memorable !
But I'm wondering - if it IS raw garlic in the top pic - what ?San Sebastian food - in like a tapas bar - do they eat with raw garlic ?
2
The top pic is pastries from Hong Kong. Those small white things are folded sugared flower petals, or a sugar simulation of such.
6
@Frank
My best guess is a bowl of oyster crackers on the counter at Swan Oyster Depot in the fourth picture. The resemblance to garlic cloves is striking.
Old fashioned neighborhood oyster bars in New Orleans usually serve cellophane wrapped Saltine crackers along with the fixings (lemon wedge, horseradish, hot sauce and ketchup)