Mark Bittman - Food Lovers Guide to the World: Experience the Great Global Cuisines

I suppose I was already plotting my getaway even when I was a kid. Sprawled on the floor of my suburban California bedroom with a copy of the latest National Geographic magazine, I would disappear for hours into the photographs I saw between its glossy pages. The images that always held me captive the longest, though, werent of exotic landscapes or archaeological digs. They were of people in distant places doing that most simple of things: eating.

Theres one photo I remember particularly well. It showed a village in rural India, a woman in a turquoise sari using a stick to stoke a sparking fire, a blackened pot hanging over it. I remember closely inspecting the mysterious ochre-colored curry inside the pot, the meal she was preparing, enchanted. This place seemed so foreign but I wanted to be there, smelling that fire, hearing it crackle, eating what I thought must be the most unimaginably delicious, exotic food. The photo was a doorway into another world, a world far removed from the pot roast and frozen dinners that I grew up eating.

At 19, I had my first real opportunity to travel to a place like the ones Id fantasised about since I was a kid. I was in college; it was 1982. One afternoon, Tanya, a fellow student who came from Indonesia, asked rather matter of factly, Why dont you visit my family in Jakarta sometime? Within days, I booked a ticket. Within weeks, I was staying in Tanyas familys home.

AUSTIN BUSH :: LONELY PLANET IMAGES

Then, as now, Jakarta was about as overwhelming as a place can be for a newcomer: crowded, hot, a cacophony of smells and sounds, none of them familiar or particularly friendly. My first few weeks were spent in a kind of sweaty stupor. One day, though, Tanyas mother, Ann, held a selamatan, a traditional Javanese feast, as a benefit for a charity organization she was involved in. Its our version of a potluck, Tanya told me. A parade of women soon arrived in silk sarongs with foods theyd prepared for the occasion. I counted 32 dishes in all. My jaw dropped. There were glistening coconut milk curries, pickled vegetables tinted yellow with fresh turmeric, whole grilled fish topped with lemon basil, sticky-rice sweets in every colour of the rainbow and thats just what I saw on the first table. A woman in orange batik spotted me.

Tell me, do you know any of these foods? she asked.

Over the course of the next few minutes she took it upon herself to act as guide, steering me toward different dishes a beef rendang, meltingly tender and scattered with finely shredded lime leaves, from West Sumatra; Javanese opor ayam, a chicken curry fragrant with cinnamon and cilantro filling in my mental map of Indonesia with distinct flavours and aromas. Of a dish from the Spice Islands, of tuna braised with tomatoes and whole spices, she said, The locals use cloves and nutmeg in everything. I began to tease out the layers of spice, chilli, lime leaf, and lemongrass in the dishes I was eating, and to grasp how a few simple, fresh foods like pineapple, cucumber, palm sugar, and peanuts can come together to make something that awakens your palate. Id found a way to understand and to love Indonesia.

In the years since that trip Ive travelled to more places than I can count in hopes of seeking out similarly revelatory meals. Ive eaten rustic char kuey teow (wok-fried noodles with cockles and shrimp) at night markets in Malaysia. Ive sampled thick, chewy huaraches (foot-long, handmade tortillas) covered with searing hot arbl chilli salsa and a tangle of sauted cactus at street stalls in Mexico City. Ive gorged on thalis of a dozen different dishes, including lentil dhals and salty pickles, in Kerala, India. For me, there is no better way to understand a place to literally get it inside you than by eating its food. Through food, I always find my way.

James Oseland is the editor-in-chief of Saveur magazine.

ALEX LINGHORN :: GETTYIMAGES

When we travel we discover a place its people, land and culture through its food. We bring back not just mouthwatering memories but inspiration. Mark Bittman explains.

T here is a Japanese place in midtown Manhattan, of the kind we used to call a greasy spoon, whose name I barely know. I go there monthly at least, and I send friends there as well. Not everyone: just people who I think will appreciate the funky, playful, non-sushi side of Japanese food for the most part, these happen to be people whove been to Japan. And, for the most part, they love it. Afterwards, theyll call me and say, It was amazing! We were the only non-Japanese people in the place! Everyone was speaking Japanese! The food was unlike anything else! It was just like being in Tokyo!

Actually, no. Its not. Im not a Tokyo expert, but I can tell you that as authentic as the representations of foreign food have become in our native cities, the experience isnt the same. A bistro outside of France, a pho stand in a country other than Vietnam, a trattoria that isnt in Italy, a taco shack even 100 miles from Mexico without taking anything away from any of those places and, really, the food itself can be just as good as it is in its home the experience is different.

Thats because food, of course, is only one of several keys to a fantastic restaurant experience in an unfamiliar place. What veteran traveller doesnt remember stumbling on an eatery that wasnt recommended by a friend (or a guidebook, for that matter), a discovery thats somehow owned by ourselves that is, a real discovery? We all know that in those instances the food isnt even the most important thing; it becomes a representation, an integral and essential part of so much else, of an experience that cannot possibly be duplicated by eating at the most authentic Turkish, Moroccan or Argentinian place in your home city. Three examples:

On the way back from an early morning run in a village (I never knew its name) near Soc Trang in the Mekong Delta, I came across a pho cart. Id been eating pho daily for a week (and I never stop to eat when Im in a post-run situation), but something about this cart the aroma, the look, the older woman serving the hot broth was alluring. I sat with my early-morning comrades and enjoyed that pho more than any other.

Wandering on foot in Istanbul, lost not hopelessly but seriously I found myself quite befuddled, and recognised that I was beyond hungry. I stopped at the next restaurant I saw, a steam table joint, the type of place Id never choose at home, and chose a soupy stew of overcooked rice, carrots, onions, and peas. Sounds abominable, right? Since then, I make it myself, all the time. In fact its one of my favourite comfort foods.

In East Berlin, on a snowy, blustery day, walking through oddly grey neighbourhoods at a time after reunification but before gentrification, I was in quest of something real, although I didnt quite know what that was. Without guidance (without a clue, really), I plunged down a few steps into an old bar and ordered the only dish offered with sauerkraut Schweinshaxe, or pork shank (or knuckle) and hunkered down with a couple of beers and a crew of new friends.