Just beyond the Hong Kong harbor lies Lamma Island, a small, quiet isle with small, hidden beaches and, during the time my husband and I visited, a remarkable butterfly population. After exploring the green surroundings, we sat down at a bar overlooking the water. What I remember most about that hot September day nearly six years ago is the cold bucket of San Miguel beer and the basket of squid—fried crispy brown and given a healthy coating of spices and salt. Sure, it was our first wedding anniversary, but we hadn’t gone to Hong Kong to gaze into each other’s eyes. We were there to eat.
Aside from the day trip to Lamma Island, we spent our time in Hong Kong scouring alley shops and market halls for unusual delicacies and freshly forged knives. We ate with the elite at the top of the Mandarin Oriental and with the masses at the Jumbo Floating Restaurant. Of course, we saw a museum or two and strolled through a few temples—that’s the best way to walk off dim sum before lunch. But our major mission, not so surprising for two lifers in the food industry, was researching foods for the menu at a new Minneapolis restaurant. What’s surprising is how many people outside the business consider eating the main focus of their vacations.
Some travelers enjoy making dining part of their adventure, wiling away an afternoon at a random street café just outside their chosen museum. Then there are those who see food as the best way to sample a culture and understand the land and people we are visiting. We make a point of seeking out the best crêpe truck in Paris and the reddest salt in Hawaii. Not content merely to visit a cheese shop, we want to see the mountain and the goats from whence the cheese came. I like to call us gastrotrippers.
No doubt, the expansion of the industries that have spawned celebrity chefs and twenty-four-hour food television is partly responsible for the rise in gastrotripping. It’s no longer enough to watch Anthony Bourdain get all the goodies on TV. We have passports, too, and refined palates. In fact, according to the International Culinary Tourism Association, a newish organization formed to help food and beverage producers connect with travel professionals, more than one in six Americans expresses a desire to travel with food as the focus.
Gastrotrips usually fall into two categories: themed tours and self-guided forays. The former involves cookbook authors, food writers, and critics as well as specialized tour companies. For thousands of dollars, you and twenty new acquaintances can spend a week, for example, in Parma, Italy, where you’ll explore a certified parmigiano-reggiano aging room, witness the curing process of a grand leg of prosciutto, and maybe even get a cooking lesson in the kitchen of a local winemaker. You’ll have a great time, you’ll connect with both the local food and the people who make it, and chances are, everything will be handled perfectly and safely. The drawback, as with any themed tour, is that these trips tend to have a rehearsed plasticity. It’s likely that by the time you purchase your olive oil and return to your bus, another group will already have arrived, eager for the next “show.”
That said, my personal choice is always the self-guided foray. By determining your own schedule and plotting your own destinations, you get more spontaneity and, I believe, a richer taste of the local color. In exchange for extending a hand, stuttering a foreign phrase, and humbly asking for opinions from people who grow, cook, and eat local foods, you are rewarded with the kinds of connections to both food and people that you can’t get with a tour group. If you’re lucky, you’ll be given directions to a lady who makes the best jamon croquetas or the name of the guy who owns the wasabi farm just outside of town. Over the years, I’ve found that it’s not the concierge who points you to the best Cuban sandwiches on Miami’s Calle Ocho, it’s the bellboy.
All you need for true gastrotripping is a little bravery and a little research. First and foremost, make sure that your accommodations have a kitchen. Vacation rentals across the globe that provide a fridge and a stove offer a good reason to actually buy those gorgeous foods from the market instead of just taking pictures. Second, whether it’s a trip to Seattle or Bangkok, go online or to the library and read the local papers from the last year for food news and events. Third, and most important, consult with your fellow eaters. For instance, the international online community at chowhound.com readily shares opinions, discoveries, and favorite haunts—from Cal Pep in Barcelona to the Shake Shack in New York City.
On a recent trip to Philadelphia, I was sitting in a little coffee shop, plotting out the afternoon’s adventures. Torn between Pat’s and Geno’s for the better Philly cheesesteak, I asked the student at the next table what he thought. He scrawled onto a napkin the location of a sandwich truck that turned out to be the holy grail of cheese-steaks: a perfect slice of Philly life that the tour buses would have driven right by.
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