New blogpost series

I decided to start a new weekly blogpost series, called Tuesday travel tip. The idea is that I will post a tip every Tuesday based on something I have learned when traveling. Let’s see how many tips I come up with, once I run out, I may have to think of another weekly series idea.

Tip 1: Eat the local food

One rule I try to live by while traveling is to try something local wherever I happen to be. In today’s modern global world, it is not always that easy to decipher what is actual local food. I tend not to be too puritan about this – if some variation of another country’s food has been present for ages in the country I am visiting, I feel it can be interpreted as local. For example, when visiting Amsterdam, we wanted to try the Indonesian Rijsttafel (rice-table) that in some way can be classified as quintessentially Dutch. The dish is a medley of small dishes from all over the Spice Islands, developed in the times of Dutch colonization in order to allow colonials to sample dishes from around Indonesia. Another example would be eating Italian food in the US; someone might argue its not local, but to me, Italian food has been around long enough to be seen as local, especially since there are many local variations that do not appear in Italy. I’m not saying that just because food from a certain country is available somewhere it is local, but some “foreign” food may be based on history.

In my opinion, the best way to find out more about the food culture in any country is to google. Good search phrases are “local food in xxx” or “traditional xxx foods”. Sometimes the search results, especially for traditional food, may suggest things that no longer are commonly eaten and, therefore can be hard to find. Some traditional foods may still be cooked in homes but not available in restaurants. On the other hand, some traditional foods may be very regional and not available in the city you are visiting. Nonetheless, I have never failed to find at least one local dish in any place I have visited.