The Best Thing I Ever Ate

Does distance make the heart grow fonder? It may with some of these items. Their sheer unavailability combined with nostalgia makes them all the more irresistible. While I may restrict myself at home, when one is on vacation the house rules no longer apply. Traveling is a time to divulge and explore foods you would never even consider at home. I hope to pass this on Kayan, refusing to eat the local food is right up there with wanting everyone to speak English in my big book of travel faux pas.

Tikka Masala Mumbai, India

We are leaving for India in less than a month and all I can think about is the Paneer Tikka Masala at Leopold’s cafe in Bombay. I stay up at night thinking of this dish. There are times when I think I only mentioned going back to India so I can eat this again. I make this dish at home a couple times a month but it’s missing something, I need that Bombay sweat and grim to make a truly fantastic Tikka Masala .It is best accompanied with either garlic or butter naan and a super sized Kingfisher. We used to go to Leopold’s after a long day of shooting, faces still caked with Bollywood style make up, order our Tikka Masala and a tower of Kingfisher. When the Kingfisher came out we would cheer like the greedy and needy foreigners we were. These were much simpler times.

Fried Chicken and Plantains, Blue Fields, Nicaragua 

First off I am a vegetarian (well pescatarian) but when you have the opportunity to eat fried chicken and plantains for a street merchant at 3 am in some back street behind a country bar in Blue Fields Nicaragua with a friend you haven’t seen in 3 years that you only found by wandering the streets of said town by asking strangers “do you know Wilmer Hall” after making the whole trip on a whim, you simply do.

Egg Sandwich, Leogane Haiti

Man cannot live on bread alone. Man cannot also not live on rice and beans alone especially when that man or woman is working 9 plus hours a day in the heat. Beans and rice, rice and beans, sometimes twice a day but guaranteed at least once a day during the two weeks we spent digging through the rubble in Haiti. While I commend the cooks for their challenging position of having to feed a 100 + people on a limited budget sometimes rice and beans will  not cut it (particularly when 3 months pregnant) I had heard whispers between the bunks late at night before I had ever seen her. It seemed that every time I went to find her she had just left, until one magical day when she was there “Egg Sandwich Lady” at side of the road making her infamous egg sandwiches for a line of weary, sunburnt North Americans. Now this is one of those times where you need to throw words like “hygiene” and “sanitary” out the window and just enjoy the moment, a perfectly prepared egg sandwich on a dirty, dusty, forgotten road in Haiti.

Caipirinha, Brasil

Technically this isn’t a food. And I didn’t eat it as much as drink many of them. Many, many, many of them during my two weeks in Brasil. And sure they led me to say things I may not have normally said, or dance when I normally would not have danced, or cause me to claim me that I am 23 when I am clearly not 23, or break out into Spanish when I really don’t know much Spanish (this is probably very annoying when you are Brazilian and you speak Portuguese) However, I hold this drink at least partially responsible for the most fun, craziest, ridiculous, fuzzily recollected two weeks that I ever had.