How to Taste the Best Kind of Delicious
When how to taste, not what to taste, led my travel, a whole new world emerged
graphic by author
I wasn’t even home a month from an epic trip with friends to Portugal, Morocco and Spain when I decided to head out solo to Salzburg and Vienna over the Fourth of July holiday in 2018.
The years before COVID were a season of my life defined by shoehorning travel into every nook and cranny on my calendar. I was ravenous to see the world any way I could.
While I would like to say it was a twist of romantic fate, a more pragmatic truth inspired how I came to visit Austria by way of Brussels: price. The only way I could afford to make the last-minute trip work for my travel budget was to book a ten-hour layover through the Belgian capital.
The logic seemed simple. I really wanted to go to Salzburg and Vienna. And the more I thought about it, the more I really wanted to sneak a peek at Brussels, too. And so feeling accommodatingly adventurous, I rolled the dice.
The itinerary sounded like a win-win. But no proposition involving an extended layover to explore outside the airport has ever tempted me since. And not because it failed. Remarkably, I had pulled it off as a novice world traveler without a glitch. But some thirty countries later, my experience has taught me that I had little, if anything, to do with it all playing out according to my plan.
For one, Mother Nature had served up a gorgeous, sunny day. It rains almost fifty percent of the year in Brussels with the rain spread out evenly across the four seasons. So right out of the gate, I won a pretty important coin toss.
The travel gods had landed my plane from Chicago on time, cleared my way through customs and security not once but twice and paved the way for smooth commutes from and back to Brussels Airport. I don’t play blackjack, but I feel like this must be the equivalent of starting with a seven and hitting four times.
Brussels, in turn, was the consummate host. There was the aforementioned sunshine and an old town that was easy and pleasant to explore with Belgian landmarks and culinary treasures around every corner. There was also strategically placed shopping, the evidence of which still hangs in my closet today.
Town Hall at the Grand Place in Old Town Brussels
Truth be told, if I were going to run that same extended-layover play again, I would do it in Brussels. It’s a fabulously charming city and the food alone is worth the stop. Belgium reminds me of that band, the one that makes you stop and say, “Oh wait, they did that song too?!”
Belgium’s list of gastronomic achievements is as distinguished as it is delicious: chocolate, waffles, Speculoos, beer, frites (crispy, golden fries) and moules-frites (mussels with crispy, golden fries).
It all sounded like a lot to tick off in under ten hours, but I arrived with mind, body, gut and soul online and ready for the challenge. Even though I’d be moving behind a wrecked circadian rhythm and pumping my body full of heavy carbs and sugars, the reward was evident. I’d see a new city, visit a new country and take in some delicious food. All while en route to my original destination, Austria.
I cracked open the memory vault to reappraise this whirlwind of a field trip for what it was. It was only my second solo, self-led trip ever. It was pre-COVID. And I had yet to discover and turn to Taste as my compass. I was working too much, traveling for either consumption or escape and moving with almost no sense of continuity, meaning or intention.
And yet, with the exception of a wandering eye toward the occasional lovely local boutique, the entire agenda had been overseen by my taste buds. While it would become quite clear Taste hadn’t been leading the way, judging from the likes of the very first stop, it was gently influencing how I moved in Brussels. And perhaps, most importantly, it was determining how years later I would come to interpret that movement around Brussels.
As is usually the case when retrospect meets travel reflection, all was not as it seemed.
I vividly remember my first stop in Brussels. However, when I check it against my Google Map green flags, I’m the deepest shade of mortified there can be. Once the shock wears off, I have no choice but to belly laugh out loud.
When I was given one place and one chance in Brussels’ Old Town to eat an authentic Belgian waffle, I preordained the fast-food chain Los Churros and Waffle as not just the spot, but the first place I beelined to when I got off the plane in this beautiful city.
I have no words.
I especially have no words since, as we’ve established, I wasn’t in any bit of a hurry that morning. To twist the knife in further, Los Churros and Waffle has an underwhelming four-star Google rating. So it’s not like I can hide today behind the fact it was a cheap and fast hidden gem where all the cool locals went. It was just cheap and fast.
Like my research apparently.
And now? I’m hungrier than ever for a real Belgian waffle.
If this baffling decision is any consolation to me, it tells me that Taste, my compass, is a good sport and a good mentor. It stood by, watching in what must have been aghast horror, as I waited in line, yes waited in line, for a mass-produced “fast-food” waffle.
It tells me, too, I had then, just as I still have now, a lot left to learn about doing a place and its food and culture right.
I’m so very sorry, Brussels.
Before continuing on down memory lane, I’m tempted to research where Amanda, now the Untethered Traveler, would have actually gone, but I’m worried those few clicks on the keyboard will almost certainly end in yet another last-minute booking to or through this fine city.
Then I realize that’s exactly where Taste has been taking me. Where would I start today based on everything I know and love if I had another chance at those ten hours?
In fairness to my thirty-nine-year-old self, a few minutes of web browsing reveals that Belgian waffle shops really are a mixed bag in Old Town Brussels. There are the easy-to-spot tourist traps and then there are the tourist traps dressed up in fancier but fraying frocks.
But if I were making the same ten-hour field trip today?
I would insist on stopping somewhere cozy, quaint and charming. I’d want to sit down at a proper eatery that focused on craft, not assembly line. On pride, not profiteering. And I’d want said Belgian waffle to be served with a side of bubbles or a really good flat white with almond milk. If it’s not asking too much, too, I hope that the sun is shining just as it was that Thursday morning in 2018.
Wrong righted.
The rest of my 2018 choices through Brussels were a mixed bag at best. I ended the day just as I had started it – at another four-star tourist trap. This time over a Belgian beer with an unremarkable sleeve of Belgian fries.
Belgian fries and beer in Brussels [photo credit: author]
I was stumped at first. My upcoming travels to Salzburg and Vienna had been so thoughtfully curated and planned down to the last detail. But here, it seemed a completely different person was calling the shots. How had I so royally missed the mark in Brussels and gotten it right in Austria?
But had I? No sooner have I made that distinction than something catches my attention about both trips.
The reason I kept missing the mark again and again in Brussels was that I kept tracking down food to try instead of setting my target on how to Taste.
Just like I was cramming as many places as I could visit in that window before COVID, I was treating what I ate when I traveled like I was shopping down a grocery list.
Worst of all, I was overlooking all the crucial ingredients that went into every meal that mattered.
And I had done it in Austria and later that year in Copenhagen, too. The ten-hour layover in Brussels had only exacerbated it, making it that much easier to see clearly today.
I don’t have an answer for why, after COVID, this stopped or if it’s even related to a time-out from travel. But I do know my relationship with Taste changed once I stopped orienting my itineraries around what I should eat. The more I introduced my palate to the stories, passion and purpose on the plate, the more Taste led my travel and a whole new world emerged.
And my oh my, if it wasn’t the best kind of delicious.
Follow the unplanned moments that make travel matter.
Read Collisions, a weekly Encounter Series by The Untethered Traveler.
