Travel and the Radicalization of Taste
One bite changes everything. What following taste in radical motion led me toward
It’s been over a year since I fell into a rhythm of writing weekly reflections on the places travel has taken me. What started as timid recollection, more superficial and circumstantial at first than deep and penetrating, has taken me on an enriching and all-consuming journey of self-discovery.
Over the last twelve months, reflection’s well of revelation, specifically its depth and accessibility, has surprised and challenged me. At times, these revelations have felt truly monumental, like divine redirects over a miraculously just-cleared horizon. But more often than not they have felt contained and inevitable, comforting not consequential, like the next stepping stone on the path I’d already been moving on.
Some arrive soft and easy like a slow, soothing wave. They don’t confront, they sway.
Others strike suddenly and ferociously in an unapologetic, unmistakable burst of reappraisal and creativity. They confront mercilessly.
Then there are those revelations that slide into view more subtly and stealthily behind collisions with purpose and people. They require investment, interpretation and awareness. Facing them with anything less disarms and dissolves their meaning.
Travel and taste work best together as an inseparable dynamic duo. They each play the role of ultimate tour guide and all-knowing, wise teacher. Together, travel and taste unleash and refine our identities and sense of adventure. They expand our appetites for the new and unfamiliar. They recast our tolerance levels for discomfort and unpredictability.
Just like travel is a culmination of experiences had over destinations and days, so too is taste a journey of joyful discovery across space and time. As our mind, body, gut and soul develop and evolve, our tastes undoubtedly change even if we fail to admit or recognize they do.
In my own journey with taste, travel has been a surprisingly effective accelerant encouraging an ever so enlightening form of promiscuity. With travel as my companion, I went from always being willing to try in theory to actually indulging every whim of my palate whenever opportunity presented itself. This more engaged, proactive approach changed everything – what I ate, how I traveled and how I lived.
As I revisit a decisive intersection of travel and taste, I always go back to a single formative nudge. While there have been other significant turning points, this act of faith is the one that stands all the way out. I didn’t just gain a new favorite dish when I tried steak tartare in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. I let go of the fear and needless hesitation I had been clinging to that prevented me from experimenting with taste.
That bite of the apple, that one slippery acquiescence invariably gave me the confidence I needed to make even bolder choices, ones that had never been in or around my consideration set before: blood sausage, sweetbreads, foie gras, uni, anchovies on buttered toast.
Negronis, Vermut, Soju, Skin-Contact Wine, Txakoli
Egg Coffee in Vietnam…
Shakshuka in Tel Aviv...
Figs in Venice…
Black Squid Ink Risotto in Korcula, Croatia…
Morning Glory in Ho Chi Minh…
Smoked Herring in Helsinki…
The Pavlova of New Zealand, the salt bread of Seoul, the Potica cakes of Slovenia (I ate them all before I took pictures!)
Rosetta’s Rebanadas de Mantequilla in Mexico City…
Knafeh in the Old City Jerusalem…
A Cardamom Bun in Malmö, Sweden…
Pastel de Nata at Manteigaria in Lisbon…
Basque Cheesecake at San Sebastián’s La Viña…
Bánh cốm Bảo Minh in Vietnam…
Over the years, travel’s influence would accumulate slowly until it eventually became a most influential impetus for my palate’s seamless and willing radicalization. Because of travel, I had these expiring albeit incredible windows of access to makers and creators from around the world whose inspired stories stoked a sense of urgency and obligation to try and try again and again.
Beyond that still, for the first time ever, I was inclined to give up full control of what I ordered to culinary imaginations and visions that tasted anything but constrained, bland and formulaic. I trusted the process and embraced the delectable unknown.
It was as if every counter seat, small format kitchen, cozy gourmet dine-in wine shop, farm-to-table blackboard menu and reimagined flavor, chiseled purposefully away at the shapeless block I was until the palate I was meant to taste the world with emerged.
The first time I encountered Taste, as my compass, was in Orvieto, Italy at Trattoria Vinosus. There the gastronomic stars of travel aligned. All it took was a twist on a classic, Cacio e Pepe with Pear, and the magic of Orvieto itself to make the delicious guidance of Taste, my compass, impossible to ignore. Once I really, truly felt it, I could suddenly comprehend to the fullest extent just how much Taste had moved and always meant to me.
Just the day before I had chosen to dine at Roscioli Salumeria’s counter in Rome. That lunch, too, would turn out to be more than coincidence. It would be the primary signal for discovering my purpose and walking away from a life that no longer served me.
I understood, then, finally, what the universe had long been trying to tell me. Taste was my life’s one true guiding force – my chi, my logos, my dharma.
It always had been.
Before then, my travels only reflected a sideline passion for Taste. Food was omnipresent on almost every itinerary I moved behind, but it wasn’t until Orvieto that Taste surfaced as a visceral and sacred pathfinder. It wasn’t until this meal, on this day, that Taste invited me to travel with a very different kind of awareness and intention.
It invited me to travel with it as my primary lens. One that I clicked into place with soul-freeing abandon and conviction. One that helped me see how to move with meaning and alignment. One that helped me process bites and sips beyond social capital, bragging rights, bucket lists and status.
Trip after trip, travel would transform this lens, this compass, into my calling. Travel transformed, too, when Taste, my compass, invited me to follow it.
And follow it I did.
Toward the discovery of new textures and flavors: of the sweet, savory crunch of Bun Cha in Hanoi; of cream meets fluffy brioche inside a heavenly Maritozzi in Rome; of the explosive combinations of AYU’s global menu in Malta.
Toward rejuvenation and reassurance: tapped during a soul-settling al fresco lunch at Ida Kuchnia i Wino in Wroclaw, Poland; slowly extracted from a trip-redefining afternoon at La Telefonica in Granada, Spain; stumbled unexpectedly upon at Bianca Mozzarella in Warsaw; left behind on a receipt’s scribbled message at Rataskaevu 16 in Old Town Tallinn.
Toward pure joy: taking the perfect bite at Eslava in Seville, Spain; ordering too much fresh sushi from the stand-up counter at Maguro Bito Ueno in Tokyo; collecting the maître d’s pin at Quintonil in Mexico City; eating every last thing I ordered at Noah in Krakow and cherishing every last bite and sip from my favorite meal at Te Motu in Waiheke.
Toward reinvigorated reappraisal: giving puttanesca at Rostelin a second chance on the Istrian peninsula; finally getting green beans at Margot in Wellington; turning over a lifelong disenchantment with beets while staring down a bowl of beetroot soup in Poland.
Toward giving it a go: figuring out Korean BBQ at Seoul’s Sancheong Charcoal Garden; sipping through resistance to non-grape wine at Lokys in Vilnius; embracing the raw prawns in Madreperla’s innovative take on Carbonara in Trieste, Italy.
Toward vivid expression of calling and purpose: the stories of Henry Onesemo’s Samoa childhood on plates at Auckland’s Tala; the snack attacks at Graze in Wellington; the quiet, ceremonial plating at Hong Kong’s Udatsu omakase service.
Toward metaphor and meaning: the olive strawberry dessert at Noa’s Chef Hall in Estonia; the traditional and modern plated moles at Mexico City’s Pujol.
Toward God: a spiritual, stunning, sunny breakfast at Hisa Franko.
A serene and stunning breakfast at Hiša Franko
Every plate that made an impression was tangible proof of purpose in action. Every day, home or away, I am reminded where following our gut, choosing to live out our purpose and trusting what we love, can lead us.
Anywhere.
