Traveling and Food.

My first time in India in the 80's my boss and I stayed at the Meliah in Delhi (I think that was the name - it's now the Taj Mahal). One of the restaurants was called Bukhara where we ate on the first night. The ordered food arrived and it was apparent that we were not about to be provided with cutlery. I advised my boss that it was no problem as Indians eat with their hands/fingers but it must be the left hand. We'd been eating for a minute or two when I noticed that others in the restaurant were eating with their right hands. I leant over to my boss and whispered "we either need to change hands or start wiping our bums with our right hands!"
 
The Velvet Curtain said:
Thai is my favourite, the combination of coconut milk, chilli, lime and fish sauce takes me back to some of the best meals I've ever had.

Sadly there is no Thai restaurant in Leicester, we are dominated by Indian outlets, and those in nearby towns are mediocre at best. Britain ( outside London) is not a top destination for Thai chefs.
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Near my home there is a Thai restaurant, but it's a combination of other two restaurants, japanese+chinese..I've never been there yet but I'm curious to try it. However, the first time I ate thai cuisine I was in Berlin...I liked it.
 
In spite of all the curries and middle eastern food I eat, Greek food is my favourite. I stayed/worked in a tiny village just north of Katerini. It was very rural in those days (late 1960s) so all the food was really fresh and mainly home grown - or swapped - and definitely what would have been called "peasant food". There was a Russian family and an Armenian family living in the village so food could be interesting, and a strong Turkish influence too. It was even better in a village that was so rural it had no gas, or electricity, or running water. The food was cooked over an open fire or baked in the village baker's oven (although the lady where I stayed did have a calor-gas stove which her son had sent over from Germany but I don't think the cylinders were that easy to come by). Water in those days was collected from a nearby stream (above sheep-line!). Nowadays there is a huge reservoir there!!!

Most of the Greek food I ate in those days, however, was in Germany. The nearest town (Waiblingen) had a largish Greek community and most of the cafés, restaurants and pubs we used to go to were Greek-run. For some strange reason :wink::whistling: we were not encouraged to go to the Turkish establishments in the town, but a lot of the food was pretty similar anyway. There were several [then] Yugoslav places where we used to eat too.

There was a café in Waiblingen which only used to make and sell tiropita, spanakopita and boureki. The owner used to cook at the food at a large island in the middle of the café, and all the filo pastry was made there too. It was fascinating to watch him swinging the dough around, above his head, until it became tissue-paper thin.

The real treat was to go back to my "mother-in-law's" flat. As was the norm, all the food was eaten lukewarm or cold, and there always used to be meals ready in the kitchen for whatever time we came home. Stuffed peppers to die for.....
 
Duck59 said:
I lived in Eritrea for two years and I've worked in Ethiopia, too, so I couldn't have missed the local bread, injera, if I'd tried. You'll also see quite a bit of Italian food in that part of the world, a colonial legacy.

As a veggie, I enjoyed Sri Lankan food a great deal. The curries were wonderful and the fruit there is also glorious. The best fruit I have ever tasted, though, was when I visited a pineapple plantation in Ghana - pineapple cut fresh from the plant is unforgettable.
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In spite of having an Arab/Ethiopian contingency in the family, I have never ever eaten Ethiopian food. I have only ever met Genet while she was on holiday here, and the last thing she wanted to do was cook! And my cousin, although he lived in Saudi for most of his 70+ years, would eat anything. Unfortunately there are no Ethiopian or Saudi restaurants in the part of London where I live either.

I was friends with an Italian family in the 1960s (they lived down the road from my Mum and Dad), so I did get a chance to eat Italian family fare. Otherwise, my only experience of eating Italian food was when on holiday in the mid-1960s. The food in the hotel was, I think, more tourist-y, but we used to get some lovely food on our travels.

I ran a business in east London (Newham) where there is a large Indian/Pakistani/Bengali/Bangladeshi population, so curries were commonplace. A lot of my friends there also used to eat in a particularly popular Cantonese restaurant and the food was pretty authentic, unlike in a lot of Chinese restaurants there or elsewhere.

Over the years, I have worked for several Sri Lankans and have eaten lots of home-cooked Sri Lankan food. There used to be a decent caterer/supplier not too far from me too, and one Sri Lankan couple I knew used to use their services for the huge parties the couple used to throw. Unfortunately our nearest Sri Lankan restaurant did not prove too popular (wrong area, not wrong food!) and it closed down a while back - the closure of the local hospital wouldn't have helped as a lot of the staff there were Sri Lankan.

There are a few Thai restaurants round about but I've only ever actually been in one of them. Most of the main dishes on their menus seem to contain fish sauce and, because of my allergies, I cannot eat them. It was a challenge in the restaurant where I went for the waitress to recommend anything (she could barely speak English, which didn't help). The owner did sort a meal out for me, and it was delicious, but I haven't been back - mainly because of the location, not because of the food.
 
I have had a couple of working trips to Sweden, and famously, eating out in Sweden is very expensive. But in my experience, there is no such thing as a bad restaurant in Sweden. Every one that I eat at was superb. In terms of specific dishes, the famous selections of fish and accompanying sauces for lunch is one strong memory from Sweden.


I have a strong memory of eating a big bowl of noodle soup for breakfast in Kuala Lumpur. My visit there was social, not working, and I was with people from Kuala Lumpur who knew where to go. Of course, Malaysia is famous for its street food, and I do recall eating at a couple of the open street-side eating places and hugely enjoying it, though I have no specific memories of exactly what I ate. Another memory from Malaysia is going to some place, maybe about an hour’s drive out of Kuala Lumpur that was a resort – not Genting Highlands, I did go there but this was somewhere else – and as casual eating – not really a meal as such – I had a banana pancake that I remember finding wonderful. It is something I have subsequently tried to make at home and the result was okay, but somehow nothing like that one I had in Malaysia.


There are various other memories that are harder to just capture – breakfast at a youth hostel in Morzine in France; soups every night at a hotel in Switzerland when ski-ing; gorgonzola cheese and fresh bread at a hotel in Italy on another ski-ing trip. I’m not sure now where exactly, but on one ski-ing trip, we eat at a place where everyone got a hot stone placed in front of them – health and safety nightmare – and there was platefuls of raw meat and various vegetables put in the middle. The basic idea was that you helped yourself and basically cooked you own food as you eat it. That was an interesting experience.
 
Ken Natton said:
I have a strong memory of eating a big bowl of noodle soup for breakfast in Kuala Lumpur. My visit there was social, not working, and I was with people from Kuala Lumpur who knew where to go. Of course, Malaysia is famous for its street food, and I do recall eating at a couple of the open street-side eating places and hugely enjoying it, though I have no specific memories of exactly what I ate. Another memory from Malaysia is going to some place, maybe about an hour’s drive out of Kuala Lumpur that was a resort – not Genting Highlands, I did go there but this was somewhere else – and as casual eating – not really a meal as such – I had a banana pancake that I remember finding wonderful. It is something I have subsequently tried to make at home and the result was okay, but somehow nothing like that one I had in Malaysia.
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It would be difficult to decide upon my favourite Malaysian foods (I worked there for almost 5 years in the nineties).

The rotis with the various dips; drunken prawns; sambal udang; chili crabs; bak kut teh; banana leaf curry; etc. But I think my number one was the murtabak, a speciality of the Royal Selangor Club in Kuala Lumpur.
 
Not my picture and probably not Selangor's but this is murtabak:

murtabak.jpg
 
morning glory said:
OK I looked it up - basically a filled Roti Canai (which is a layered flatbread and is almost the same as a Paratha as far as I can see). So where there any particular fillings which you liked, @Yorky ?
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They did a number of different ones but I think my preference was "chicken curry" - of course the murtabak was prepared by Indians.
 
Yorky said:
They did a number of different ones but I think my preference was "chicken curry" - of course the murtabak was prepared by Indians.
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And isn't that exactly the point about Malaysia - it is this mix of cross fertilising cultures - mainly Malay, about 30% ethnic Chinese and substantial numbers from the sub-continent. The people I was there with were ethnic Chinese, and I recall there being a big celebration - I don't think it was part of Chinese New Year, but it might have been - when they bring in the whole roasted pig and butcher it in front of you, already cooked. This was actually in the street among people's homes and the cut pieces of meat just got generally handed round.
 
Yorky said:
They did a number of different ones but I think my preference was "chicken curry" - of course the murtabak was prepared by Indians.
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@morning glory - I've asked my Chindian mate in KL - the options were chicken curry omelette or lamb curry omelette wrapped in roti canai.
 
morning glory said:
Chicken curry omelette! Does that mean an omelette wrapped around a curry or the curry mixed into the egg before it is cooked?
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Bejasus! It was 20 years ago. I had to ask my mate even what was in it because I'd forgotten. I would hazard a guess that it was an omelette wrapped around a curry.
 
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