Osaka Food

We don't pretend to be the penultimate foodies--we've got far too many allergies and aversions for that. But when we heard that there is a place in Osaka called Dotonbori that celebrates all things food-related, we knew it was a destination we had to add to our list.  We had so much fun wandering around watching the animated food signs, people enthusiastically taking photos of their food, food trucks and walk-up food stands and street hawkers, oh my!

The legs on this crab move, like many of the signs on Dotonbori

Ryokan in Yamanouchi

Everything we read about Japan recommended staying at a ryokan, a traditional Japanese bed and breakfast, somewhere along our journey.  The one that we found was closer to a hotel/ryokan hybrid, which gave us a bit more privacy while still giving us an introduction to the traditional tatami mat, futon beds and low chabudai table.

Finding Our Food Footing

This is the story of how, on a rainy night in the Japanese Alps, we came to eat the worst meal of our whole trip: a train station fast food burger from the Mos Burger chain.

One of the things David was looking forward to in Japan was the cuisine.  Lana was a little apprehensive about it, as she’s not a big fan of fish, especially raw fish, or things that have been cooked but are served cold. All things heavily represented in Japanese cuisine.  We also knew that we could not expect an English description of dishes or ingredients, and that generally, things come exactly as they’re traditionally made. Substitutions are not really an option.  The very polite staff may smile and nod to your “no this/no that” request and then the dish will come out exactly as the cook always makes that dish.  We can respect that.  We also knew, from previous experience using translation dictionaries, that menus often contain specialized vocabulary that’s not in a common dictionary.  We knew there would be challenges, and we didn’t even know all of them yet. 

Meals of Europe

With some exceptions, we managed to eat reasonably healthy meals until we reached Central Europe.  The amount of fat in dishes there was significantly higher than we had become accustomed to, and it was very seductive.  How do you say “no” to cheese-filled, bacon-wrapped sausages?  We also were able to cook for ourselves sometimes in Croatia, Poland, Vienna and Scotland, but more often than not we found the sweet siren call of western food to be too much to resist. Also, there was quite a bit of good ice cream in Europe, and excellent beer.  We were in deep trouble. These meals are from: Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Hungary, Poland, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Netherlands, Scotland and England.

Meals of Egypt, Jordan and Turkey

After three weeks of mostly plain fare in Madagascar, Middle Eastern cuisine was a refreshing and welcome surprise.  These meals consistently ranked among the best of our trip.  Fresh tomato and cucumber salads were plentiful; yogurt as a sauce for rice was new to us, but an immediate favorite.  Desert was often watermelon or pineapple, which was a perfect finish.  Alongside Vietnamese food, it was some of the healthiest fare we had around the world.  Our pictures don’t do these dishes justice, in part because, visual presentation was not a priority—flavor was.


The slideshow version:

Frequently Asked Friday: Best Meals?

Anyone who knows us knows we travel on our stomachs. And we certainly ate enough this year for some weight gain. So the question is, was it worth it? And if so, what was the best meal you ate? 

First of all, it was worth it. There is some work to be done to undo the damage of our consumption in the last year, but it’s ok. Most of the time the experience outweighed any caloric overload in the decision-making process.  But we couldn’t narrow it down to one meal, as we each had some pretty solid contenders that came to mind as soon as we started thinking about it.  These are in chronological rather than ranked order, as we couldn’t choose one favorite.

Meals of Madagascar

We did not go to Madagascar for the food.  We love food, and we really loved Madagascar, but it certainly was a low point in terms of food for the trip.  You'll see a lot of repetition in our meals.

Tea Class

We are both tea people—tea snobs, possibly.  Excellent tea was one of the things we left behind on our journey.  We haven’t had access to actual tea, even in teabag form, for most of the trip—there are a lot of hot drinks around the world that are called tea but have nothing to do with leaves from a tea plant.  We knew that Hong Kong was one of the best places to seek out some truly spectacular tea, so we did our best to find some. The recommendations we found were to visit somewhere called LockCha Tea Shop, so we took ourselves there on our first morning in town. After tasting four different kinds of teas and then buying some (yeah, we know, we don’t buy stuff), when our tea sommelier told us about a tea appreciation class that was available at the Museum of Tea Wares, we signed up on the spot.
Outside the tea house, they had a section of tea plants growing, which were quite pretty.

Meals of Asia

The next installment in our meals around the world includes: Bali, Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand.  We had some amazing meals, in Hong Kong and Vietnam in particular.  We were no strangers to Asian cuisine, but were surprised by the difference that local ingredients and regional variations made.  We were also surprised by the variety of delicious, cheap fruit smoothies, and you'll see we had them with most meals.  That may be what we miss most!

Here is the slideshow version:

111 Meals in New Zealand and Australia

Here's the next installment of "The Bumps Travel On Their Stomachs."  The first installment, 180 meals in South America, is here.  For reference, we flew to Australia on January 9th--there is no specific cue in the pictures to that change.

Food was very expensive, especially in Australia.  And, kitchen facilities were much more common, so you will see a lot more meals that we made; especially breakfasts and lunches.  We're still struggling with consistently taking pictures of our meals, but we were really bad at remembering to take pictures of lunches we made.  So when you see just two meals for a day, the third was almost certainly a lunch of PB & J, eaten on the road somewhere.

Bon appetit!

If you prefer, this is a direct link to the album of pictures:

Meals in NZ and Oz

Adelaide Central Market

We loved city markets in Australia; we’d wander, take pictures, and assemble a picnic lunch, and find a spot to eat.  Cheap, healthy, and quite fun.  In this particular market, I decided to try some more abstract close-ups, after documenting the market a bit.

Meals in New Zealand

This is a typical lunch in New Zealand (or anywhere that sells peanut butter, for that matter).  The view wasn’t always a beach, but it was almost always gorgeous.  Generally there would also be an apple or yogurt, and some kind of cold drink, which are not completely visible here.  Simple, cheap, and reasonably healthy.  Also, very flexible—we didn’t have to plan our day around being somewhere we could buy lunch.  When we started to get hungry, we’d keep our eye out for a pretty spot.  When we found one we liked, we’d pull off, make our peanut butter (and Jelly too, for David) sandwiches, munching away while watching the scenery and reading.  

180 Meals in South America

It’s been said that we travel on our stomachs.  We do enjoy food; we like cooking it and eating it, as well as reading and writing about it, and we love to eat local dishes when we’re traveling.  While David keeps track of what we eat, and where, in a written journal, we’ve found that pictures are much better at bringing back our memories of meals we’ve had.  On this trip, David vowed to take a picture of every single meal.  That lasted one full day before he forgot, and it wasn’t the last time, by any stretch.  However, he took pictures of most, and the ones we have are representative of the trip in general.  We also rated each picture, from 1 to 5 stars, based on how the contents tasted; not all the pretty dishes were tasty, and some of the ugly ones were fabulous.  It should be noted, however, that no ice cream or gelato is picture here. Ice cream, of course, will merit its own post.

The video above moves fairly quickly; if you want to see them at a slower pace, you can scroll through them here at your own pace. If you're curious about something we ate, leave us a comment and we'll explain what it was. Bon appetit!

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