Food

    ← Food

    Travel

    Almost everything I cook I met somewhere else first. It started with two years in Japan in the mid-eighties and it has not really stopped since — every US state and thirty-odd countries, and I have eaten my way through most of them. The rest of this site is organised by subject: pickles here, sausage there, cheese over there. This part is organised by trip, because that is how I actually learned it — a place at a time, usually without the language, usually by pointing at something and finding out afterwards what it was.

    Japan, 1985–86
    Japan, 1985–86 Two years at MCAS Iwakuni, a car, and most weekends spent driving southern Japan with no destination — stop at the docks, ask around for a bed, and more usually than not be invited to stay with a family. The food from their irori hearths is the best I have eaten, and I have said for forty years that I could never replicate it. Turns out I was right, and there is a real reason: an irori is not a technique, it is a room with no chimney. Explore →
    Shenzhen, March 2026
    Shenzhen, March 2026 Five days in Futian at the front end of a work trip. Almost every identification here came off a photographed sign rather than a guess — Sister Pei's Chongqing hot pot and its late-night tagline, a banquet house, a plaque reading 民以食为天. The best find was not a meal at all, it was a cold, sour, smoky soft drink made from a fruit that is not a plum. Explore →
    Vietnam, March 2026
    Vietnam, March 2026 Ho Chi Minh City and a day out in Đồng Nai. Phở on a steel stool at ten past six in the morning, which is when it is actually eaten; a bún bowl built to order off a pavement grill where the noodles are cold and the pork is scalding; and bánh xèo, whose mountain of herbs I had been treating as a garnish for years when it is the cutlery. Explore →
    Narita, March 2026
    Narita, March 2026 Thirty-eight minutes in an airport on the way home, which is enough for a small argument about 成田空港限定 — "Narita Airport limited" — and how airport retail noticed that Japan already had a deep tradition of bringing food home from a place, and then declared a terminal to be a place. Also the last thing I ate on the trip. Explore →

    Coming in this series

    Hong Kong, China and Vietnam. These go up a destination at a time, once the photographs are sorted and I have written down what I actually saw rather than what I have since read.

    Get new content

    Occasional emails when something significant ships. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.