Dining abroad: a holiday for your taste buds!

One of my favourite aspects of a holiday is sampling local food. Well, I live in London and English food is famous for being bland, unadventurous and boring. But in order to get the best out of your dining experience when abroad, it does pay to do a bit of planning and research. I am usually very adventurous and will want to taste all the authentic local flavours of the countries I visit. I've had both good and bad experiences when dining abroad and allow me to share some of my experiences so you can be sure you have plenty of tasty experiences on your holiday!

How adventurous are you when dining abroad?

1. Do your research - start with Google and Wikipedia 

Once you have booked your trip, go and do your research online - say you're going to Morocco. Google Moroccan cuisine and check out information on Wikipedia as well as simply doing an image search on 'Moroccan cuisine'. Learn about the local delicacies and make a list of the dishes that you do want to check out. Remember that you will need to memorize the names of the dishes in the local language rather than English.

You should also gather information about where the best places to dine are in the cities you are visiting - whether you are looking for the classiest restaurant in town or the best street food, there are probably plenty of websites that will offer peer review (Qype, Yelp, Tripadvisor are good places to start). I adore these peer reviews because if a place is crap, it will get loads of poor reviews and you will know that you should avoid this place. These are so much more reliable than the advertisements that these restaurants or cafes will put in tourist brochures. Wondering around aimlessly may leave you dining in all the wrong places and having a miserable experience.

Moroccan tagine and couscous

2. Learn the basics of the language to navigate your way around a menu

No one expects you to be fluent in the language of the country you're visiting - but you should be prepared to know the basics so you can navigate your way around a non-English menu. Learn to identify food-related words like fish, beef, bread, salad, milk, soup, rice, pork, juice, etc and whilst you're at it, learn a few basic phrases to communicate with a waiter who may not speak any English. This is especially the case if you know that you're going to a country where the locals are highly unlikely to speak any English. You never know when you may find it necessary to use this - some of the best meals I've had in places like Germany, Poland, Portugal, Turkey, Spain, Indonesia, Russia, the Czech Republic and Vietnam were in places where none of the staff spoke a single word of English.

Imagine if I had given up on dining there just because they didn't speak any English - I say, who cares if they can speak English, as long as they serve great food! And if all else fails, don't panic and run away - use sign language, point and smile. I remember this barbecued duck restaurant in Lào Cai , Northern Vietnam that was so crowded with locals. No menus, no prices and certainly no English. I tried Mandarin (we were less than 1 km from the border with China, I could see China across the river) and French (the former colonial language) but it was clear that they spoke only Vietnamese. With my very limited vocabulary of Vietnamese, a lot of sign language and my note pad (to write down prices), we got what we wanted and it was the best barbecued duck in Vietnam I've ever had.

I totally love Vietnamese food!

3. Avoid touristy places with pushy waiters

Okay, you see I am a Chinese-looking tourist (well technically speaking I am Eurasian, I'm mixed) but I digress) and I can't help but stand out in most places I go. You should've seen the way children just stared at me in Africa becase they were just so not used to seeing a Chinese person. This means that I usually attract the attention of shopkeepers and restaurant touts who want to drag me into their shop or restaurant. I usually run a mile when I see someone coming up to me. There are plenty of tourists (usually monolingual English speakers from the UK, US, Australia, Canada and NZ) who will actually gladly go to places like that if they are worried about the language barrier.

Need I state the obvious? You're usually not going to get a good meal in places catering for English speaking tourists. Such places always charge a premium for service in English and the food can be terrible. Why? They have no incentive to make an effort - a local restaurant has to try hard to cultivate customer loyalty by serving excellent food at reasonable prices. A local will never return once he's had a bad meal there but a restaurant for tourists can serve awful meals and the worst you can do in response is to leave them a bad review on a website like Tripadvisor or Yelp - but they're not worried. They know the bulk of their customers are English speaking tourists who will dine there once and never return. By that token, avoid restaurants within shouting distance of major tourist attractions.

Les escargots, anyone?

4. Pick a place with plenty of locals

You can't go wrong with this simple rule: if a place is crowded with locals, then they must be doing something right. I am not talking about a place with plenty of tourists, that's a different story. If there is a queue of locals patiently waiting in line to get into the place or to buy some street food, then you know it must be good. Join the queue and whilst waiting in line, strike up a conversation with a regular customer and ask them what is the best dish to order. Likewise, if a restaurant is deserted during meal times, the locals probably have a good reason to avoid it.

5. Try street food 

The beauty about street food is that it is often prepared right in front of you: you can see how it is made, what goes into it and you can smell it. I love these street markets where you can wonder around, taking in the sights and smells before deciding on what to buy. You can also see if there is a long queue of locals patiently waiting in line - that is usually a good sign. Some of these places also give away free samples to entice undecided customers.

A delicately thin pizza that melts in your mouth

6. Do try a local buffet

I know what you're thinking - an all you can eat buffet? Food that has been cooked 5 or 6 hours ago and left there all evening? But please reserve your cynicism, it does have its merits. Once of the best buffets I had was in Reykjavik where there were about 30 different kinds of local specialties and given the number of days (and number of meals) I was going to have in Iceland, there was no way I could have tasted all of those local dishes. Some of them were nice, others were gross - but hey, I simply tried a little of each dish and then went back for more of those that I enjoyed.

7. Be careful whose advice you take

I have always been disappointed with the advice I have been given from hotel staff! When I was in Ghent, I asked the lady at the reception of my hotel for a nice recommendation for a place for dinner in town and she sent me to one of the most expensive restaurants in town opposite the Vlaamse Opera. And I was like, yeah I don't doubt that this would've been great but it also looked exorbitantly expensive. Instead, I wandered towards the university district and found a bunch of cheap and cheerful places catering mostly for the local students.  When I was in Muscat, the hotel staff tried to tell me that the best restaurant in town was in fact the restaurant in the hotel itself and I shouldn't waste my time venturing into town when the best food was available right here at the hotel. Hotel restaurants are rarely any good.

Limpeh in Ghent, Belgium

I have found that in the Middle East, many of the English-speaking service staff in the hotels are either from India or the Philippines (or from somewhere else in the world) but are not local - many of them are either new to the country or even if they have been there for some years, they tend to with only people from their own country and not know the city particularly well. I remember chatting with the Filipino waitress at breakast in my hotel in Muscat and our fairly mundane conversation revolved around what I had seen and done whilst on holiday in Oman. I realized that in a few short days, I had seen more of this country than this Filipino lady had, despite the fact that she had worked there for three years. The fact is, she is probably paid relatively little by the hotel and has to be careful with her money (maybe she was sending her earnings back home as well) - so she does not have the luxury of exploring Oman the way I did whilst I was there. Don't bother asking someone who is clearly a foreign worker for local advice - approach a local instead.

8. Visit a local supermarket for inspiration

The local supermarkets will always sell what the locals like to eat and simply by walking around a supermarket will give you plenty of inspiration - you will find yourself saying, "ooh that looks good, that is rather special, I want to try that, maybe I can buy some and take it home". Supermarkets do cater for a local clientele in any case, so if the weather is good, you can always buy take-away food for a picnic to enjoy in the local park. I always visit a supermarket within 24 hours of leaving a country just to stock up on local produce to take home with me. You should see the way I fill a trolley at an NTUC each time I am in Singapore - it is great fun to explore foreign supermarkets!

9. Remember - in most cases, you get what you pay for.

I remember the best meals I've had around the world - they were all in rather expensive restaurants. Okay, they didn't cost a hideous amount of money (I can afford to travel but I am not that rich) but the bottom line is that you often get what you pay for. If you want a great experience, then you must pay for it. There can be times when you find affordable and tasty street food, but if you want a meal that you will remember for years to come and want not just a meal but an experience to cherish, then you have to push out the boat and pay for that privilege.

Oh I remember the soft-shell crab curry I had in Colombo - it was melt in your mouth and whilst it wasn't cheap, the whole experience was amazing and worth every rupee. Then there was Nordic meat fondue in Oslo where we had a big pot of oil, into which we dunked big chunks of moose, elk, reindeer, veal and wild boar meat. I remember dining by candlelight under grape vines in this gorgeous seafood restaurant in the Sultanahmet region of Istanbul - again, it wasn't cheap but the ambiance was magical. This is what holidays should be about - be good to yourself!

Limpeh in Reykjavik, Iceland

10. Have an open mind ad be prepared to try new stuff

There will also be times when you are taken out of your comfort zone - maybe it would be trying food that makes you squirm with discomfort (such as live sashimi in Japan) or the many different kinds of exotic meats found in Donghuamen market in the Wangfujing district of Beijing, Perhaps the standards of hygiene may not be quite what you are used to, this was certainly the case for me when I was in Vietnam where I had to sit on these little plastic stools by the roadside in the old town of Hanoi. Or it may simply be trying to cope with the chaotic nature of trying to order your food in a crowded place like Djemma El-Fna square in Marrekech. Keep an open mind and be prepared to try new stuff.

You never know what might surprise you - such as this strange salad vegetable I encounter in Crete, Greek. I think the Greek name for it is 'Xota' and I had never encountered it outside Greece. If I had simply thought, "strange looking foreign green thing, I'll avoid it", then I would have never discovered it. I did think twice before ordering an 'jus d'amandes' (literally Almond juice, but it was more like a milkshake with almonds) in Morocco because I was afraid the hawker may have used tap water for the ice cubes, but it was a risk worth taking as it was an incredibly tasty drink for a hot day in North Africa. And whilst I was in Turkey, I was warned not to eat Çiğ Köfte as it contained raw meat and could cause food poisoning if not prepared correctly. But it's a risk worth taking as it was so incredibly tasty.

Donkey sausage in available in a street market in Cannes, France 

Not every exotic dish may be tasty - I had horse meat in Zagreb, Croatia and I couldn't distinguish it from beef as it was heavily seasoned. I had a wild black guillemot in Reykjavik, Iceland and that was actually very similar to duck. Even eating whale meat in Norway wasn't that big a deal taste wise, it was just the whole taboo about eating whale which it controversial. I even had dog meat in Kunming, China (it was an item at a buffet) and I couldn't stand the smell - I could barely swallow one bite of it. But hey, at least I tried it and I was able to say, "I took a bite of it and didn't like it".

So there you go, that's my ten tips to make your holidays a little bit more tasty. What have been your greatest culinary adventures whilst traveling? What other tips do you have for my readers on this topic? What are some of the tastiest adventures you have ever had abroad? Feel free to leave a comment below, thank you for reading!

Hawkers in Djemma El-Fna Square, Marrakech, Morocco