QUOTE(Viridae @ Wed 13th May 2009, 9:47pm)
QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Thu 14th May 2009, 4:31am)
QUOTE(Viridae @ Tue 12th May 2009, 12:11am)
QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Tue 12th May 2009, 5:18am)
QUOTE(Cla68 @ Sat 9th May 2009, 6:55pm)
The other day while I was at a Tapas restaurant in Shibuya (Tokyo), a Japanese woman, one of my wife's friends, looked at me over her paella and asked me, totally out of the blue, What do you know about Ayn Rand? After picking my jaw off the floor, I answered sensibly, Nothing.
Just out of curiosity, why the hell eat tapas and paella in Tokyo, unless you're a homesick Spanish ex-pat? It sounds like going out for sushi in Madrid. I'm sure it's possible, but what's the point?
Does that apply to those two cities in general, or cities that are not generally recognised to be multicultural. I ask because I live in Melbourne which appears to have at least one restaurant specialising in every culture on this here earth. Its a multicultural foodie melting pot - paticuarly good if you want good (and generally cheap) Chinese or Vietnamese, but stretching to such countries as Tibet, Mongolia, Ethiopia and Colombia (to name a few random places off the top of my head - there is at least a half dozen Ethiopian restaurants for instance. Damn nice food.)
Oh, I'm sure anybody anywhere gets tired of the local food (whatever it is) and wants to try tacos in Tokyo or something. Fine. I just had the odd idea that some out-of-towners were being taken out for that kind of thing, but perhaps read more into it than there was.
Just had Ethiopian food the other night-- in LA. Found out some friends of mine, of whom one is gluten-sensitive, were suffering from food deprivation. They didn't know that that teff used to make injera bread has little gluten. There's a little-Ethiopia near where they live, but they'd never been there.
So forget my comments. I'm just a fan of trying to eat the local foods first when traveling, on the theory that the locals are more likely to know what they're doing. That's a pretty good first-pass rule for travel, when it comes to all activities.
Yeah I'll agree with that. Read an amusing review of an Italian restaurant in Vietnam the other day.
Sorry, Milton, I just noticed your comment this morning. There's a good reason why the Michelin guide has named Tokyo as the world's best restaurant city since they started publishing a Tokyo guide two years ago.
The Japanese are really serious about their food, and not just about their own food. Japan is the only place I've ever been to where it's common to find the cooks working in a mid-priced Italian restaurant, as opposed to just high-end restaurants, who have all attended culinary school in Italy. The same holds true for the other national cuisines which Japanese enjoy- French, Spanish, Chinese, even American. The cooks here try, and are usually successful, at making it all as good as you could get in the countries of origin. Of course, they often concentrate on dishes from those countries which cater to the local tastes, such as seafood since the Japanese, in general, love fish and shellfish. Also, they often add an Asian blend to the dishes, but their creativity is usually superlative.
Whenever I'm in the US, the only way I can find restaurant food that even approaches the quality of most low-to-mid-priced Tokyo restaurants is to go to a high-end restaurant, and not just for Japanese food, but Italian, French, or Spanish also. Others who have lived here have told me the same thing.