Travel Tips & Advice
Food & Drink Overseas
One of the joys of travel is wining and dining on truly authentic local cuisine. Yes, you can get Italian back home, but not like they make in Tuscany! They sell French wine at the local market, but not to compare to a bottle of Bordeaux in Bordeaux!Travel is an adventure of the body, mind and spirit - don't spoil it by eating nothing but Big Macs... Food is a parallel adventure of the palette.
Be adventurous. The local cuisine has developed over thousands of years to utilize local herbs and spices to complement available vegetables, meat, poultry and seafood, often in surprising and fantastic ways. To visit New Orleans without trying some blackened catfish, shrimp jambalaya or other Cajun fare, is like visiting the Louvre just for the gift shop!
When traveling, it's always a good idea to eat where the locals eat. The food is more likely to be authentic, fresh and top quality. You may also find that the prices are much more reasonable than popular tourist restaurants.
Some of the larger international hotel chains offer buffets. To a traveler worried about eating foreign food for whatever reason, these might seem like the best option, but the food is often average quality to start, and after potentially hours in the warming trays, questionable at best.
Street vendors can actually be a good choice if sanitation is a concern. The high volume served helps ensure the food is fresh. Again, this follows the rule of eating where the locals eat.
Many travelers are concerned about water quality when traveling. Ominous echoes of "Don't drink the water..." bounce of the inside of their skulls whenever they near a restaurant. This can be a very real concern.
Even if the water is perfectly safe for locals to drink straight from the tap, it may also contain bacteria that your body has never met before. Our bodies tend to get a bit defensive when meeting new bacteria and the result can be pretty nasty. If in doubt, drink bottled water with NO ice. Frozen local water is still local water. The bacteria don't mind the chill...
Alcohol is a different story. Wine and spirits are generally of high enough alcohol content to kill whatever may have lived in the water before fermentation, so drink with confidence.
As for what to drink, same goes. Drink what the locals drink. A house wine in a wine producing region is often a high quality wine. Some restaurateurs may even produce their own wines from local vineyards. How can you go wrong?
Once you've had your meal and begun considering whether releasing that top button would be frowned upon, the next question to follow may be; to tip or not to tip? That's a fine question, but the answer will likely be different depending on where you're going. The nice part is, it's such a common question, that pretty much any guide book you pick up, or tourist information resource for the region will likely cover tipping for that specific region.