i love foreign/international travel. i try and do it as often as i can without permanently damaging my financial well-being.
when i was younger, i used to be organized and regimented about my itinerary prior to departure. i’d map out what i would do, see, & eat each day. however, in my greying years, i traded in my anal “to do” lists for a more relaxed, zen-like approach, allowing the unexpected to be my most frequent travel companion. my strategy is quite simple now… get up early, pick 2-3 things I want to see that day, sling on a day pack with a bottle of water, and walk. no cabs allowed but any other form of transportation is ok (foot, bike, monorail, venicular, bus, train, hot girl on moped, etc). for food, it’s even simpler – avoid 5-star chic and zagat/michelin darlings and just look for the most crowded mom and pop shops with the longest lines. it never fails.
the charm of any "hole in the wall" needs no translation
on my trip to Bali last year, i followed my culinary exploration technique to what ranks as my #1 “hole in the wall” food experience ever. Bali is known for it’s Babi Guling – roast suckling pig. i knew i wanted to try it. but where? i saw quite a few babi guling warungs (family owned businesses) but all of them were not really crowded. gotta stick to the rules right? long lines & crowded. finally, i ended up in the town of Ubud. one early morning, i went for a walk, looking for some handmade trinkets to buy. it was about 10 am when i encountered a really long line about 50 people long. now understand, the town of Ubud in Bali is made up of 2 main streets and jungle/rice paddies…so a line of that magnitude is rather hard to ignore. turns out it was a line for a babi guling warung known as Ibu Oka. It opens at 11am, they prepare 3 whole suckling pigs each day and serve until they run out (which is usually by about 3pm). Ibu Oka is fully owned by a balinese local (a really nice lady) and run by locals. the line consisted of many locals as well as tourists. long lines? check! crowded? hell yeah! so i jumped in line, waited an hour before it opened and had the most amazing meal – pig skin, white meat, dark meat, pig blood sausage, local daily greens, all served on a bed of white rice. Total cost with a coke – $2. it was soooo good that i ordered a second helping and then returned every morning for the next 3 days until i departed Ubud. awesome. Ibu Oka, to this day, is my #1 international “hole in the wall” find. i think about it all the time.
WHAT’S YOUR #1 INTERNATIONAL “HOLE IN THE WALL” FOOD JOINT/EXPERIENCE?
"the special" at Ibu Oka. you can't go wrong
I remember this Italian place in Bangkok that was amazing. This Italian chef had married a Thai woman and opened a restaurant–awesome Italian food with a slightly Thai twist. But the holes in the walls are best. I remember being in Busan and just wandering around the streets and eating at random places and having the best food.
Edinburgh, Scotland. Two blocks from our venue was a Chinese take away place. To go. We stopped in after rehearsal. There were no tables, just a counter to order, then you waited. I waited for more.
The girl who took orders was a young woman, perhaps late teens. Chinese. She spoke English, obviously a native speaker. Here’s the rub:
She spoke English with a Scottish accent. And she had a Cantonese accent. Try it. I could not listen to her enough.
perhaps you were served by Katie Leung, the Scottish/Chinese actress who played Cho Chang in the Harry Potter movies. Sexy…
Oh my god, babi goreng (that’s how the Malaysians would spell it) is awesome! I really miss the food back home…
My hole-in-the-wall would be this tiny ghetto apartment in Brunei that sold nasi lemak (translated literally as “fat rice”; the locals also call it “nasi katok”, probably because you knock on the owner’s door to get your order in). There was no place to sit, just a window where you collected your packets of coconut rice mixed with spicy sambal (prawn paste with chilli and other mysterious ingredients), roasted peanuts, a piece of home-fried chicken, cucumber slices and hard-boiled egg. Sooooo good. My parents and I would buy them for late-night suppers and wolf down two packets each.
Each packet cost less than 75 Canadian cents in the local currency, and people would line up and buy like ten packets in a go. Argh, I really have to go back home…
Whoops, totally misinterpreted “guling” as “goreng”! “Guling” means to rotate, while “goreng” is to fry. This is what happens when I’ve been away too long…
both are hard to pronounce.
either way, both are delicious…
Street food is the best be it on the carts or in hawker centers (open air food courts in Asia). In Singapore, my favorite is pretty much anywhere which will make Hainan chicken for me, Shanghai it’s about the fried buns in the street, and in Beijing I had the simplest but most delicious breakfast – it was a freshly fried piece of flakey dough (similar to Indian paratha) smeared with hot bean sauce with a piece of lettuce and semi-runny crispy fried egg.
THE BEST FOOD I EVER HAD was in this shack in Togo, West Africa. My friends and I were hungry and someone pointed to a shack. Apparently, it was this couple’s home and the ‘restaurant’ part was their very long kitchen table. Dirt floor, walls made of pieces of scrap wood and old billboards… and this food -which was simply chicken and rice- blew my head apart! They served it with yogurt. I never even knew yogurt existed in Africa, and that Africa’s yogurt was far tastier than American yogurt! Yum!
I love food carts in Taiwan. tsong yo bing, tofu soup w/ ginger and peanuts, that white rice sausage-looking thing, soft mochi with ground peanuts . . . . aaaaaahh i’m hungry for Taiwanese cart food . ..