Travel broadens the…waist

One of my favourite dictums (dictii?) is “Travel Broadens The Mind”. Usually delivered with a lot of gravitas by an armchair traveller whose furthest travel has been to what we Indians call “native”, or “hometown”. This was perhaps valid in the early days when travel was a more leisurely and refined activity rather than the frantic, Instagrammable, group dash it is today.

In pre-Google days people not only took a long time to reach their destinations, they also took the trouble of learning about the history, ethnography, language and culture of the destination by actually reading up on the available literature of the place. So, not only did we broaden our minds, but by doing moved that much higher up the evolution scale (when was the last time you saw an ape reading up on “Thing To Do In Deadhorse, Alaska”?)

But an ancillary benefit of this kind of travel has not really got its place in the sun – the opportunity to try different cuisines, in the countries of their origin. Globalisation has made it possible to eat sushi in Saki Naka (a suburb of Mumbai, India) but does it have the same feel-good factor as going to Sushi Saito in Tokyo?

Travel for travel’s sake may have been a fad during the times of da Gama and Columbus, but today with the growth of digital media, there are “bucket lists” of things to do which usually include dining at “famous local eatery in Timbuktu” and posting photos of you holding the dead goat’s head on Instagram. Food For Likes.

Ancient cities like London, Paris, Tokyo, Beirut, Fez and Amsterdam have a whole host of famous eating spots and you cannot visit these cities without eating in at least one of these spots. The mushrooming of food blogs, restaurant review sites and cooking shows fuels an urgent desire to “travel to be seen to be eating in the right place”. As long as you are travelling to eat, I suppose it is OK.

As a resident of Dubai, the world’s most worldly city, I can access a host of international cuisines within half an hour of driving from home. Many restaurants try to recreate the ambience of the country whose cuisine is on offer. But the whole effect is ruined because the person serving you is never of the right ethnicity – surprising for a city with over 200 nationalities! I would rather enjoy Oktoberfest with a bevy of lederhosen-clad dralle Damen from Germany. Know what I mean?

I have had some very fine meals in the 29 cities that I have lived in during a rather chequered life and career (camel meat in Kano, Nigeria and so forth) I have also had some of the same meals in Dubai (camel burgers included), led on by memories of meals past. But the experience has always been spicier, more fragrant and much more insightful in the city itself. But as a microcosm of the world, Dubai serves its purpose of allowing you to sample cuisines from places you might not visit, and not just because of a virus.

So, the next time you feel hungry remember what renowned sage Baxicius said: “getting to table is also about journey, not just destination”.