Travel

Bermuda is pretty pink beaches, dazzling turquoise water, lush vegetation, touches of British style, pastel painted homes and truly friendly people. It’s posh yet casual and while not a bona fide culinary destination, it offers some delicious things to eat and drink that you won’t find elsewhere.

Here are my top picks:

FISH CHOWDER
This scrumptious soup, considered the national dish, was originally poor people’s food, made from fish bones. It’s a rich broth, with vegetables including onions, tomatoes, celery, carrots and a variety of spices and herbs. It's a little bit like Manhattan style chowder but with bits of fish instead of clams, but what makes it most special is the black rum and sherry pepper sauce that’s added to it, often at the table.

Where to find it: I loved it everywhere I had it, and it’s on just about every menu, but I’m told, the best version is sold at the Rubis gas station near the airport (get your taxi driver to take you!). I tried it at Bonefish, Henry VII and Wahoo’s Bistro.

I’ve just returned from a quick trip to Tokyo, where The Hub was promoting a new film and where we were both doing our best to eat from morning to night.

Eating in Japan is serious business, and sushi is no less than an art form.  The Michelin Guide expanded to Japan for the first time in its history in 2008, and in its debut year, it awarded more stars to the Land of the Rising Sun than any other country, including its native France.  In fact, there are now more than twice the number of cumulative stars found in Tokyo (227) than in Paris (97)!  (Not that any of the Japanese chefs really cared.  One 3-star designee apparently asked, “Why does a French restaurant guide care about what we’re doing in Japan?”).

Over our four days and nights, we ate like kings.  We sampled hot oden noodles, hot ramen noodles, cold soba noodles, mounds of tempura, shark fin soup (supposedly very good for your complexion), skewers of yakatori (basically chicken on a stick, though our selection included chicken skin on a stick, which was inedible), and all sorts of other delicacies that I’ve now lost in a haze of sake and jet lag.  Speaking of sake, we knocked it back – always cold and dry and delicate.   We were also given a shot of something that looked like a weak Bloody Mary but turned out to be 40 proof vodka laced with turtle blood.   My arm hairs were on end for about 10 minutes.

I remember a conversation with my good buddy and talented food writer, Monica Parcell, a few years back. The gist was the proliferation of food bloggers and the common themes. We basically bitched  “we don’t care about your vacation to France” (because it’s always France, and maybe sometimes Tuscany).

So here I am, talking about my recent trip to Indonesia. But, it’s not just about sharing vacation memories, it’s about Banana Pancakes. When we weren’t staying at a hotel with a buffet breakfast (like the Phoenix Hotel in Yogyakarta – with the lovely morning adventure of fresh exotic juices, spicy soto ayam – chicken soup with condiments, rice porridge, tapioca with coconut cream, eggs sambal, fried noodles, platters of fruit, cheesy yogurt, fresh donuts, etc.) our choice for breakfast was between “banana pancake” or nasi goreng – fried rice with veggies topped with a fried egg and a few shrimp puffs. I always opted for the nasi goreng – it was too good to pass up. I love spicy food- even in the morning.

When trekking in Sumatra to view orangutans, we camped out on the river near Bukit Lawang one night. Oudin, our camp-master fixed us an amazing dinner, then for breakfast, Banana Pancake. The pancakes were like the others served on Java and Sulawesi, but impressive in that they were fried in a well-seasoned wok over an open fire in the middle of the jungle.

Can we talk about how strange a yoga class in London is?  Stretch out your kidneys, she kept saying.  Elongate your kidneys.  Her British accent easing me from one pose to another…but…kidneys?  Really?  I don’t even know where my kidneys are.  Honestly, I know they’re somewhere in my torso region but to the point where I could isolate them into a stretch.  It was really strange. 

And it got me thinking about other body parts that in my opinion have nothing to do with yoga.  Like my esophagus.  And my appendix.  And, well, my stomach.  Was it grumbling?  Or was I distracted?  By the time we got out and started wandering around Primrose Hill, the gray sky somehow bright and exciting like I wouldn’t mind if it started raining, by that time my stomach definitely was growling.  I’m still not sure what my kidneys were doing but I was hungry.  And it had to be breakfast