This week in Just a Taste, we asked food and travel writers about their favorite food memories. Some are Thanksgiving related, some are not. Many will make you hungry. What are your most memorable food moments around the world? Share them with us on Twitter.
As part of my job I eat my way through the world, but nothing ever compares to the green Chile of my home state— New Mexico. One bite of a green chile breakfast burrito and I’m instantly transported home. My favorite green Chile burrito spot is always both my first and last stop any time I visit home and I even make my parents send me jars of it so I can make my own green Chile recipes in my New York apartment. – Hannah Freedman, Travel Editor for Family Traveller
The smell of roasted onions, ginger and curry powder here in my Swiss kitchen transports me back to the kitchen of my Grandmother in Australia – especially in the holiday seasons where she would adapt her curry recipe to lamb at Easter, turkey for Christmas. – Kristin Reinhard of Swiss Family Travel
I was a Japanese major and moved to Tokyo soon after graduation back in the mid-nineties. I was feeling very homesick that fall, and was thrilled to be invited to an American Thanksgiving. I volunteered to make the cranberry sauce in my tiny kitchen, but realized too late that you can’t just go to the grocery store to buy cranberries. So I trekked across town to the international market on Wednesday after work, found the cranberries, went to pay for them, and realized I had left my cash at home. To my surprise, they wouldn’t accept my credit card and I had to apply for a special store credit card that involved getting references, which, of course, I could not provide on the spot, and a waiting period. I was NOT going home without those cranberries, so in my faltering Japanese, I insisted repeatedly that I was a “good person” and explained how special cranberries were and noted I would lose face if I didn’t bring this special holiday dish to my office party. I was pretty proud of myself at my burst of fluency, but then realized I had been using a classical Japanese term for an esteemed noblewoman, something dredged up in my memory from Heian literature. So maybe they thought I was either an estranged duchess or just a nut job. Either way, they took pity on me: the cranberries were mine. – Jennifer Burns Bright
Kolkata is my hometown, every winter we used to eat puli pithe, which is a kind of rice dumpling stuffed with coconut and jaggery. In most Bengali households puli pithe is prepared during winter, particularly on the occasion of ‘poush sankranti.’ I live in Mumbai now and puli pithe reminds me of home. Sweets of Kolkata are pretty popular within India but I really do hop puli pithe gets its fair share of fame soon. – Tania Mukherjee Banejree
I’m from Hawaii. My ancestors were subjects of the Hawaiian Monarchy. Some were paniolo, or Hawaiian cowboys. We cook turkeys in an imu–a large pit dug in the ground, lined with a special type of rock found only at certain beaches or mouths of streams. The rocks are heated by burning a fire. When ready, the turkeys are wrapped in ti or ki leaf, placed in chicken wire baskets, then covered with banana stumps, wet burlap sacks and a deep layer of sand. Hours later and sometimes with great fanfare, the turkeys are uncovered, rested, and carved. The most delicious, moist birds. He ono! My brother still does his turkeys this way. Many times local schools will sell space for your turkey or ham in their imu as a fund-raiser for graduation. It is still very much a tradition in Hawaii. – Michelle Winner
Bubby’s Mandel Bread (Brot). Sort of a Jewish biscotti. We had it at every holiday or occasion. I will be bringing it to my friend’s place for Thanksgiving. I baked it for my Airbnb host in Germany, and taught the cooking/cleaning ladies at the finca I stayed at in Salento, Colombia how to make it. I also taught it to my housekeeper in Quito Ecuador while I was cat sitting. – Carole Rosenblat
Turducken at Luke in New Orleans. A regional dish my ex-husband and I had together our first Thanksgiving by ourselves. Reminds me of a time we were happy and in love and the future was full of possibilities together as we tried new things in a new place as a self-standing family for the first time. (We are very amicably divorced ~10 years later, so the memory remains fond, even if it’s a little bittersweet.) – Su-Jit Lin
The first year during the holiday season I was in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I had never spent a holiday alone and was looking for a fun distraction to keep me busy and engaged in my present moment and place. I chose to spend the day of Christmas Eve on an organic farm cooking traditional Thai dishes with other travelers. It was such a wonderful experience to share Christmas Eve with other vagabonds who are far from home–and the food we made was phenomenal! I’ve kept up the tradition of doing something exciting on holidays while being thousands of miles away from my family. – Lola Méndez
One of my most delicious memories is the smell and melting goodness of the Potica roll my mother would make for the holidays. She learned from her mother, a Croatian Immigrant, and adapted a recipe from the Slovakian Womens’ Club Cookbook (I have it and her notes in the margins still.) I had never eaten it anywhere else outside of the US until I visited Slovakia last year. While sweet, nutty, and toasted the slices missed the melted slices of California dates my mother added – of course! – Elaine Masters
I’m from Hong Kong, where my siblings and I attended an American school. We’d always learned about Thanksgiving, but our parents were quite traditional and didn’t much care for what it was. So until I was 18, my family ordered KFC for Thanksgiving every year. Turkeys were not as accessible and difficult to make. We’d sit around the table, all six of us, with a bucket of fried chicken and small bowls of gravy and mash potato and pretend it was this big American holiday we were celebrating. Every time I see a KFC outlet or eat there (yes, even as a food writer), it reminds me of home and of family. – Tiffany Chan
Anise always takes me back to Christmastime in my family’s former kitchen in Ivanka pri Dunaji, outside Bratislava, Slovakia. My American family moved to Slovakia when I was 10. My parents hired a language tutor, and somewhere along the way she decided the best way to practice our Slovak was by baking together. Anise is one of the hidden stars in the spice mix for medovniky, a gingerbread-like honey Christmas cookie. These cookies are everywhere in the country around the holiday season, usually decorated to the nines in intricate icing script. The blend of spices is so common that it comes pre-mixed as “prášok do perníka,” so I didn’t know even know anise played a role until the individual spices were laid out for me. Now, the smell of anise takes me back immediately–to Slovakia, to warming my hands over a fire at the Bratislava Christmas market, to the joy and frustration of learning a new language, and of course, to my childhood kitchen. – Leandra Beabout
When my mom had me, she found herself with three young kids, full-time work, and a need for help with our home (she did have a husband…but he also worked full-time and was not especially domestic). Annie was hired to help my family with babysitting, errands, carpools, cooking, etc. She was from Pensacola, Florida, and she’d brought with her to New York all kinds of southern dishes. Her sweet potatoes with crushed pineapple at Thanksgiving were the best. I wish I had the recipe. Annie became one of the defining influences on my life. I stayed in close touch with her till she died a few years ago. We spent Christmases together. I am still in touch with some of her family. She was deeply amazing. – Pamela Grossman
To this day, my favorite meal is a bowl of gumbo I ate in a stranger’s backyard in rural Louisiana. It had been cooking since dawn, a rich broth of andouille sausage and onions, topped with a cold scoop of potato salad. That’s the moment I found myself connected to food: the community of it, the patience, the coming together. It’s those big messy meals I remember best, served from a pot or on paper, where everyone sits around and gets their fingers dirty. – Katy Anne
When I was sixteen, I briefly lived in San Sebastián, Spain. One Saturday, we went out on a friend’s sailboat and had lunch in the harbor of Hendaye, eating roast chicken and fresh tomatoes with our feet in the water. It was a super simple meal, but it is also exceptionally hard to forget. It competes with the best meal I had in Indonesia, on a small island off the coast of Bali. Along the coasts of the island, there were plenty of the classic warungs (restaurants) designed for tourists, but if you walked toward the middle of the island, down unlabeled paths, past a few unattended cows, there was a concrete box of a restaurant that made the most exceptional tempeh, ginger-flower-laden chicken, and herb salads I’ve ever had. I ate it while sitting next to a chicken outside. I think about the chicken dish constantly — and the guilt I felt eating it while hanging out with a chicken. – Brooke Jackson-Glidden
My most wonderful food memory is getting to visit my husband’s family in Provence. They had a small house near the base of Mt. Ventoux 20 minutes away from the nearest town or village by car, and mostly ate whatever they grew in their garden. I had never tasted vegetables like that before. I remember nearly being in tears as I ate a tomato salad – a tomato had never tasted so much like pure joy, like sunlight! It was magical. – Janelle Lassalle
I have more special food memories than I can count, but one that sticks with me is every time I would visit my grandma in Tampa. She lived on a canal and we would wake up early in the morning to go kayaking at sunrise. Then we would come back and pick grapefruits off her tree and have them for breakfast (breakfast was always scrambled eggs with cheese and canned mushrooms, Quaker grits, bacon, and sometimes toast). If we were feeling fancy we might juice some oranges too. Grandma is in hospice now, and still asks me to make her that breakfast every time I go down to see her. Another is that when I can, I make fermented foods that celebrate departed friends and family. The apple scraps from a final meal we shared, or the scraps from the last carrots they grew in their garden. Sometimes these fold into my existing starters, sometimes they don’t. But this way, a bit of them is always alive and with me. And whenever I open this first jar (apple scrap vinegar), it smells like my grandma’s house. A reminder of the magic of micro-terroir for connecting us to people and place. – Julia Skinner
Cranberry sauce and turkey are ordinary holiday foods, but preparing them for the first time when I hosted my first Thanksgiving made me feel like an adult. And I was almost 40. I’d lived in other countries for the past decade, so the opportunity never arose. Funny what constitutes a rite of passage. – Joan Vos MacDonald
From the time we were able to walk and talk, my siblings and I spent Thanksgiving in my father’s bakery located in Queens, New York so that the rest of the staff could have the day off and our mother could work behind the sales counter. After the store closed we’d go to a diner for dinner. One year we were invited to the home of the bread baker. They were German immigrants and the most lovely couple. I will never forget the unique flavors that I tasted that day. An enormous roast turkey stuffed with fresh apple and bread stuffing, mashed rutabaga and potatoes and the creamed spinach laced with fresh nutmeg. It also happened to be the night that Heidi was on their TV set. The show that preempted an infamous football game. I remember savoring apple strudel while my father, brothers and others complained about missing the end of the game. – Susan Drucker Ericson
I miss bierocks in Kansas (runza in Nebraska). Simple yeast dough pocket with ground beef/onions/cabbage and sometimes cheese. Served in wax paper with a pickle spear. I’ve moved to the south and while I really appreciate sweet and fruit tea, I wish I could still get that mix of German heritage and hyper local culture. No real cheese curds in the south either. – Amy Cipolla Barnes
I am Canadian but we grew up with pumpkin pie and whipped cream as a must for thanksgiving dessert, when I moved to Quebec from Ontario I could not believe my in-laws had NEVER tasted pumpkin pie! I fixed that! They did not like it though:( No accounting for taste!) – Sue Campbell
For Thanksgiving 2015, I was in Paris. I had just moved to Berlin for a job that kept me there for the winter months. It was cold and dark and I was lonely. Luckily, I had friends that were vacationing in Paris so I made a plan to meet them there, even though the horrific terror attacks had just taken place about a week before. There were armed police everywhere on the streets of Paris and flowers were strewn along the sidewalks creating makeshift memorials. When I walked into the restaurant on the evening of Thanksgiving, I found a room full of Parisians doing what they do best: eating, talking, laughing, and drinking wine. It was an incredible testament to their resilience and a reminder that despite the tragedy that had just occurred only a few blocks away, life does and most go on. I slurped oysters that night in lieu of turkey, and felt grateful to be with good friends eating a delicious meal. – Sari Kamin
I spend Thanksgiving working the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line, helping cooks around the country and other countries cook and create holiday food memories. Each year I bring my grandmother’s Old-Fashioned Pound Cake to the Talk-Line team and her cake never gets old—the team loves it! – Charla Draper
When we were living in Beijing, we treated ourselves to a weekend in Shanghai and dinner at Jean-Georges. A snooty welcome set the tone: they were askance that we wanted to sit side-by-side for a view of the lights of Pudong, and things went downhill from there. We were made to feel like interlopers, and it wasn’t all that fun, despite the hype and the price tag. The next night was rainy and miserable, and having utterly depleted our budget, we went to the food court in the basement of Food Supermarket Number Two for take-out: shengjianbao (pan-fried bao), cucumbers with garlic, and shredded vegetables with seaweed. The bao soaked through the paper container dripping with meaty juices, the cold dishes were packed in plastic bags, and we got a bottle of wine, all for less than about $15. We sat on the floor of our hotel room and looked at the lights of the city, eating with our take-out chopsticks at the coffee table. It was one of the best meals of my life. – Ivy Lerner-Frank
We came from from Turks & Caicos on Thanksgiving Day. That morning we walked on the beach and smelled burgers cooking. When we got home on Thanksgiving afternoon we decided to have burgers for dinner, delaying Thanksgiving until Friday. – Jan Butsch Schroder
When I was living in Japan, in my early twenties after college, a group of us expat foreigners went to great lengths to recreate Thanksgiving. I think someone had a hookup to an American on a military base and managed to procure a Turkey. I have no idea how we cooked it, however, as Japanese ovens—if you were lucky enough to have one—were tiny. We did our best to rustle up baking potatoes, someone’s parents mailed us cranberries, and Japan has their own type of sweet potatoes. But in the end I don’t remember a thing about the food. What I remember is a tiny Japanese apartment stuffed to the gills with lonely North Americans, gathered together to make good cheer, and to make a home on the other side of the world. – Tara Austen Weaver
In college, my Ecuadorian friend and I spent thanksgivings together. We both had single moms so they’d come into the mix too. With Beatles records in the background, I’d make Korean food and he’d make the turkey and our moms would come eat. Holidays were always hard growing up but it’s one of my favorite holiday memories of living in the US and the first time I felt like that I could reclaim that very American holiday. – Hahna Yoon
I have been doing Totally Truffled Thanksgiving for years. TTT. All dishes are designed around local truffles that I buy in the Appenine mountains in Lazio. Also since it isn-t a holiday in Italy, most Americans celebrate on the Saturday after. – Sarah May Grunwald
I’m American and have lived in Europe for nearly 10 years now. It’s nearly impossible to get a turkey in November. Here in France, they do eat them but not until Christmastime so they’re “not ready yet”. So instead my husband and I usually travel over the Thanksgiving holiday. It’s shoulder season in a lot of places. We’ve done everything from take a cooking class in Thailand learning to make Thai green curry and Tom Yum Goong to stuff our faces at the opening of the Christmas Markets here in Europe. No matter where we are, we’re extremely thankful to be able to share an “exotic” Thanksgiving meal together in some of the most beautiful places in the world. – Jennifer Dombrowski
On my honeymoon in Ubud, Bali, we got a six course meal delivered to our cottage, which was on the edge of a forest with a stream babbling down the hill. We sat outside and the server brought us each course as we were ready, including tea-smoked duck. And Balinese rosé wine. When people ask me the best wine I’ve ever had, it’s always that one – though I suspect if I tried it today, without the jungle sounds around me, I might have a different opinion. – Jeanne O’Brien Coffey
Warning, controversial opinion: my mom makes the best matzoh ball soup in the whole. wide. world. It’s my favorite food of all time, the one and only recipe I really shine at in the kitchen, and the #1 self-care thing I do when I’m feeling homesick. I’ve lived on a different continent from my family for over 7 years now in a place where there are very few other Ashkanazis, let alone someone who even knows what matzoh ball soup is. It takes about 8 hours just to make the broth and even when you make it for yourself it just tastes like someone is giving you a hug. It’s like a secret moment between the me eating it and all the other mes there ever were. I know that’s corny and idgaf who knows it. – Rozena Crossman
I have far too many to recall here, but one that stands out is eating Yemeni bread dipped in an array of breakfast dishes on the floor in a tiny restaurant in Irbid, Jordan. Or conversation in Rome with Livia Hengel over cacio e pepe. Or my dad’s pecan pie or my grandmother’s peanuts. Hummus at Hashem’s in Amman, or warm, pillowy samoon in Erbil. Pad Thai served on a banana leaf on the street in Bangkok, or batata pavada eaten in extreme heat in Mumbai. Maryland crab cakes every summer with my family, Wisconsin cheese curds, Chicago hot dogs, an all ceviche meal in Lisbon, and an unexpected meal in Modena complete with opera singing and the best tortellini I’ve ever had. And many, many more. – Rebecca Holland, founder of Curiosity Magazine
The first year I made Thanksgiving myself I studied old cookbooks like I was taking a class. I thought about what I wanted to make for my friends, and the women who made special meals for their families. Although I cannot remember what I made, I’ll never forget the feeling of attachment I had for the dishes, and for the women who prepared them. I was time traveling, people traveling- it’s the feeling I have now as I bake bread. – Amy Halloran
Kedarnath, a pilgrimage site for Hindus, is in the Himalayas and open only for few months because of extreme weather conditions. As a teenager, I trekked along to reach the shrine. On return trek, I wandered close to a ferocious flowing river because of dense fog. The journey and scare of being swept away in the river drained me physically and mentally. When I rejoined my frantic parents they were sitting in a shack run by a poor village old woman who served hot potato gravy with fried Indian bread called poori. All of us were so exhausted and famished that the lack of cleanliness and the shack were overlooked and we ate as if we were hungry since ages. Had we been not as tired probably we would have not eaten there. But that day, the old woman and her food literally saved us. We polished off all that she had…. there wasn’t a more delicious meal that we ever had…simple warm and served with love. – Shoma Abhyankar
I’m Canadian but really looked forward to celebrating US Thanksgiving in Puerto Escondido Oaxaca, Mexico, when a few local restaurants would prepare roast turkey with stuffing, gravy and cranberry sauce ( yes!) for the expat population. Normally, it wasn’t easy to find turkey or cranberries in town, so everyone really appreciated the extra effort that went into preparing the communal meal. You needed to book early to score a coveted seat at the table. – Michele Peterson
When I lived in Florence, my Canadian roommate and I decided to cook a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, but we went to the butcher shop without knowing the word for “turkey” which was still uncommon in Italy in 2001. As we tried to describe it, the butcher only looked more confused. Later that day I found the word “tacchino” in the Bargello Museum, on the label for a sculpture by Giambologna made in the 1567 of what was then this strange beast from the New World. The butcher special ordered it for us and we were terribly excited until we unwrapped it and found we had to pluck the entire thing ourselves. It was not pleasant, but the memory of plucking an Italian turkey with eyebrow tweezers still makes me and my friend cry with laughter. – Danielle Oteri
