We’ve reached that awkward, liminal stage of the pandemic where, rather than simply wallowing in misery, weight gain and relentless tedium, it has apparently become acceptable to turn to another person (from two metres away, of course) and ask them: ‘Where is the first place you want to travel to, when this is all over?’ Now that there is the tiniest sliver of light at the end of the plague tunnel, thoughts inevitably turn to how we might embrace our new-found freedom. It has taken precisely two iterations of this question for me to become sick of it. My standard response, now, is simply to roll my eyes and say ‘Literally anywhere. I don’t care.’
In spite of this, though, the question continues to sit there in my head, refusing to shift – a bit like the extra kilos around my waistline as I live by the mantra ‘a pudding (twice) a day keeps the crippling pandemic depression away’. It would be easy to answer with the list of places I’d planned to go in 2020, trips that I like to think of as postponed rather than cancelled, and destinations to which I still intend to flee as soon as it’s safe and legally possible.
But actually, I realise the question has a slightly more complicated answer, one which I struggle to put into words. Here goes.
What I really want, when this is all over, is to stumble, bleary-eyed, off an overnight bus, train or plane into the chaos of morning rush hour in a strange new city, and then to find something unfamiliar and wonderful to eat. Something that will taste doubly exquisite for having truly been earned, whether by cramming my body awkwardly into an uncomfortable non-reclining seat or surviving a fitful slumber punctuated by the perpetual stop-start of screeching wheels on rail tracks.
While breakfast, for me, is always a joy regardless of the context, there is something about the heady combination of fatigue, adrenaline and anticipation that accompanies travelling which adds a certain frisson to the experience. My morning granola tastes good as I sit at my kitchen table at home, but it doesn’t taste half as good as a warm, buttery, egg-stuffed roti fresh from the griddle at Colombo station after arriving off an eleven-hour flight, full of glorious anticipation for the days and discoveries ahead. Or that first tongue-blistering sip of sweet chai after a nineteen-hour train ride through Rajasthan, accompanied by whatever fried delights had just passed through the carriage in the baskets of the itinerant snack vendors. Whatever brunch treats I rustle up for myself at home simply cannot match the combination of a creamy flat white and a cardamom-strewn Swedish bun, eaten straight from the paper bag on a station bench after eight hours on a night bus and before the sun has fully risen. Nor that first bite of sushi plucked from a conveyor belt in Tokyo after waking up in the middle of the night to visit the famous fish market. I’ve enjoyed many a Vietnamese pho in my time, but none quite as potent as the bowl I slurped at a station in Hue after a mad early morning rush to catch the first train. I still remember the quivering slivers of rare beef that sat atop the noodles and whose iron seemed to work itself directly into my veins as I revived with every sip.
There are others, too. The sticky rice steamed in a bamboo tube, devoured in the streets after I’d risen before the sun to watch monks walk the streets of Laos collecting alms. The stack of peanut butter toast ordered for me by a kind stranger at a café in Malaysia, as he told me firmly that I needed to ‘get my strength up’ after a gruelling night train experience. The standard bakery-chain croissant eaten straight from its napkin to blow away the cobwebs after the overnight ferry crossing to Copenhagen. The pillowy steamed bun washed down with a mug of sweet, milky tea after a rainy early morning bike ride through the streets of Yangon. A bowl of miso broth tangled with freshly-cut udon noodles and crispy tempura vegetables sipped at a café in Hiroshima after an early trip to the Atomic Bomb Museum, and which served as a much-needed balm for both my appetite and my heart.
These moments are precious punctuation marks in the midst of otherwise frenetic travels. There are few things better than stopping to take it all in: the novelty of a new landscape, city or culture, and the anticipation of what lies ahead. That sense of having escaped your own reality for a while, and having swapped it for a new one. The best time in which to do this is before the world has quite woken up, when you can watch lives, routines and journeys unfold before your eyes. Even better if you can do so with something delicious in hand.
I miss the intoxicating sensation of arriving somewhere completely unknown in the small hours of the morning, inevitably exhausted from whatever ill-advised budget mode of transport I’ve taken to get there (perhaps it’s because I never, technically, left university that I constantly forget I no longer have to live like a student). I miss the thrill of knowing that I can – indeed, should – indulge in the delights of a proper, double-shot coffee, because I’m so tired that the caffeine would simply bring me up to normal energy levels, rather than sending me into a spiral of panic and anxiety as it usually does. I miss the anticipation of that coffee, and wandering brand-new streets with wide eyes, taking in the novelty while primed to pounce on the first decent-looking beverage outlet I can find. (I say coffee, but at times this niche has been filled variously by milky red Thai iced tea, delicate earthernware bowls of matcha, and Syrian mint lemonade, all of which were highly acceptable substitutes.) And then, said beverage in hand, I miss scouting for the best possible thing I can find to accompany it; preferably something that will deliver a quick shot of sugar to the brain, but I’m open to everything.
I remember reading once in a cookbook – I’m fairly certain it was an Ottolenghi one – that breakfast is the meal least likely to transcend cultures. While we might revel in unfamiliar ingredients and hitherto unheard-of dishes at every other time of the day, we are set in our ways when it comes to literally waking up our tastebuds. Breakfast, it seems, might actually be the most fiercely regional of meals, the ritual that ties you most firmly to your global and cultural origins, wherever they are. This might be one of the secrets behind the immense success of Mark Zee’s ‘Symmetry Breakfast’ Instagram account and cookbook: nothing is more evocative of a particular culture and its way of life than how its people start their day. In an age of globally available ingredients and experimental fusion food, certain dishes offer us an unadulterated ‘way in’ to their regions of origin: a purity and authenticity of experience that you just don’t get with lunch or dinner.
And perhaps that’s why breakfasting in unknown spaces offers such heady delights. You’re forced further out of your comfort zone – as if you weren’t literally out of it already. There will be no granola and berry compote on the train as it pulls into Jaipur. You will not find a croissant at Colombo station (well, OK, you might, but you’d be a fool if you chose that over the egg roti waiting to be devoured hot from the griddle). You’d be hard-pressed to locate banana and chia seed porridge in Hiroshima.
While it might be getting increasingly easy to stick to what you know, food-wise, in this modern age of rapid globalisation and cultural transmission, you’re less likely to do so when those morning hunger pangs assert their urgency. Lunchtime might offer opportunities for a leisurely stroll to try and find your home comforts, but morning hunger demands to be sated. It will give in to temptations, however unfamiliar. It will move you to accept a bowl of rare beef and noodles, where you’d normally have oats and milk. It will succumb to the promise of a chilli-spiked taco in place of a smoothie or toast. And, in so doing, that morning hunger will take you on journeys – both literal and metaphorical – of unimaginable delight, opening new culinary doors and giving rise to cravings that will resonate long after you’ve finally made it home.
