Baklava, a Middle-Eastern dessert made of filo pastry and a honey syrup. Photo / Bay of Plenty Times
Aucklander Dean Starnes offers a quirky and amusing eye on the world of travel in his new book Roam, published by Harper Collins and available now for $39.99.
Starnes, who has written for the Lonely Planet guide books, is a survivor of three bus crashes, one shipwreck, malaria... and a thousand dodgy meals. Here, in an extract from the book, he offers an insight into dishes to savour, sidestep or avoid like the plague. Unless you want to risk getting the plague.
Food can be an adventure all in itself. Many first-time travellers are unprepared for anything more disagreeable than the airline food on the way over but be warned, food is the social glue of society - in some countries it even tastes like glue, and you'll be expected
to partake.
As an esteemed guest [in some poorer countries] you may even be treated to the local delicacy which can be a dubious honour. Considering that the locals are doing all they can to merely scrape by, it's a grave insult to turn up your nose at their freshly grilled dog.
Sure, chowing down on Lassie may not seem much of an honour, but refusing to eat their pet pooch can make things uncomfortable. As a general rule, keep an open mind, pray that it tastes like chicken and try to sample everything you are served. Although, that said, it's prudent to avoid anything that's appeared on a postage stamp or a WWF calendar.
All countries have their national oddities: the Scots have their haggis, the Americans have their preservatives, but it is the Asians who have taken the motto "waste not, want not" to heart and to their stomachs.
You don't have to venture far into a Vietnamese market before you'll be confronted by all manner of local fauna fried, boiled and served with a tasty dipping sauce.
Nor is it just the flesh being offered. In Asia no part is wasted - chicken cartilage (nankotsu, Japan), fish eyes (it's acceptable to spit out the cornea in the Philippines), monkey toes (deep fried in Indonesia) and blood from a freshly slaughtered cobra, drained into a glass and served still warm while its body is left to wither in front of you in Thailand. (It's appropriately called "ran", and run you may well do.)
Many people wonder if they should eat from the local street stalls or stick to the more up-market restaurants. I've given this careful thought over the last few minutes and now realise that generally, despite appearances, it's safer to stick to the street vendors than dine alone in a flash restaurant. True, the restaurant may appear to be more hygienic but there's no real difference between the fly-encrusted street food and the fly-encrusted food in the kitchen apart from price.
In many poor countries the locals can't afford to dine in the restaurants and so the food there is left sitting around growing salmonella, waiting for a well-heeled tourist. Few things in life are as deadly as a reheated meal in Nepal. If you do eat in a restaurant make sure you leave by the front door - that way you're unlikely to stumble across the dogs out the back "doing the dishes".
The only time I ever became ill in Nicaragua was after eating restaurant food. By and large I found it best to get it while it's hot, straight out of the frying pans on the street.
