2024, Food, History, Travel, Uncategorized

Food and Friendship

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We are in Boston until Sunday, and are having a lovely time. I feel pretty spoiled to be on both US coasts in less than a month to sample great seafood in both places. The only thing better would be to eat homemade pasta in Bologna, Italy.

We had a wonderful encounter with the cab driver who drove us to the hotel from the airport on Wednesday. He was an East Indian man in his 30’s who has lived in the US for 14 years. He loved telling about the city and things we were driving past. He also was a great fund of information about good restaurants to try. Husband mentioned that I had made a good biryani recently, and I chimed in that I had made twenty chapati and almost all of them puffed up like footballs when I fried them. Our driver got really excited hearing that, and that we appreciated good Indian food, and he invited us to his Sikh religious community gathering on Sunday evening to try the food there. Were we not leaving early Sunday, we would probably have taken him up on his offer.

One story our driver told us was about the banning of Happy Hour in Massachusetts in 1984. Too many people were drinking and driving after work, resulting in several fatal accidents. The law is still on the books despite challenges from the hospitality industry. There are pretty strict rules about the size of individual drinks served between 5:00 and 7:00 pm, and how many people need to be at table per pitcher of beer during those times. It is not a problem for us, as I don’t think either of us have been to a Happy Hour in decades. Opponents of the law say it just reinforces the Puritanical stereotype of the State’s residents. The people we have met thus far have been helpful and friendly in the extreme, and not Puritanical at all.

Who have been interesting people you have met on your travels? What are your favorite foods you would like to eat in the places they originated? Do you still attend Happy Hour?

28 thoughts on “Food and Friendship”

  1. I could probably write a book on each of these questions. 

    Suffice it to say that I have met scads of folks around the world who were fascinating – some of whom I am still in contact with and eaten wonderful food everywhere.

    ALTHOUGH… the sticky toffee pudding that I had at an outdoor table at a restaurant on the marina in Grand Cayman will always have a special place in my heart as well as the vineyard meal outside Rome and the Mt Etna winery meal in Sicily. 

    Happy Hour? Meh. 

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  2. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    Happy Hours hold little interest for me, plus I am a light drinker and I find hanging out with a bunch of drunks pretty dull. I accidentally find a Happy Hour when I go to dinner early. 

    Interesting people along the way are part of the fun of travel. November, 2015 found me in Philadelphia with a friend in a VRBO apartment for a professional conference. We took a cab to a grocery store to encounter a taxi driver who was feeling threatened by UBER. He graced us with a very loud, quite obsessive lecture about this service and his feelings about it. At that point I had never even heard of UBER so neither of us knew what he was talking about. We could not turn down the volume on his rant though and fled the cab with some anxiety because we thought he was crazy. He offered to wait for us. We said “No Thanks.” Later someone at the conference was talking about UBER and I finally figured out what the guy referred too. 

    London Black Cab Drivers are the most interesting of all. They know all the secrets of the city and seem to own the gift of gab.

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  3. The most interesting people I tend to meet are either musicians or authors. Not so many musicians these days as when I went to a lot of live performances while traveling. Mostly authors these days at book fairs, conferences, etc. But occasionally I’ll meet a fascinating customer who regales me with some stories about themselves.

    Food? Pasta in Italy. I’ve had French pastries a few times in France, so I’m good there. Also some of the best bread I’ve ever tasted. Of course, seafood on any coast of any country is usually exceptional. Maybe Belgian or Swiss chocolate might be superior to US chocolate. But I figure technology and globalization have made it easier to eat authentic foods from anywhere in the world within a few hundred miles of your home, if not able to actually make the dish yourself.

    Happy Hour? Like Jacque said, only by accident.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  5. I have daffodils, crocus, winter aconite, and violets galore in full bloom. The tulips should pop in a day or two if we get a little sun.

    My forsythia bushes are blooming this year, thanks to a mild winter, I guess. My rhubarb is ready for harvesting already. Spring is definitely here.

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  6. Croquetas. The typical tapas in Spain.

    I can’t locate the Madrid location.

    I do remember the waiter recommended certain locations in the Prado that must be seen.

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  8. On my 50th Birthday Train Trip I sat with a very interesting woman as we headed east from New Orleans to Jacksonville, FL. She was traveling with her grandson (maybe 5-6 years old), and I ended up reading to him – or was it letting him read to me? Wish I could remember her name…

    The baguettes in France – nowhere else can touch ’em. And seafood in coastal South Carolina when we were visiting a friend in Folly Beach.

    The only Happy Hour I’ve enjoyed is the current “Support Group with Wine” that I’ve mentioned before, with three other women from the East End. I can usually walk or bike there, and don’t have to worry about driving. We eat enough hors d’oeuvres that I just need to make sure there is something for Husband to eat at home, once I return.

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  9. interesting people drinking with Townes van zandt after a failed attempt at winter camping in banff is the best story telling interesting person but I meet them everyehere

    food …chinese in china is interesting and wonderful and so different from the chinese here

    very basic as is traditional in most foods if you’re not going to dazzle dazzle you joints that want your $100 and need to fancy it up to have you justify it

    gosh I remember rolling into happy hours with 1/2 a buzz on and filling it out in short order

    double the booze in the glass or the number of glasses,

    now I guess it’s got to be vape tokes or gummies but I don’t do that much

    it would be fun to go do a hash bar or something exotic like that

    i still want to do ketamine again in the correct happy hour setting

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  14. I have met so many interesting people in various places I have lived and worked. A few stand out, but I have written about them on here before, so I’ll not bore you with a rerun. One that comes immediately to mind is Barrington Watson, the painter from Jamaica that I met in Basel. Another is Baba, a mystic from India, who had taken a vow of silence and communicated through an interpreter with grunts and gestures in a sort of home made sign language. I can attests to the fact that Baba was an excellent cook, and really weird. We knew him while he was married to Isabel Thorson and lived in Blooming Prairie. Here’s a link to his obituary in the Strib. https://www.startribune.com/shree-krishnaji-silent-spiritual-master/93826094/

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  16. I had fish pie and two pints of Guinness yesterday in Galway! The fish pie was delicious! I’ve never had Guinness before and I drank two pints. I’m not driving. I was fine – just wanted to try it. We shopped and met people from all over the world. We listened to local musicians playing traditional music in a pub! It was a dream come true kind of day for me.
    We met a guy who taught me to say, “How’s the Craic?”
    Dream come true!

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