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TravelBlog
When it Rome...
In the early 1980’s I was working for a company
called System Development Corporation (SDC).
They were planning to team up with Hitachi for a defense contract
with the Japanese government.
I was doing some pre-proposal work and made a trip to Japan.
SDC had a subsidiary in Tokyo whose employees were primarily
Japanese with a few American expats thrown in.
I made a trip to Japan for some meetings with Hitachi to
show some of our pre-proposal work.
Before leaving I got some good advice from one of SDC’s marketing
people here in the US. He
spent a lot of time travelling to Japan and had a Japanese girlfriend.
While in Japan, I worked with two employees from
the SDC subsidiary. They
were both Japanese and could speak some English.
Part of the trip involved traveling to Hitachi City, which is
along the ocean, north of Tokyo.
Before leaving, one of the gentlemen asked about the kind of food
I ate. I told him that
while I was in Japan I planned to follow the old expression: “When in
Rome, do what the Romans do.” I further explained that I planned to eat
Japanese food while I was in Japan. That
is what I did do, with one exception.
One night I was walking down the street in Akasaka looking for
some place to eat, when I encountered a wonderful smell.
I decided to follow my nose to find the source of the smell and
eat there. The smells lead
me into an office building and up the stairs to a restaurant on the
second floor. It turned out
to be an Indian restaurant.
I ended up ordering Tandoori chicken and some Naan (an Indian bread).
The restaurant was rather small and I could see the cook making
the chicken and Naan in what I later learned was an authentic Tandoori
oven. The oven was round like a
barrel that was set upright. The chicken was on skewers and the Naan is
made by slapping the bread dough on the sides of the clay oven.
After telling him that I was planning to eat Japanese food, he asked me if I had ever eaten raw fish. I told him that I hadn’t but said I was willing to try it. Our trip to Hitachi City was an overnight trip. We took a series of trains to get there and stayed in a business hotel overnight. There was a restaurant in the hotel and that is where we ate. The restaurant was divided into two sections; one had a western décor with tables and chairs and the other had Japanese style low tables with bamboo mats on the floor. Initially we were going to be seated in the western section but I asked my host if we could eat in the Japanese section. After sitting on the floor, my host immediately talked with the waiter. Shortly thereafter the waiter came back with a sashimi plate and my host motioned for the waiter to set in down right in front of me and urged me to eat it. That I did and I was treated to the absolutely best raw fish that I have ever eaten. I clearly remember eating some translucent shrimp that had a rather sweet taste. My hosts were intently watching as I ate. It turns out that Japanese take great delight in watching a foreigner eat raw fish to see their reaction to eating raw fish for the first time.
When we returned to Tokyo, I told my host that I planned to try some Sushi. He suggested that I avoid ordering it at the hotel and that I should find a real sushi restaurant because they had the freshest fish. One night I was walking in Ginza and I spotted a small Sushi restaurant and decide to eat there. No one in the restaurant spoke English. The sushi chef would point things out and I would move my head up and down to say yes I would try it or I would shake it side to side to say no. The Japanese patrons loved seeing a foreigner there and they kept ordering Saki for me. It was obvious that I was providing great entertainment for them as they watched me ordering and eating the Sushi. I really pigged out on the Sushi but the total bill for the evening was a bit over $10 American as I recall. I have to admit my memory was a bit hazy on what I paid after drinking all the free Saki.
So what has this got to do with Thailand? Well I am getting there. While in Thailand, I have eaten mostly Thai food. It is wonderful food and I never got tired of eating it given the huge variety of dishes. At home I eat all kinds of cuisines; Thai, Mexican, Italian, Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese, German, and even a little American food. I normally like a variety of food but have not tired of eating Thai food.
I wish I could say the same about beer.
In the US, there is now a plethora of microbreweries that brew an
incredible number of beer styles.
There are ales, porters, stouts, IPAs, double IPAs, barleywine styles,
imperial stouts, Lambic, Belgian beer, Belgian style beers, Scottish
ales, Hefeweitzen,
and more. In Thailand
the beers are all lagers and I am not a lager fan.
Normally I drink ales.
Unfortunately there are only a few breweries in Thailand and they
all brew lagers.
The main ones are Singha and Chang but you can get Kloster in
some places. We would frequently
go out for a nightcap later in the evening.
After drinking these same beers night after night, I would get
tired of drinking these beers and would sometimes drink some Scotch.
On our last trip to Chiang Mai, I was looking though a tourist
guide in the hotel room and there was an ad for a German restaurant.
What really stuck out was not that they served German food but
that they had German beer on tap.
The ad indicated that they had some dark beers.
Seeing that, I told Lucia that this was the place we were going
to have dinner at that night.
It wasn’t for the food, it was for the beer.
I would normally first ask Lucia if it was okay, but it turned
out that she wanted a break from Thai food anyway.
She normally eats Thai food but she is westernized and, like me,
enjoys eating a large variety of cuisines.
We ate at the restaurant and the dark beer was a
real treat. Being a German
beer, it was probably a lager but it was like a drink of water after
being stranded in a desert for several days with no water.
But the most surprising thing about eating there was that they
served probably the best German food I have ever eaten.
I had ordered a sausage plate that contained a variety of German
sausages and they were all very tasty.
Lucia also loved her food.
Several days later, her son Paul came to Chiang Mai to spend some
time with us and she wanted to return to the same place to have the same
dish she had the first time.
I guess the moral of this story is that yes, when in Rome, do what the Romans do. But can anyone say the Romans only ate Roman (or was it Italian) food while they were busy feeding the Christians to the lions? It’s something to think about. But I am definitely a believer in eating the local cuisine and trying to blend in with the locals wherever I am.
There is more philosophical musings in the Blue Highways commentary.