I’ve heard it said several times that smell evokes the strongest memories out of all the five senses. It certainly makes sense: many places I’ve visited are now in my mind strongly associated with a particular odour. When I think of Paris, for example, I immediately remember the slight whiff of burnt rubber that pervades the metro system. It’s a bizarre memory, but it’s a smell that featured heavily in my daily life in the city, where I spent at least an hour every morning commuting.
It’s perhaps no surprise then that food also plays a prominent role in most of my travel memories – after all, taste is closely linked to smell (and, what’s more, I love to eat!). When I think of Barcelona, the rich flavours of the chorizo al horno and the lemon-soaked prawns I used to gorge on in my favourite tapas restaurant (Ciutat Comtal on Rambla de Catalunya, if you’re interested) immediately spring to mind. Conversely, whenever my boyfriend remembers our recent trip to Japan he can’t help thinking about the taste of what he refers to as ‘the tentacles’ (deep-fried, battered octopus legs which are a speciality of the island of Miyajima) – unfortunately not a pleasant memory for him. But he does have some fond food-related memories of our travels together too: the delicate sword fish carpaccio we enjoyed at a an ivy-clad courtyard restaurant in Certaldo Alto, Tuscany; and the steak he tucked into in South Africa’s Cape Winelands, which he maintains to this day is the best slab of meat he’s ever tasted, and the meaty gyoza dumplings which warmed us up after a day spent searching for snow monkeys in the freezing Japanese Alps.
My recent trip to Madrid is a perfect example of the importance of exploring a place through food. As you might know, I haven’t always got on well with Madrid, thanks to a series of minor disaster which have marred my previous stays in the Spanish capital. But I now have many happy memories of the city and, at the risk of sounding greedy, they’re mostly linked to eating. The weird but wonderful apple and blue cheese-filled pasta I sampled at vegetarian restaurant Isla del Tesoro (trust me, it will convert even the most hardened carnivores); the enormous plate of chorizo I worked my through at a tiny and rather shabby pavement café in the Retiro, accompanied by a glass of cheap red wine and a dose of sunshine; the crisp, sugar-sprinkled skin and soft, doughy inside of the churros I enjoyed at a street stall hidden among the crooked alleyways of the old city… I could go on, but it’s making my stomach rumble so I’ll stop there.
So what about your food memories? What tastes and smells remind you of certain places? And what are you culinary must-eats around the globe?
I agree that food makes up such an important part of my memories of a place!
Smell that stand out in memory are the heady smell of shisha pipes in Bahrain & the smell of smoke and guns in Thailand after the red shirt protests in April. My number one food memory has to be the night markets in Taiwan, with thousands of teems arriving on mopeds to try the many weird and wonderful foods available.
Wow – some amazing memories (and perhaps rather scary in one instance!).