Travel in the Kitchen.
A Modern Travelogue For Pandemic Times
I love to travel. I love to eat. I love to travel to eat. This was going to be another year to do just that, but 2020 definitely put a snag in everyone’s travel plans including mine. Personally, I had planned on attending Le Cordon Bleu in Mexico City to learn traditional Mexican cookery, but that didn’t happen. I had quit my full-time job in February and had a good amount of catering/personal chef jobs lined up to fill my time before leaving for Mexico. Covid-19 hit hard in March and all those sweet opportunities dried up instantly due to lockdown measures. Any money I had saved for my professional development in Mexico City was being drained for rent + food.
I definitely had several internal mental breakdowns (because if they were external I’m sure my boyfriend would have freaked out). I had no job or job prospects. No travel to look forward to. Just the four walls of my home + an occasional trip to the grocery store every 2 weeks. How was I going to cope? I kept reading about people’s adventures with baking sourdough bread + trying to cook every single cooking project they’ve always wanted to tackle. I was not one of those people. I knew how to cook bread (including how to make a starter from scratch-definitely, not a humble brag...just saying). I also cooked things I was excited to try whenever I wanted to regularly.
Cooking at the start of the pandemic was more for my mental health than anything, but quickly segued into something else. I found a loophole for traveling while avoiding people, planes, + the Rona. I would travel in my kitchen through recipes and ingredients. I “flew” to New Orleans through a hearty bowl of gumbo, China by way of fat little homemade dumplings, + experienced the damp misty harbor of San Francisco in a bowl of cioppino. I traveled far + wide in my tiny kitchen seeking deep flavors + connections. Sometimes I wanted to just travel locally to the Upper West Side to grab a plump chewy bagel, but couldn’t so I took to making my own rendition of New York’s holy blessed sacrament.
As months flew by, rates went down, and restrictions were lifted I found myself still seeking those adventures in my kitchen even though now I could find these foods in the struggling restaurants outside my door. We ordered as much as we could to help support local businesses, but also I couldn’t rely on takeout as a means to feed us. I traveled to Jackson Heights, Queens, and went to my favorite supermarket, Patel Brothers. This local gem has pretty much every South East Asian vegetable + spices that you could want. I stocked up my cart with over 20 varying bags of spices because I love to buy more than I need (it’s really a problem). I figured when winter approached + a possible second lockdown happened I could continue “traveling” wherever I wanted.
I plan on making a couple of roundtrips to India, Thailand, Italy, Japan + wherever else my kitchen passport allows me to go. As I travel I’ll keep documenting with photos, newsletters, + souvenirs in the form of memories.
