The Bizarre Truth (29 page)

Despite some less-than-ideal beverage experiences, every once in a while I come across a drink that just flips my trigger. Usually, it’s the simplest stuff. The coffee in Nicaragua or Ethiopia and Taiwan’s tea are arguably the best in the world. I lost my mind over Ethiopia’s mango smoothies—no ice cream, yogurt, or ice, just a puree of massive, juicy, fiber-free mangoes. Served chilled with a glass and a straw, this is a tremendous drinking pleasure. And I can’t forget drinking fresh coconut water straight from the shell in the Philippines, which quenched my thirst like no other. Skyr shakes in Iceland, avocado shakes in Chile—you name it, every country has some killer quaffables.

However, when it comes to satisfying drinks, I’m a self-proclaimed soda pop junkie. As someone who doesn’t drink alcohol anymore, what do I have left? So despite all these natural, one-of-a-kind experiences, I recall a bottled commercial soda pop beverage as being my all-time favorite. On the road, especially in hot climates, I down water like it’s going out of style. There’s always that
stay hydrated, stay hydrated
mantra replaying in my brain. At the end of my first day in Tanzania, I was just thirstier than all get-out and way over drinking more water. In the afternoon we settled in at a small café in Arusha, and a waiter asked me if I wanted a Stoney. I’d never heard of such a thing. He looked at me and asked, “You’ve never heard of a Stoney Tangawizi?”

With that, I demanded a Stoney immediately, if for no other
reason than it had the most fun name I’ve ever heard. This large, oversize brown bottle, which looked like the old-school 7-Up bottles, soon sat on the table in front of me. The curvy bottle stood fourteen inches high, the thick glass sanded down around the outer edges, worn from being racked and cleaned so many times and rebottled. And there on the label, in beautiful yellow enameled writing, it said “Stoney Tangawizi.”

Most folks opt to sip straight from the bottle, often with a straw. I like to pour it in a glass over ice, or chug it straight. It’s a perfect blend of ginger beer, ginger ale, and a very unfruity 7-Up, with a nutty, sweet aftertaste. It has almost a sarsaparilla or root beer quality in the finish. If you’re really thirsty and you’re powering down a whole Stoney, the four flavors play in your mouth like a quartette. I would kill for an ice-cold bottle of Stoney right now; it’s definitely my favorite drink in the world. While I did find some Stoney in cans in South Africa, the version that hails from the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Tanzania does it the best. And just my luck, you can’t find it anywhere else in the world.

The other bottled beverage that I am just nuts about is Cuba’s Tu-Kola. The Cuban government isn’t fond of most American products, although they do import a few. For the most part, Cubans are self-sustaining and derive a sense of honor and pride from producing almost everything on their own. Coke products aren’t sold anywhere, save a handful of hotels, where they stock one or two cans in the minibars. Instead, the whole country drinks the state-owned beverage company’s product, which is Tu-Kola. They make a lemon-lime version, they make a Tu-Kola Light, which is their diet cola, and they make a conventional Tu-Kola—it rocks.

I remember RC Cola with fondness. Slightly sweeter, less robust and acidic than its rival Coca-Cola, this soda was a hit on the East Coast during my childhood. RC Cola tried to compete with Pepsi and Coke but never really made it. I’m not big on conspiracy theories, but I think whoever created RC Cola was smuggled into Cuba to create Tu-Kola. Slightly more acidic and lemony than RC,
this cola is made with natural cane sugar, which gives it a level of sweetness and a balance that you don’t find in the domestic Coca-Cola. After spending the day in a hot ’57 Oldsmobile exploring Havana, there is just something simple and rewarding about popping open a bottle of Fidel’s finest cola.

I love pleasant surprises. Often they are the familiar food memories that come to me when I’m out of country rather than the shocking surprises or the anticipated foods. As much as I love Peking duck at Quan Jude in Beijing, I expected it to be good. When I was seventeen years old, my friend Toby and I spent much of the summer on the Cycladic island of Sifnos, in Greece. We lived with a family on the island, and almost every day we ate at the local pizza parlor. Keep in mind that the Greek and Italian varieties of pizza hail from completely different families. The pizza we found in Sifnos started with a cooked piece of round dough, brushed with crushed tomatoes, salty Greek goat’s cheese, and oregano, and drizzled with olive oil as it left the oven. It’s more like a seasoned focaccia than anything else. As a born-and-bred New Yorker, I’d like to think I’m an authority on great pizza, and I’ve thought about that delicious Sifnos pizza at least once a month for the last thirty years. One day I will get back there. Nothing would be a more pleasant surprise than discovering that more than three decades later, that Sifnos pizza joint is still putting out their simple, unexpected culinary gems.

aking part in ceremonies and rituals makes for magical adventures. Often people believe you must travel to the ends of the earth for these types of experiences, but I can tell you, there are some odd experiences to be had in the United States. Ask anybody who has experienced the crowning of Princess Kay of the Milky Way at the Minnesota State Fair in Minnesota—which is celebrated by carving a bust of her likeness out of a giant block of butter. Visit a New Age shaman in Sedona, Arizona, where experiencing a sacred Navajo sunrise ceremony conducted by a mystical healer will leave you feeling like you’ve just retuned from another planet.

My feeling is that diving into another culture face-first gives me the most bang for my buck. There is no better way to gain a unique perspective than to share a meal or participate in a native ceremony or ritual. It’s these sometimes challenging and often humorous experiences that make up my favorite travel memories. Since it combines both food and formal socializing mechanism (ritual), the odd sauna-meets-barbecue restaurant experience just outside Seoul, Korea, is at the top of my list of crazy travel stories.

The Chamsutgama Restaurant sits in a suburb of Seoul and features some of the country’s most traditional cuisines: barbecue. Pork belly is one of the “it” girls of the moment when it comes to ingredients in fancy American kitchens, but Koreans have been cooking up the stuff for ages. This cut works especially
well for barbecue because of its high fat content. When cooked low and slow, it melts in your mouth. Chamsutgama serves some of the best examples of this classic meal, scorching the belly in a 2,000-degree kiln. The meat is then sliced, placed back on the grill, and slid into that oven for just a few seconds. The strips are cut with scissors and served to you tableside with platters of vegetables and loads of ban chan—cups of delicious pickled dishes that Koreans are famous for, especially as accompaniments to their barbecue. Patrons dine in an outdoor pavilion, where tables are outfitted with small grills in the center, perfect for crisping up little pieces of the pork belly.

Despite the fact that Chamsutgama serves some of the best barbecue in the country, the place is known better for premeal rituals than the food itself. You don’t walk into Chamsutgama, grab a table, and start eating. First, you have to walk through a locker room and register for a sauna. While breaking a sweat before dining isn’t required, the restaurant strongly encourages it. So instead of telling your hostess, “Zimmern, party of four,” you grab a locker key and dress up in orange cotton pajamas that look like a cross between a tae kwon do dobok and a prison uniform, with big black stenciled letters on the back stating: DO NOT REMOVE FROM PREMISES—in Korean characters, of course. I learned what the letters translated to in English as I was walking out the door with my pj’s clutched under my arm. Someday I will have to learn how to stop stealing orange pajamas from Korean barbecue restaurants.

Once you are dressed in your outfit, an orange napkin is placed on your head. Little ladies prowl the area just outside the men’s locker room, being sure to correctly tie the napkin, twisting the edges, then tucking them in and under the headdress, giving you a handsome Princess Leah–style look. It might not be all that attractive, but it keeps the sweat out of your eyes. A long wooden walkway connects the locker rooms to fantastic twenty-foot-high domed edifices made of clay and brick. These kilns house giant
bonfires that are connected to a number of similar domes through a pipe system. Saunas vary in temperature—from “damn, that’s pretty hot” to “holy crap, I think my face is melting” hot. What can I say? There is a temperature for every taste when it comes to the Chamsutgama.

The experience of sweating to the point of exhaustion is uniquely Korean. Referred to as Han Jeung Mak, Koreans have implemented this practice for the past five centuries. It’s meant to draw sickness out of the body, just like any other type of sweating ritual. However, I’ve never seen this ritual tied to a meal before. Profuse sweating before dinner isn’t something I’d ever considered, but I liked it. I was exhausted and spent when I crawled out of my sauna, I drank a ton of water, and twenty minutes later, I was reregulated physically, and boy was I hungry. Best of all, I didn’t have to change out of my pj’s to go eat!

Of course, food rituals can be a lot more serious. One of the most beautiful and poignant ones that I’ve ever experienced was in Bolivia on the shores of Lake Titicaca. Regarded by the Incas as the birthplace of their civilization, Lake Titicaca is the highest navigable lake in the world. I headed to this sacred site to take part in something called an apthapi, local lingo for a traditional Andean potluck picnic.

We ventured to a farmer’s home to help a family prepare their contribution to this community-wide picnic. Families sit on blankets knitted in the style of their region or their tribal division. Cholitas, or Bolivian women who wear traditional bowler hats, colorful skirts, and sashes, bring a different dish to share with the group. It’s more or less their version of a Minnesota potluck, minus the green bean hot dish.

The meal took place at the farmhouse we visited. The home was very small, and our meal preparation spilled from the kitchen into the sleeping quarters. To get anywhere, you had to step over people prepping their dishes on the dirt floor. My favorite dish to prepare and eat was the quinoa dumplings. In recent years, this grain has
garnered a lot of attention as a superfood in the United States, but I’d yet to see the traditional Bolivian preparation. Cholitas sit on the floor, grinding the quinoa grain on large stones. Eventually, they create dumplings by combining the ground grain with water. The thumb-size dumplings are rolled out by hand, then stamped with a thumbprint on the ends. Next, they are steamed in hand-woven wicker baskets placed over pots of boiling water. The sweet, nutty flavor reminded me of an earthy bran flake and served as the perfect accompaniment to the rest of the meal. I especially loved it with the homemade farmer’s cheese and pan-broiled llama.

Of course, with that many cooks in the kitchen, there was no room to eat inside. We had perfect weather for our apthapi: a thirty-three-degree, icy rainstorm, complete with hail. But everyone pressed on. At this traditional meal, the food is eaten off the ground, literally spilled out of the pots onto woven blankets. I first tried Lake Titicaca trout at the apthapi, a freshwater fish that comes from an absolutely pristine body of water, making its meat sweet and pale white. We also had Ispis, a snack food of the area’s indigenous people. Ispis are tiny fish, fried whole, salted, and served with all sorts of different goodies. I ate it with steamed root vegetables, dumplings made of ground quinoa, homemade cheese, broiled llama meat, and chunos—putrefied, rotten, steamed black potatoes. We dined on all these goodies al fresco, but I couldn’t resist pulling some of the fish out of the frying pan in the cooking hut. Dee-lish.

I guess a word of explanation about chunos is probably in order. Here’s a random piece of knowledge to throw into your
Jeopardy!
file—did you know the potato originated in the Andes? It’s true, although we rarely see Bolivian potatoes in our produce sections. Bolivia’s Alto Plano region, the high area above La Paz at the foothills of the Andes, is known for its perfect potato-growing climate. However, given its high altitude, most nights dip below freezing, even in the summer. When it’s especially chilly, farmers
will actually freeze-dry their potatoes. Eventually, these tubers are rehydrated in soups or through steaming, and the end result is fairly edible. Chunos, however, are a different ball of wax. Farmers spread out these potatoes on the hillsides that face the sun. At night, they freeze. During the day, they defrost. After nearly a week of this cycle, the potatoes rot and turn black. Trapped in their frozen, dried phase, they can last for as long as twenty-five years—and trust me, every single one I ate tasted like it. Just before I headed to the apthapi, I spent time with another farmer, who showed me part of the chuno-making process. Stomping on a pile of them with your feet was certainly the most fun. It’s actually less of a stomp and more of a rolling technique used to slip the skins off the rotting potatoes. I did one batch myself, so somewhere in Bolivia in the next twenty-five years, someone will eat rotted potatoes that have seen the bottoms of my feet—just hope it isn’t you.