Many foods are rightly associated with geography. It's nothing to expect excellent tomato sauce in an authentic restaurant in Tuscany or top-notch sushi in a trendy Shibuya bistro. Real culinary adventures happen in odd corners of the world. When a memorable meal happens in an unassuming place, the sheer surprise and novelty can make the experience that much better. It's often downright surreal to find an amazing flavor in some middle American gas station or behind some forgotten door in a foreign country where it has no earthly business. Here are three stories of my own weird food finds around the globe.
It's not exactly contentious to claim that the best chicken-fried steak in the world comes from Texas, but where exactly in Texas I found my own favorite iteration of the dish was a bit surprising. It wasn't in a home kitchen or a famous family eatery. I was on a cross-country road trip with my brother during the dog days of summer 2007. We found ourselves in a particularly desolate patch of the south-central segment of the state, the region where it's literally a hundred miles of desert between fragments of civilization. We found a motel at a truck stop that consisted of nothing else but an abandoned silo, some gas pumps and a restaurant called "Restaurant". It was the kind of greasy, deserted place that somehow manages to make even the fountain soda taste grimy. From the look of my brother's burger, I'd say that nothing on the menu qualified as food in most places, but damned if my chicken-fried steak wasn't the Platonic ideal of what the dish should be. Fork tender, thin but structurally sound and perfectly seasoned, that CFS remains one of the best meals I've ever eaten.
Speaking of thin, fried things, I once ate a pancake that transported me to a lower realm of paradise. Where did I find it? A little-known lounge called Jan's in New City, Jerusalem. Given all the religious and political tension of the region, Jerusalem isn't really famous for being a great food town, which is a crying shame. All told, I didn't have one bad meal during my entire ten-day stay in the City on the Hill, but Jan's was far and away the best among them. Even without the amazing atmosphere of sitting on piles of pillows in an intimate international setting, that special dessert pancake would have still been incredible. Golden brown, complex in its sweetness and paired with a stern cup of Turkish coffee, it was a little slice of heaven.
In Columbus, Ohio where I grew up there were a surprising number of great restaurants in the 1990's. Expansion, corporate chains and a down economy put a lot of them out of business by the early 00's, but they were nice while the lasted. One such restaurant was a warm, friendly tavern called Christopher's. It wasn't a particularly fancy place, just beer and regular American fare. Not exactly the place one would expect to find a stunning variation on sesame chicken wings. This classically Chinese dish just happened to come alive at Christopher's. The homemade sauce was zesty and not too sweet, the wings themselves cooked to perfection.