Food can be a source of estrangement for travelers: it can puzzle the taste buds and churn the stomach. It can make you wonder at human ingenuity and adaptability.There are very few things in life as daunting or as exciting as the prospect of a new way of eating.
Food can also take the traveler home in an instant. Take New Yorkers’ love affair with fruit. You see it everywhere: watermelons shining like verdant bowling balls; peaches flushed like young lovers; myriad cherry stems poking out of wooden crates…
I am back in the market of my childhood in Madrid holding my mother’s hand as she crams her shopping trolley full of fruit; a kind fruit-monger hands me a strawberry, an apricot, or a handful of grapes, then pats me on the head.
There is so much life and love in fruit. No question.
Fruit outside corner shop in Brooklyn
A Fistful of Olives 