Pelikanos Clam Chowder and Other Travel Food Memories

One of the fun things about traveling is exploring the food available where you are. The appetizer table above was from our trip to Provence.

In France my favorite thing was the mussels cooked in wine and served with fries that you dip in the cooking liquid. They came in a large black pot with the mussles on top and the liquid below. The fries were on the side and piping hot and crisp. Scooping the mussels out of one shell with the other and then into you mouth was the way eating them was done by the other diners, so I did it too. Fun!

We also had a really lovely meal with Naomi at her home in St. Saternin les Apt in Provence and another at a restaurant just down the street from her house. The most memorable thing about that was the fiery alcoholic beverage marc served at the restaurant  and, for dinner at home, that you have to purchase the baguette early in the day because they are gone by the time the shops open again in the afternoon, so some planning is required.

The cheeses and pate' were also amazing, but then all the food in France is outstanding. The one pictured above was a very soft cheese, like a brie, but covered with chestnut leaves. The baguettes are the best I've ever tasted, including those I've made myself. Must be the flour...or the water...or the bakers skills?

 In Ireland I tried pub food and enjoyed it, tried scones and was surprised at how long the ones with currants lasted without going stale, and had the traditional full Irish breakfast many times. Still not sure about those blood sausages for breakfast.

Sweetie talks about his time in the Peace Corps and eating breadfruit (which apparently is pretty starchy and not something he enjoyed) and piles of rice, plus whale blubber...canned whale blubber which was fairly inexpensive for protein but still somewhat expensive for most families. He was given a larger piece as an honor, so had to somehow swallow it and look pleased. Fresh fish, when they could get it, was his favorite.

Traveling with children is another thing all together. Katherine as a youngster had very timid food preferences. As a matter of fact, the first time we went to Hawaii she had a burger for her meal the first four meals because it was something she recognized and she knew what it would taste like.

Later she tried and enjoyed fresh pineapple and fresh mango and passion fruit, plus lots of other dishes as time went on. Now she tries almost anything and can enjoy spicy foods that I have trouble with.

Max had an adventurous palette. I think he would try anything probably because he was always curious about everything. When we went to Seattle he talked us into buying fairly expensive fresh King Crab. Of course once he had tasted fresh the frozen kind was disappointing.

On our trip to Victoria, BC, we took a short boat ride around the harbor. The owner and skipper got into conversation with Max and apparently Max asked him about the best place to have clam chowder. We had been doing clam chowder tasting in a few other places during the trip and the goal seemed to be to find the best clam chowder. The skipper told him that Pelikanos, about a half hour drive from Victoria proper, had the best to be found.

Fortunately we had come over to Victoria on the car ferry and had a car. Naturally we took a trip one Sunday to Pelikanos. It turned out to be a fairly small restaurant run by one family. The clam chowder was so good that it is still the gold standard for others to be judged by. It was creamy, filled with lots of clam pieces, just thick enough, lightly seasoned so that the clams were the star and had just the right amount of potatoes. On the way back into Victoria we stopped and watched a local soccer game and enjoyed knowing that we had had a less touristy experience than if we had stayed in the city. In Victoria itself the favorite restaurant was a Greek place near our hotel. I've always loved Greek food and theirs was delicious.

Speaking of Victoria, it is a wonderful place to have tea. The usual place is in the big hotel but we walked through and decided that it was a bit too fancy for a young boy to be faced with, so we went to a local tea room where the tea pots had knitted cozies to keep them warm and the fare came on plates instead of fancy tiered trays. I suspect that the scones were every bit as good at at the Queen Victoria and the tea was certainly bracing.

What fun food and travel stories would you like to share?

Travel and Food and Voting

As we continue to explore food memories of mine, I think it's time to turn to travel and the food memories that come with it. When I was really young there weren't a lot of fast food places the way there are now. You could go for hours without seeing a place to eat and there was no huddle at exits of Burger King and Taco Bell, McDonalds and IHOP. When you had to make an effort to find a place to eat while on the road, it was more of an experience. It could be a good experience or a terrible one. Fast food places are usually franchises and that means that they keep the food the same and the standards the same. Predictable but boring. Local places can be greasy spoons or they can have excellent food or anything in between. No matter what, they are rarely boring.

About the only place I can think of that was a franchise restaurant in the 50s was Howard Johnson's Restaurants. They were usually located near the freeway or turnpike or main road in the area and their portions were fairly generous. That was on the East Coast so I couldn't tell you about other places in the country. Since eating out in general was too expensive if you had a party of eight or more like my full family did, the only time I remember eating at a Howard Johnson's was with a friend and her family.

We had fried clams. They did have a nice seafood flavor but were mostly breading and were really chewy. That's about all I remember. There were fries and tartar sauce and maybe a leaf of iceberg lettuce or two. I love seafood, but this wasn't worth repeating.

On the other hand, Dad took a few of us fishing at Chincoteague Island one summer and we ate fish at a local place, but I don't remember the name of the place. It was clean but not at all fancy, with oilcloth as tablecloths and paper napkins. The fried fish and hush puppies were outstanding, moist inside and crispy outside and full of flavor! We also were allowed to order soda to drink, which was a rare treat. A recent meal at Courtney's, a seafood place in Maryland near the Chesapeake with Sweetie, Kate, my younger brother and the pirates was very similar. Really great seafood, but not fancy at all. The boat in the second photo was pulled up to the dock right by Courtney's...I think the owner was going in to have some of that wonderful seafood.

In the early 70s when I was traveling a five state territory on the East Coast for my job, I always tried to eat at local places because the food was usually better and often cheaper than in the restaurants that were part of the hotels and motels I stayed at. Blue Plate specials at small restaurants were usually an excellent choice and I ate some great short ribs, meatloaf, stuffed peppers and fried chicken this way.

In the morning I would usually eat breakfast at the lunch counter of the drugstore I called on first. I usually just had eggs and bacon and toast and coffee or tea, but the fun part was listening to the locals discuss the issues of the day, particularly local concerns. I always had a morning paper to look at so that it wasn't obvious that I was listening in on their conversations. Since I traveled to big cities and tiny rural towns and everything in between it was an education. As a matter of fact, I thought of it as my version of grad school. I still remember the amazement of the Pennsylvania Dutch folks who made an old fashioned ice cream that had chew to it when I paid a fair amount to have some wrapped up with dry ice so that I could take some home to Dad in Virginia. He used to talk about the ice cream of his youth that was so much like that. At the time most grocery store ice cream was pumped full of air. He was pretty amazed, too, but delighted with this vanilla ice cream with little specks of vanilla seeds and a firm, chewy texture and rich, rich flavor. There was a lot of butter fat in that ice cream!

I still think about what I learned, especially these days when my country seems so divided politically. The concerns of city folks were often very different from those in the suburbs and very much different from people in the rural areas. I think part of our current dysfunction stems from the fact that we don't get exposure to what ordinary, regular people are really interested in or worried about in the various sectors of our society and country. We tend to hang out with and hear from those who think like we do and the internet makes it easy to be cut off from differing views. Travel is an antidote, especially if you leave the interstate and try eating at local places. Just remember to carry some reading material to cover your eavesdropping!

If you live in the U.S.A., I hope that you voted if you are eligible to vote. It is a hard won right and we are pretty lucky to have the right to vote and make our voices heard. It may not be perfect, but people from all over the world are envious of our freedoms, including this one. If the polls are still open and you haven't voted...why are you here reading this?...go VOTE.