Editor’s Letter: More Than Ever, We’re Hungry for New Experiences

I wager you all know the feeling of staying in the midst of some regular activity when suddenly a extensive-overlooked memory pierces your consciousness, arriving with these kinds of urgency and clarity that it feels like it must be making an attempt to inform you a little something. Various months into the pandemic, I started off getting this practical experience with recollections of meals I have eaten close to the entire world. On a very long generate, all I could believe about was fiery tacos in an open up-air market in Mérida, Mexico. Cleansing the kitchen, I flashed to a hearty bowl of gukbap, a rice soup with pork bone, that I inhaled in a brightly lit alley in Busan, South Korea. In the park with the young children, I remembered the lángos—hubcap-dimension discs of fried bread topped with potatoes and cheese—that we requested on the shores of Lake Balaton, in Hungary. Occasionally I would remember meals at fancy restaurants, like wild boar at Steirereck in Vienna’s Stadtpark on just one pre-youngsters trip with my wife, or the famed ants and Amazon River fish I ate on a solo reservation at D.O.M. in São Paulo. But more frequently I found I yearned for individuals humbler culinary ordeals that built me really feel like element of the material of a put.

I was hungry—not just for the flavors of the environment, but for the feeling that only food can supply of getting transported and connected. I guess you’ve got felt that starvation oneself above the previous two decades. Even if you are not the kind of traveler who tends to make restaurant reservations right before booking your hotels, I’m guaranteed your palate guides at least some of your vacation setting up. Whether or not you are nevertheless figuring out what to do this summer time or concocting schemes for next calendar year, allow this issue’s exploration of the evolving food items cultures of some of our preferred places, enable you decide where to go. From pumpkin soup with mussels in Luberon, France, and jerk pork cooked in excess of pimento wood in Boston Bay, Jamaica, to pastry pockets of spiced lamb at an Ethiopian cafe in Charlotte, North Carolina, you can find a food right here to feed your soul.

This report appeared in the July/August 2021 difficulty of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the journal below.