Sunday, November 2, 2008

You Are What You Eat


Yesterday we all went out to celebrate our quarter year in the Land of Opportunity.

Food is always a wonderful gauge of cultural assimilation. I've seen sweet and sour frogs' legs on several Chinese restaurant menus in Paris, and you can get curried sausages at chippies across Berlin. I've even come across (no pun intended) curry- and rhubarb-and-custard-flavoured condoms in a vending machine at Gatwick Airport. Last night's trip to the California Pizza Kitchen was a superb example of such culinary eclecticism.

Although we did not have the classic spaghetti with meatballs which most Americans will swear is genuinely Italian, our exquisite meal was definitely a case of adapting foreign cuisine to suit local palates. All of us had a pizza; my daughter Anna had a Hawaiian, my son Tom a barbecue chicken pizza, Laurence's had a pile of guacamole on the top, while I had a Thai chicken pizza that featured the following classic Mediterranean ingredients: beansprouts, peanuts and sesame sauce.

All thoroughly delicious, but I do wonder what Italian tourists must make of it.

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