Sharing Your Vacation with a Dinner Menu

Call me a fuddy-duddy, but I don’t get the appeal of text-sharing photos of vacation meals. And it doesn’t get any better as a selfie of you leaning over your plate. What about instead bringing your vacation home with a travel-inspired dinner party? If you truly want to share, I think that’s a lot better way to engage their senses and rekindle your own memories.

I still remember a cold cherry soup I ate in the mountain village in Poland in 1992 and the fresh salmon I enjoyed in the Scottish Highlands in 2006. Then there was the fantastic escalivada and grilled lamb at an out-of-the-way restaurant in Barcelona circa 1997.

Eater, the digital site covering food and dining, recently featured a story by writer Devra Ferst on travel-inspired dinner events. She shares her own experience of such a party after a two-month solo journey to the Balkans. She referred to her own photos to assemble the menu featuring her version of stuffed grape leaves, roasted peppers with Kaymak from Sarajevo, smoky Macedonian eggplant dip, and a salad of arugula dressed with pumpkin seed oil. She finished off the meal with poppy seed ice cream with sour cherry compote, inspired by a dessert from Belgrade, Serbia.

Ferst also shared her research of similar gatherings by other travelers who shared their journeys with friends and family around the table back home: the toy company exec who hosted a Greek dinner party after a trip to Santorini and a clinical psychologist who has hosted some 20 such parties over the years. Caroline Eden, a travel writer who wrote the fantastic book Black Sea: Dispatches and Recipes Through Darkness and Light published in 2018, organized two supper clubs to raise funds for Ukraine. Guests discussed the Russian invasion over a meal of pickled mushrooms, challah, and a Black Sea borek using a recipe from her book.

Singapore-based food writer Anette Tan told Ferst that she just likes the idea of sharing a slice of her holidays with friends and family. She thinks of it as sharing an experience.  “…Sometimes kind of encouraging them to go. It’s a recommendation in physical form.” Tan related that when she found it difficult to source some ingredients, she learned to buy them there and carry them back home.

Thinking about trying such an approach yourself? Extensive kitchen experience isn’t always necessary for such a meal, but planning is. Here are a few tips I picked up. First, make sure that you can source the ingredients you’ll need before inviting your guests – and that they’re seasonal and available. Review what you ate and enjoyed on that journey and judiciously determine if you have a few food-related photos of your destination. Assuming that the ingredients you may need are available and fresh, consider how you can help your guests share your experience. Call it the theatre of a meal, when you share a detail, background, or interesting anecdote about each dish. Can you play music indigenous or popular in the region to accompany your dinner party? And how about serving pieces? Maybe consider specialty cheeses or specialty drinks. What’s the typical toast from that destination?

Mrs. Farmboy and I have hosted a dinner featuring dishes from Hawaii, planned to warm our guests during a New England winter night. It was complete with Hawaiian decorations, leis, and music, with a roaring fire to replace the warm Hawaiian sun. Like all such events, it was an opportunity to cook with ingredients used from a location several time zones away – and a way to give back to the places and people you have visited.

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