Meal 500: A Landmark in the Movable Feast of Asia

We devour the Tasmanian rock oysters, attack the Canadian littleneck clams, gorge on the New Zealand green-lipped mussels and practically inhale the Norwegian cod. A second wind carries us through the scallops, tiger prawns, salmon and yabbies, crawfish-like creatures that taste like sweet prawns. Close to bursting, we plunge into the Australian lobsters.

This fresh seafood orgy is not without good reason: It isn’t every day you sit down to your 500th consecutive meal on the road.

It’s fitting that this milestone falls in Singapore, where Andrea and I have flown from Ko Samui, Thailand. This island city-state, located at the tip of the Malay Peninsula, is famous for its outstanding food. The venue for our 500th meal abroad is Blue Lobster, a trendy new restaurant in the Riverwalk, a complex of eateries on the Singapore River between Boat and Clarke quays. As we wrestle the mound of seafood before us, we reflect on the preceding 499 meals--the good, the bad and the unrecognizable.

On the whole, we’ve been impressed with the quality of fare brought to the table during the first half of our journey. On many days we’ve enjoyed tasty food served in spectacular settings, from the South Pacific to the Himalayas to the Gulf of Tonkin. We’ve even occasionally run into some good service.

For the most part, we’ve stuck to the local cuisine, eating chicken tikka in India, for example, or dal bhat, a lentil dish, in Nepal. This strategy produced a savory surprise a few weeks ago in Lijiang, China. We were just off the bus, tired and hungry, unwilling to forage far for food. We stumbled into a no-name street stall and sat on plastic stools at a round plastic table. The menu was in Chinese, and nobody spoke English. A man at a nearby table lifted noodles from a soup bowl with chopsticks. I pointed to the man and held up two fingers for the waitress, indicating we wanted whatever our neighbor was eating.

The cook emerged from the kitchen moments later bearing two big bowls of bubbling gray broth. On her next trip, she carried a tray of plates and bowls containing myriad ingredients: chicken pieces, raw pork slices, various greens and white noodles. I could not identify the other items: tiny raw eggs of some sort; a fleshy, ribbon-like substance; and some black wiggly things that looked like they might swim away from my chopsticks.

I figured you picked your own ingredients, but the cook dumped them all into our bowls. I watched the makings boil and simmer, then tentatively dipped a spoon into the caldron. It was delicious, one of the best meals I’d had in months. The tab for two, including tea, was less than $2. My only regret was that I did not know the name of my lunch, so I was unlikely to find it anywhere else in China.

It’s not always easy to sample the native cuisine. Many restaurants on the international tourist trail play it safe with menus like those at a T.G.I. Friday’s--pages and pages of selections to appeal to every palate but the local one. Not that we were looking, but we never found a restaurant in Vietnam that could pull off lasagna, beef stroganoff and tacos with equal aplomb. A general rule: the more Western the items on the menu, the less sumptuous the food. Many dishes are Western in name only. The “pizza” you spot on the menu can turn into a ketchup sandwich by the time it reaches the table.

Andrea has had a couple of memorable menu misunderstandings. At the Weilong Hotel in Kunming, China, she ordered the mushroom and bacon quiche. After a 45-minute wait, during which I finished my dinner and dessert, she was served a plate of mushroom caps sprinkled with bacon bits. Earlier on the trip, at a cafe in Nelson, New Zealand, she chose the “vege-burger,” expecting a patty of soybean or mushroom. Arriving instead was a garden salad spilling from a hamburger bun.

Yet for each time we’ve suddenly lost our appetites, there were dozens of days our taste buds were dancing with delirium. In Jodhpur, India, Andrea discovered lassi, a blended drink of yogurt and fresh fruit. To her delight, the creamy concoction has continued to pop up on menus across Asia.

Beautiful scenery makes food taste better, and the trip has offered it in abundant supply. We have been lucky to dine often on or near water. We feasted on fresh fish steps from the Pacific Ocean in Fiji; enjoyed stir-fry on the banks of the pretty Perfume River in Hue, Vietnam; and savored delectable curries on moonlit rooftop restaurants overlooking romantic Lake Pichola in Udaipur, India.

We’ve learned that our second most time-consuming activity during waking hours on this trip is eating. It is topped only by the many hours we spend waiting for the check. There must be a school in this part of the world where would-be waiters are taught to take your order, bring your food, then never again glance in your direction. I know it’s rude in many countries we’ve visited to make the customer feel even slightly rushed, but I’d quickly forgive the waiter who established eye contact with me at least once between breakfast and closing time. There have been some interminable meals when I feared that the next person to approach our table would be a doctor--coming to check for my pulse.

Ah, but a trip around the world is no time to be watching the clock. Besides, we’re adjusting to the pace. Most nights, like this one in Singapore, we’re happy to linger over whatever gets served up on this movable feast. Five hundred meals on the road sounds like a lot, but I figure we’re good for 500 more.

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Did you miss a Wander Year installment? The entire series since it began in January can be found on The Times’ Web site at https://www.latimes.com/travel/wander.