travel tip: cultural anthropology

Hit Up the Grocery Store

If you sent 20 members of the Bon Appétit staff to different destinations around the globe, it wouldn’t matter if one was in Tel Aviv, one in Montevideo, and another in Chengdu, we’d all end up at the same place: the supermarket. It’s our own brand of culinary anthropology. Want to really know what makes a country’s belly growl? Take a spin up and down the aisles and you’ll find out that Norway has a thing for brown cheese, Portugal will put any creature under the sea in a can, and in Thailand there seems to be a different style of fish sauce for every dish. Supermarkets offer a window into locals’ day- to-day lives—something even the best museums and monuments simply can’t. —Andrew Knowlton, editor-at-large

via {bon appétit}