Hal’s Three Rules for Culinary Tourism – Part Four
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APEX contributor Jordan Yerman explores the rise in culinary tourism in a four-part web series, released every Friday starting April 3, 2015. In this final instalment Yerman speaks with food and drink writer Hal B. Kleins on his experiences as a culinary traveler.
Journalist Hal B. Klein has made it his mission to explore and document Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’s rapidly-emerging culinary scene. His work has been featured everywhere from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to NPR’s All Things Considered, and he penned the award-winning On the Rocks column. It wasn’t long before his love of travel met his love of great food, and it was love-love at first sight.
Culinary tourism and paying the rent have overlapped, and Klein has refined his technique for juggling travel, eating, foodstagrams and storytelling. After visiting Italy and Hungary to plunge deep into their food and wine scenes, he spoke with us to share his experiences as a culinary traveler. Whether you write about food for a living or just love to share photos of your next meal, Klein has much to teach, so grab a pen. And a fork.
Adventure Finds You
Klein’s first major culinary-travel foray was to Italy. “I went because I wanted to go to the Slow Food Biannual Conference, and I’ve never been to Italy, either. So it was kind of a good excuse to go, and I knew I was going to write something about it, but I wasn’t sure what it was going to be.”
Turns out that the conference itself wasn’t the story. While there, Klein met the folks behind Acetaia del Cristo, producers of authentic Northern Italian balsamic vinegar, and that was the story:
Mr. Barbieri had suggested that I stick my pinkie inside a 165-year-old juniper-wood barrel. I did, coating my finger with thick, mahogany-black fluid. I tasted it: sweet, lush, acidic, alpine.
“You will taste that for a long time,” he said.
Travel journalism is a tricky business: Sometimes you travel to write, and sometimes you travel and then write. When you travel for food, it’s a lot like traveling to cover any other topic: You strike gold in the unlikeliest of places. The trick is to set yourself up to find those places.
Team Up
When Klein headed to Hungary, he was joined by one of Pittsburgh’s top chefs, as well as one of the city’s top bartenders. A writer, a chef and a mixologist: That’s a recipe for either a reality show or an action-comedy. “While I was there, I pitched a story about the wine,” Klein says. Indeed, Hungary’s wine region “kind of lost its place in the world” after two World Wars, and “now there’s this renewed interest in it,” he explains.
Klein’s first culinary travel tip is to travel with like-minded individuals. “It helps to travel with people who are on the same wavelength as you,” he said. Klein and his confederates were all about sharing dishes, exploring nooks and crannies and learning how the sausage is made.
A photo posted by Hal B. Klein (@halbklein) on
Say (Artisanal) Cheese!
Klein’s second tip: Travel light. He doesn’t bring much with him besides a notebook and his phone.
“I just travel with my iPhone now. As long as you manage the light, you can take really, really good photos with your iPhone.” Klein said that food photography is well-suited to camera phones, since the subject tends not to move (unless you’re eating something truly exotic). Besides the ability to shoot close-up and macro photos with a tap of the finger, “It’s just less to carry, which is nice.”
Prepare Pre-Departure
Lay the groundwork preparation is Klein’s third rule. “The thing I learned, especially on the trip to Hungary,” says Klein, “[is] the more connections you can make in advance, if you can find the right sort of person to guide you, the easier it’s gonna be.” Through the Slow Food Conference in Italy, Hal and his companions connected with people in Hungary’s slow food scene. “Experiences like that are harder to come by if you don’t find the right people to talk to in advance. Which is not to say that you shouldn’t just wing it sometimes and follow your instincts, but having something set up is really helpful, especially when you’re going somewhere where you don’t speak the language,” he shares. When you meet like-minded people, they can welcome you into their community. Once locals bring you into their world, new adventure awaits, and things can get pretty intense. Klein found this out firsthand…
Reap the Rewards
These three rules have opened doors to whole new worlds, and made good journeys great. “With Hungary,” said Klein, “it was how deep their food culture is, and how proud they are of what they do. Italy was less of a surprise and more of an affirmation… that it would be this place I would connect with on a super-geek level, and I did!” He added that Italy’s “reputation was not overblown, it was justifiably deserved.”
Next up for Klein: “I’ll go to New Orleans for Tale of the Cocktail in July.” This will allow him to explore NoLa’s vibrant Vietnamese food culture: “From everything I heard, it’s really just fantastic and amazing.”
Having explored culinary worlds near and far, Hal B. Klein leaves us with a parting thought: “You can find good food in all places.”
ICYMI: Check out Part One, Two and Three of the culinary tourism web series:
The Rise of Culinary Tourism – Part One
The New Food Cities: Building a Global Culinary Magnet – Part Two
In-Flight Photos: Culinary Tourism Before You Land – Part Three