A guide to high morale through eating even if alone
1. Find a place with the roughest furniture. Environment is no indication of the quality of food in Asia - quite the contrary - you will find some of the best outdoor eateries next to sewage pipes.
2. Study the person cooking the food. Is it a greying, old, ragged, fat woman with an arched back?? If so..... She is likely to have spent her life over the stove. She will know her dishes better than you know your genitals. She won't use measures or quantities preferring to use her scarred hands only as a guide. Eat there immediately*
*the opposite is true of Thai massueses where superhumanly strong scrawny things will iron out the creases in your soul.
3. Instantly disregard any restaurant claiming to do western dishes. This is especially true of British breakfasts. Anyway, have you tried a Thai breakfast? They are superb. Rice, broth, chicken, spring onion - savoury sublimeness and likely to be very cheap.
4. What language are they speaking? If they speak no English there is a greater chance they are cooking purely for local people. This means real food at real prices. All you need to know is that they speak the language of food.
5. "Dirt is good" as Sir Terence Conran once remarked about his kitchens. Throw your western standards in the slop bucket and watch the food being cooked from raw ingredients. Anyway, are Britains greasy spoons really that clean? We all know where the best English breakfasts are served.
6. Show your appreciation by saying the word delicious in the native tongue or burping loudly*
*best to check which countries this applies to.
7. Use your senses. If the mango at the street stall looks slimy, dark and smells fermented it probably is. This rule applies particularly to fish. Learn the 7 signs of freshness or ask me and I'll tell you what they are.
8. Eating outdoors has many benefits. You can see everything being prepared and cooked. This is usually not the case in many restaurants.
9. If you have followed the above rules, you will by now have forgotton you are alone and tucking in to real food cooked with passion.
Just the way I like it.
