Welcome to Food. I'm Kate Bitman. Before we get started a reminder that you can email us at food at mark bitman.com with any questions or comments.

A guest recommendations are also extremely welcome.

Let us know who you'd like to hear from.

And if you want more from us, head to bitman project.com.

We've got a gift guide full of ideas from the best chocolate to beautiful kitchen textiles to

gadgets and appliances, plus a few non-food items.

Plus Holly Haynes just wrote about what I think is the coolest use of

eggplant I've ever seen and now on to today's episode. We'll get back to that conversation in a minute, but first I want to talk about

something that lots of people ask me about when it comes to global cuisines.

There is something magical about eating a cuisine in the place where it

originated.

One of the reasons for that is that the dishes that define a cuisine are built around

the produce that's native to a place.

It's why the feta and tomato in a Greek salad tastes so perfect in Athens, or the artichokes in olive oil in Rome are to die for.

They have a certain sweetness and tang that you can get close to, but not easily replicate.

And not surprisingly, one of the best ways to get a sense for how something

should taste is to visit a region of the world and sample a dish in several forms

from lots of different neighboring areas.

Then you can appreciate the local variations as well.

And the most efficient way to do that, for me at least, is the first class experience

of a Regent Cruz. I was able to do that on our recent

all-inclusive tour of Asia. I had a hankering for seafood, well I always do, seafood that you don't

...