Hi there. It's Mark Pittman and welcome to food. As always you can reach out to us at

food at markbitman.com and we will respond. Let us know what you think.

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Please subscribe to the podcast and please also subscribe to our thrice weekly newsletter, the bitman project at bitman project.com. 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 the fine cuisine are built around the

produce that's native to a place.

It's why the feta and tomato and 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 cruise.

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 get easily in the US,

and I had just an incredible experience in the fish markets of Busan,

just overwhelming varieties of fresh seafood.

...