Welcome to Food with Mark Bitman. I'm Kate Bitman and we're very glad you're here.

Before we get started I wanted to let you know that you can email us at food at mark bitman.com with any questions or guest recommendations anything you have to say

This week on the bitman project bitman projectcom. We posted my favorite way to cook sweet potatoes. It is a

recipe that was meant to make it into how to cook everything vegetarian but

somehow didn't and it's truly terrific. We also posted a Chitaki bacon on top of a Brussels sprout peel off so you should check that out and our annual holiday gift guide, mostly food-related items, but there are a few outliers too,

and we've gotten a couple comments. People have said it's our best gift guide yet,

so if you're looking for something, that's where to go. 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 it 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 Cruz.

I was able to do that on our recent all-inclusive Tor Evasia. 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.

...