Hi, it's Mark Bitman. Welcome to Food. As always, you can email us at food at

Mark Bitman.com. We're happy to respond. We'd love to hear anything you say, seriously.

And please subscribe to the podcast and rate us wherever you get your podcast, say wonderful things about us,

and please also subscribe to the Bitman project our thrice weekly newsletter which you can find

at bitman project.com which like this podcast gets better and better all the time. Okay, 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 in 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 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.

With more than 500 destinations worldwide, Regent's options are endless.

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