Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and I remember saying that prayer whenever it was my turn to say grace before a family dinner. It was always good for a laugh. Thinking about those big turkey dinners turned my thoughts to the best parts of any motorcycle adventure, and that’s the food. I’ve enjoyed some fantastic meals on the road, and you know what? People tell me the photos have been the best part of any writing I did along the way. I like photos of scenery and people on our adventures, but readers consistently tell me the food photos are the most interesting. Allow me to share with you some of my favorites.
Colombia
Wow, was Colombia ever an adventure. Everything about that ride was absolutely world class, including the dining. Take a look.
A simple Colombian breakfast…scrambled eggs, arepa, and those incredible Colombian cheeses!A fish lunch along the Chicamocha River. Good Lord, it was fabulous!Chicken and mushrooms. It was way more than I could eat.Beef? Pork? Nope, neither. It was pig stomach lining. Very tasty, I’m told.Carlos, yours truly, and Juan at dinner in Mompos. It’s the oldest town in Colombia, and to say it is off the beaten path would be an understatement.We had dinner that night in Mompas in a restaurant run by an Austrian, where I had the best pizza I’ve ever had in my life. The beer helped, too!
China
What can I say? The ride across China was amazing in every way, and the food was one of the best parts of it.
Sean took Gresh and me to a hole-in-the-wall place for lunch on the main drag just outside the entrance to Zongshen’s 100-acre manufacturing campus. It was one of those places I would have looked at and thought “who would ever eat here?” The food was amazing.Fried lotus with pork in Shandong Province. I could do a book about eating my way through China.A seafood selection, including a starfish, outside of Qingdao. I’d never heard of eating a starfish before the ride across China.Donkey burgers in Hebei Province. Kong, one of the Chinese riders, told me there’s an old Chinese saying that goes something like “people in heaven eat dragon burgers, and people on earth eat donkey burgers.” Cue in the music from Indiana Jones.I was leery of the super spicy stuff in China at first. Then I developed a taste for it. It was exquisite.Except for the tourist hotels in the big cities, folks don’t drink coffee in China. Gresh had a Nescafe stash, which he graciously shared with me each morning.The Canton Fair has a restaurant row that must have 100 restaurants. This delicious beef dumpling soup was a whopping 25 RMB (that’s $3.96 in US dollars), and it was delicious.
Baja
Hey, no discussion related to adventure riding and food would be complete without touching on Baja!
The best fish tacos on the planet are served up by good buddy Tony in Guerrero Negro, about halfway down the Baja peninsula. These are guys in one of the CSC groups I took down there a few years ago.The man, the mystery, the legend: Tony, fish taco chef extraordinaire!Tony’s fish tacos, worth a ride south all by themselves.Street tacos in Ensenada. It’s hard to go wrong with just about any kind of food in Baja.
The above is just a small sampling of delicacies I’ve enjoyed on the road. You can find more by reading about our other rides, and you can get to those on our Epic Rides page.
That’s it for now. For some reason, I’m hungry. Later, my friends.