There is so much more to travel than selfies and sightseeing. This is something that travel media powerhouse Lonely Planet, publisher of the original and still best-known travel guidebooks, knows too well.
In recent years Lonely Planet has been making a concerted effort to shift the vibe of international travel. Spokesperson Chris Zeiher tells SBS, the travel gurus want to make it less about “just taking a selfie in an interesting place,” and more about deliberately slowing down and connecting with different cultures.
Its latest food-themed offering, The World’s Best Bowl Food published this month, is a cross-cultural celebration of simple and nourishing foods served in bowls. It provoked a mild case of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon in me because, up until a recent stint I did in LA, I’ll admit to having no idea that bowl food was a bona fide “thing.”
Sure, like most Australians who eat out now and then, I’m acquainted with the macro bowl. This ubiquitous and self-conscious healthy dish heaped with grains, steamed vegies and tofu pops up on quite a few menus, its presence seemingly designed to soothe vegans and health nuts in one swoop.
Macro bowls, Buddha bowls, burrito bowls, poke bowls, curry bowls, soul bowls… Everything, it seems, can be served in a no-frills stand-alone bowl, often with just a spoon or fork.
But a few months overseas revealed that "the bowl” now commands its own section on menus at almost every LA eating establishment, from salad bars to upscale vegan eateries. Macro bowls, Buddha bowls, burrito bowls, poke bowls, curry bowls, soul bowls… Everything, it seems, can be served in a no-frills stand-alone bowl, often with just a spoon or fork.
Given this surge in popularity and Lonely Planet’s reputation as the pulse of international travel, it’s not surprising to see the globetrotter’s bible capture this moment in the culinary zeitgeist. With 100 one-pot recipes sourced from across the globe, The World’s Best Bowl Food features Lonely Planet’s characteristically impressive photography, as well as a brief history of every dish. Taste notes are thrown in for good measure.
So, why the current obsession with eating from a bowl, and is it really a new fad given bowl-shaped crockery is not exactly a new invention? Lonely Planet traces the trend to New York and the “power bowl”, which is essentially a more substantial and hearty version of a healthy salad aimed at “time-poor and wellness-obsessed New Yorkers”. Naturally, they “embraced the power bowl’s wholesome qualities and inspired a social media movement”.
But by interpreting the concept of a food bowl quite literally – each chapter features breakfast, salad, soup, pasta, stews or desserts – Lonely Planet acknowledges that throwing a diverse range of foods into a bowl is something humans have been doing for centuries.
The book includes food staples from all over the world, with some recipes following tradition to a T, such as the Spanish Gazpacho (time to dust off your mortar and pestle!). Others, like the Persian Spiced Cauliflower and Bulgur Salad, which comes courtesy of one of London’s top chefs, are more of a homage to the cultural origins.
Food bowls may be a fad among the hashtag set, but Lonely Planet insists that often, “fads reveal a deeper truth, and this trend towards one-pot dishes reveals common ingredients and themes from around the world. These are meals that speak the international language of comfort”.
Bowl? Check. Fork? Check. You're good to go on this Persian Caulifower and Bulgar Salad. Source: Andrew Riverside/Shutterstock
Many cultures, for instance, serve some variation of chicken soup to the sick. Whether that has to do with common cultural traditions or colonialism is arguable (one of the few pieces of information I managed to retain from my first-year cultural anthropology class was how Christian missionaries disseminated chicken soup to remote tribes as a cure for the cold with almost as much zeal as they spread Bible stories).
All in all, despite the emphasis on ease and speed, food bowls are not all that dissimilar to the slow-cooking trend in that they are made up of “foods that go to the heart of a cuisine, and recall home, or childhood, or tradition”.
In a world that seems intent on growing ever more complicated, this move towards comfort and simplicity is only likely to get more popular, and it is indeed comforting to see there are some still devoted to reaching across our differences to find the things that unite us.
Salad image from The World's Best Bowl Food (Andrew Riverside/Shutterstock).
