After a long academic year filled with lengthy analytical essays, I decided I wanted to write for my Normandy Scholars blog something more casual. I greatly appreciate how the Normandy Scholars trip provided me with a wealth of information on World War Two and how we remember past events in general, which my fellow scholars have done a great job writing about. As an avid foodie, I equally appreciate how this trip gave me the opportunity to eat a wealth of international cuisines, which I decided to document in this blog. In the span of two weeks, I sampled (in chronological order) Indian, British, Filipino, Vietnamese, French, Chinese, German, and Turkish cooking. My culinary excursions left me with some memorable moments. I clumsily flung hot snail shells across a French bistro. I was peer pressured by Jamie into eating chicken feet, and actually liked it. I discovered that I enjoyed Germany’s Turkish food more than German food.
All of this leads me to one burning question: which dish was my favorite? I’ll first narrow down this difficult query to my preferred dish from each country. In England, the pad thai from Churchill Arms was the most flavorful and exciting dish from a city whose cuisine is generally considered rather bland and dull. My favorite meal from France is the most difficult to narrow down, as I was quite impressed overall by my meals there. However, the foie gras galette at Chez Marianne was both extremely rich and extremely French. I was most excited for Germany’s cuisine, and was blown away by the Turkish feast for four I shared with Jamie, Ian, and Raman. From these three excellent candidates, the winner has to be Churchill Arms’s pad thai. I have eaten quite a lot of pad thai in my life, and never before has it been that good. The juiciness of the prawns, the lovely aroma of the spices, and the perfectly paired glass of White Zinfandel all contributed to a superb meal.