I can’t claim to know much about Turkmenistan, but here’s one thing that makes me love the country immediately: Turkmenistan officially celebrates National Melon Day on the second Sunday of August. It’s actually a major national holiday, sanctioned by the government. You might think that this is some sort of political slogan, but in […]

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  I seem to say the same thing after every single meal these days: people are amazing. In my search for Timorese food, I emailed some complete strangers in East Timor – alumni of my high school’s “sister school” – and asked if they knew any Timorese people who live in New York. Within a […]

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  As you can probably tell from my recent blog posts about non-Gambian food, Tunisian food, Kenyan food with an asterisk, and Costa Rican food with another asterisk, I’m starting to struggle a little. I have fewer than two dozen countries left. They’re hard.   My latest desperate food-hunting activity: cold-calling United Nations missions, looking for somebody […]

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  So when we say the word “country”, what the hell do we actually mean? Most of us would agree that Taiwan is a country; China and the (other) United Nations definitely disagree. Puerto Rico is technically a territory, but it has its own national soccer team, and it definitely has its own cuisine. And […]

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  Nuevo Jardin de China is one of those places that I’ve walked past literally 100 times, without really noticing it. Chinese food in Astoria? Meh. Not when there’s baklava and mezedes as far as the eye can see. But wait… “Nuevo Jardin de China” is, um, Spanish. Fine, it’s probably just one of those […]

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