What Next? ‘A Fish Called Rwanda’?

Someone get these guys a ham sandwich.

As majestically as The New York Times does everything it touches, its touch on travel writing is simply “hungry,” not Hungary. They are obsessed with eating. It is a wise policy not to do the grocery shopping when you’re hungry, but it seems the same might apply to travel writing, too.

The Times people can’t eat enough. Not for them the glories of the dawn over the Himalayas when they can write, instead, on where best to eat a yeti. Who there cares about the rebuilt Parthenon when there’s a tapas stand nearby worth 1,700 words?

Just this past weekend, the Times’ travel folks led the section with “Liberty, Equality, Gastronomy — A food-obsessed traveler uses the Zagat guide of the Napoleonic era to explore the culinary wonders of this city in the 21st century.” It follows along with sandwiches in Marfa, Texas, tapas and choriso in Madrid, sushi in Amman, changes in B & B (with emphasis for the second B) culture. In its stylish T magazine, we learn about Italian restaurants in San Francisco, pub food in resurgent Baltimore, hip restaurants in Cambodia, Latino restaurants in Miami, neighborhood eateries in Buenos Aires, and so much burpy more.

It’s the same every time. What’s next, restaurtant reviews of “A Fish Called Rwanda” or “Pol Pot de Feu” in Phnom Penh? Or “Specialty du jour at Chez Jeffrey Dahmer: Shepherds Pie.”

Of course people eat while they travel, although few so well as the scribblers for the Times. Maybe it’s (Johnny) Apple Envy but the emphasis on eating eating eating is a bit unsettling.

Survey after survey show that people travel to explore, to shop, to refresh, to learn. Eating is certainly a part of that and the Times certainly knows what it is doing, casting its pearls before the ravished millionaires who have exhausted their interests in mere destinations. The airlines and health system are already groaning under the additional weight of the average American. How much more heft should they have to bear as the Times’ Avoir Dupois Brigade hits the road?

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