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Ah, the curse of being a traveller: once you start you just can’t stop. I often wonder to myself how amazing life would be if I could be a nomad, travel around discovering new places, new foods, new people. I imagine that I would be known as ‘That Travelling Girl’, I would carry my possessions on my back, I would write about my experiences and live the perfect existence… and then I think about my comfortable double bed, my jingly-janglies that I always wear, and my love for pretty shoes… yeah. Maybe not. But it’s still nice to dream, no?

Some of you may know that the other week I disappeared to Copenhagen for the day to have lunch at the number one restaurant in the world, Noma. After such a huge trip around the world you may have wondered why I was still travelling and, even more importantly, why for only one day. You may have said, ‘but Jackie! You only just got home! Why can’t you be satisfied with home?!” Well, I’m sorry – I just couldn’t help it. Home is where my heart is and at heart? I’m a traveller.

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Oh how I wish I’d planned to spend more time in Chicago. I’m not sure why I thought a day and a bit would be enough (I arrived in the afternoon on the 1st, had the 2nd to play, then left on the morning of the 3rd: error) because it wasn’t! Not at all! There was so much to see and do, so many to play with, so much to eat, and yet I only gave myself that weenie amount of time. Oy-vey. I didn’t try an Italian beef sub, I didn’t even get deep-dish (or stuffed) pizza; what a disaster!

However, it’s not all a loss because I can always return, and after meeting the wonderful Alice, Mara and Mike, I know I have plenty of good company in town too! And although I didn’t get to try “typical” Chicago fare, I did have the best meal of my life when I was there, a meal that I would happily get on a plane and return for, in fact that I would specifically travel to Chicago just to have again. If that’s not a reason to love the Windy City then I don’t know what is. Thanks to Alice, Mara & Mike, and, of course, my baby cousin Lorraine, for the food, the fun and the complete awesomeness. You guys were the best!

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I’m in Sydney! It’s 10am and I’m looking out over a gloriously sunny view of the city. The Sydney Opera House is just to the right with tiny little ants making their slow way up the Sydney Harbour Bridge (I don’t think I’ll be doing the Sydney Harbour Bridge walk, but if you don’t have a problem with heights you should! Pretty pricey, though) and beyond that are a mass of buildings, their chrome and glass glinting in the morning sun.

Am I making you jealous? Because if I were you I’d totally be jealous.

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Frying an egg on the Teppanyaki hot plate at Matsubishi, Convention Plaza.

I bet it was seeming like you were never going to hear from me again, eh? Well you don’t get off that easily! As I write this I’m sitting in my grandmother’s apartment, looking out over Causeway Bay, I’ve just come back from a delicious Indonesian lunch with the wonderful Rita, SC and their 4-month-old baby Lil’ Marcus (who is totally adorable – I nearly took him home with me!) and though I’m feeling a little sleepy (Hong Kong will do that to you), I’ve been having an awesome week.

So what exactly have I been doing for the six days I’ve been in Hong Kong? Duh: eating, and oh how I’ve been eating. The thing about Hong Kong is that the choice of food is so eclectic: it’s not all about eating in the big name restaurants, or only eating Chinese food. There is so much choice because there are so many people, and everybody has a different background. Don’t limit yourself by eating only the HK Michelin starred food, or only the places that are “amazing” but barely anybody goes there: in other words, don’t be a food snob. Eat up! Eat up good! Sometimes the most amazing meals can be found tucked away in the nastiest, most ghetto neighbourhoods, where even as you eat your snake soup (more on that later) you’re convinced the triad are going to pop out from behind one of the cages of live snakes and kill you. Probably with a snake. Maybe with throwing stars. Or is that too ninja?

Instead of giving you a blow-by-blow account of every single thing, I’m just going to give you a foodie photo round-up. Having said that, I’m saving some stuff because have I mentioned I’m the newest food writer for London-based magazine The Arbuturian? Oh yeah. There are more people being subjected to my writing, photographs & ramblings about food. Follow along with my Food Odyssey at the magazine’s site, where tidbits from my best (and possibly worst) food experiences will be published. You can read the first installment here. The second is now live here.

So. Without further ado. I present to you: FOOD. All photos can be found in a larger format on my Flickr.

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