Taking a ferry across the Chao Praya River to a traditional Thai house is a grand way to arrive for lunch, yet stepping into the Supatra River House I found the personal touches of heart and home. The calm and classy interior was decorated with the unique furniture and antique family portraits you’d expect to see in an old family home.

Drawn to this beguiling photo, I later learned this benevolent lady (the namesake of the restaurant which was her family home) was an important player in Thailand’s history. Khunying Supatra served in the royal court as a young girl in the 1920’s, later going on to receive a master’s degree in law in 1939. A successful business woman running the family’s ferry boat business, Khunying Supatra helped champion the amendment of the women’s rights portions of Thailand’s Civil Code. In her lifetime, she earned international recognition for her humanitarian work for the welfare of Thai people. Some even thought this dynamic woman would become Thailand’s first female Prime Minister.

Tucked along the river, in a quiet pocket amidst the chaos of Bangkok, I enjoyed a sublime lunch of traditional Thai food. A watermelon shake broke my summertime sweat, and delectable spring rolls primed my appetite for my favorite cuisine. Preceeded by a simple fresh fish and mushroom soup, the main course – gang khiaw wan pak (a green vegetable curry) – filled my nose with the bouquet of those famous Thai herbs and spices we’ve all come to recognize. Sweet, salty, spicy and smooth, it was the first of many times on this trip that I lamented not being able to take the final spoonfuls home with me to savor again later.

Situated near Bangkok’s Grand Palace, Supatra River House serves lunch and dinner. In addition to the cool interior dining room, you can also take your meal al fresco on their riverside terrace or on one of their Chao Praya dinner cruises.

Remember, there’s a feast for the eyes over at WanderFood Wednesday!

I was hosted on this trip by the Tourism Authority of Thailand, and though the restaurant selection may have been theirs, my enthusiasm for this eating experience was all my own.

I love connecting with a place through its food. The food that generations have been making and passing on recipes for – that’s what I want to taste. (Sometimes, to my detriment – guinea pigs, for example, go back to the ancient Incas, so of course I had to sample them when a local family served me their traditional recipe in Peru).

Even when traveling just beyond my backyard, local food gives me a visceral sense of place. Here in the Pacific Northwest, the salty waters of Puget Sound hold a lot of the mystery and history.

I celebrated the 4th of July last year with a Puget Sound clam bake on the Kitsap Peninsula. Clams have dug deep into our local mythology and lore here in Washington. The native Haida people tell the story of Raven releasing the first humans when cracking open a pandoric clamshell. In more modern times, Seattle’s Ivar Haglund created a culinary empire and put his stamp on pop culture with clams as the star of his show.

My own inaugural clam bake experience was auspicious in its simplicity. The clams were cooked over a fire pit with just a bit of garlic, shallots and white wine. A copious amount of butter turned into velvet liquid in a copper pot, and as the clam concoction began to roil, the clams began to pop open as if they were shouting back at Raven. That’s when Joleen, a native of the area who cut her teeth on the local bivalves, knew they were ready.

A simple crusty bread and red wine set the perfect meal. We dug in, and…I’m still dreaming about this meal today.

Be sure to whet your appetite further over at WanderFood Wednesday!

Luang Prabang, Laos is the kind of place the seeps under your skin, slows down your heart rate and tells you not to go. At least, that’s what happened to me and my partner; our first visit found us digging in and staying a spell, and return visits stretched over weeks and into months.

Among the many delights of our simple daily life in Luang Prabang was morning coffee at the local stand down by the Mekong. The stand was simply a wooden table fashioned off of the hub of a big shady tree trunk, and the coffee was brewed on a typical Lao wood-fired brazier stove. Locals stopped in to chat, watch the passersby, read the paper or contemplate the boat traffic on the Mekong. Some pulled up on motorbikes and took their java to go, driving away one-handed with a fistful of dangling coffee-filled baggies.

If you have never had the distinct pleasure of tasting Lao coffee, you are in for a treat. It’s almost intimidatingly dark and thick, but tempered by the high note of sticky sweetened condensed milk. It is usually served with a chaser of nam sa (mild tea) and at our coffee spot of choice we were always offered a couple of plates of baguette and sweet breads to munch on. All for the price of 4,000 kip, or 40 cents. Often a woman selling warm silken tofu in rice milk with ginger would stop by, and for a few cents more she’d serve us up a bowlful, completing the perfect breakfast.

Join us and share your travel-food memories at WanderFood Wednesday!