1. Barbecue - 2008 was the year that I pretty much ate my way through Texas and the porky delights that the state offers. I learned about the different types of barbecue and the history behind it. My favourite is still the rib, but those juicy Germany-style sausages are a close second.
2. Chinese Food - More specifically, Chinese food menus translated into English and the hilarity that ensues. Before the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, there was much made of the fact that the Chinese government had standardized menu translations of about 2,000 dishes so that they made sense to foreigners. The Beijing restaurant that I stumbled into apparently didn't get the memo. I was given a large, album-like menu and ordered from an array of dishes such as "Smooth Ball of Coke", "Saliva Chicken", "River Taste Sausage" and "Water Cooks Flesh".
3. Microbrewed Beer - This is something I've been enjoying both at home and away. When I was in Perth this September, I sampled the product of Little Creatures, a small brewery with beers that are now available across Australia, as well as a cool restaurant/pub in an old crocodile farm; MadMonk, a restaurant-style brewpub on South Terrace; and the old standard, the Sail and Anchor, an old-fashioned pub with great beer. In Texas, I visited the Frederickburg Brewing Company, and here in Vancouver, I enjoyed a weekly cask ale at The Whip.
4. Anything Spanish - Sherry enthusiasts end up turning evangelical. They want you to understand (as they now understand) that there is more to sherry than that sickly sweet stuff that your great aunt drinks. And so it goes that after being won over on to the sherry bandwagon by my husband, I then had to convert my mother. Strangely enough, this occured in a tapas bar in Hong Kong. But it didn't stop at sherry - my love for the espanol also stretched to food, simple little dishes that go fantastically with wine, such as at the amazing Bar Lourinha in Melbourne.
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