Strike a pose: Marcus, Seapa and Kieran of the Taste Cadets
(Picture: Taste Cadets )Instagram food sensations Kieran Cavanagh, Marcus Adams and Allan ‘Seapa’ Mustafa of People Just Do Nothing know a thing or two about troughing abroad, so here are their five top tips...
1. Plan but don’t plan
Do your research, plan the food spots you want to visit: especially if you don’t have much time in each place potentially to make mistakes. But also, keep the plan loose. You want to be able to find new gems along the way and have enough freedom to try to experience new things instead of ruining your trip by ruling it with an iron fist.
2. Google Maps hearts
This one goes hand in hand with the first part of the previous tip. Heart the shit out of your Google Maps, meaning save each spot on your Maps by adding a heart. That way wherever you are on your trip you’ll always be near some fire food spots.
3. Do as the locals do
This is the most obvious ‘traveller’ tip but it’s still 100 per cent true. Don’t go around thinking you know everything about the local culture and food just because you’ve read food blogs and watched a few YouTubers. The locals will always know best so if in doubt find a spot that’s packed and point to what they’re eating.
4. Learn at least a few words
To show respect we should learn the basics: please, thank you, sorry about my friends etc. But another thing we discovered in Japan is that learning the word for the foods you don’t like and the word ‘no’ is a good way of being able to experiment without ruining your entire meal. One of us doesn’t like fish (naming no names) and he (I) went to a famous ramen spot, ordered the soup and it was the most anchovy-tasting broth that would have been hard for even the fishiest dons to stomach. Needless to say I covered it with a napkin, pretended to take a phone call and ran out leaving the boys there. This tip would have saved all of that.
5. Protect yourself
Perhaps the most obvious tip that no one talks about on these sort of things: IMODIUM! If you’re gonna be sampling foods that your alien body might not be used to day and night like an unstoppable maniac — in a good way — it’s going to catch up with you some point. In Mexico we did a day of 12 different roadside taco spots, and once it caught up with us we had to take a day off filming and just eat bananas and white bread after a series of quite disturbing incidents. Good ol’ conquistadors revenge: it’ll get ya. Anyway, enjoy your next trip.
