Marcela Valladolid encourages travelers to find adventurous eats
For Marcela Valladolid, food, travel and memories go hand in hand. While travel has a sense of adventure, those meaningful moments will last much longer.
Many foodies know Marcela Valladolid from the Food Network. The talented and vivacious chef has traveled the world in search of new experiences. Many of these adventures have influenced what she eats, how she lives and have continued to impact her outlook on life. In truth, travel can produce many meaningful moments long after that vacation ends.
According to a Capital One survey, “82% of people aspire to describe trips as more meaningful to them and their loved ones.” That number is astonishing. From social impact travel adventures to just recreating a favorite vacation recipe, that trip is more than the time spent away from home.
Today, the world is part of everyone’s community. Sometimes a new food can spark and interest in a different culture. Sometimes a trip can create a love affair with a new food. When a person takes the trip, they become part of that bigger communication.
Recently, Capital One has launched the concept, The Purpose Project. This program looks to encourage travelers to experience meaningful moments. More importantly, it encourages the conversation about people seeking “to travel with a purpose to improve yourself, deepen your personal connections and leave a lasting impact on the places you explore.”
Marcela Valladolid has partnered with Capital One on this new initiative. Building on her belief that exploring cultures through travel has deepened her connection to her heritage, this partnership was a perfect fit.
Marcela Valladolid visits New Orleans, photo provided by Capital One
As part of this partnership, I had the opportunity to interview Marcela Valladolid. During this conversation, we spoke about travel, being adventurous and, of course, food.
Below is a transcript of that conversation.
Cristine Struble: Sometimes a big trip is associated with a momentous event (significant birthday, honeymoon, bucket list trip), how can any trip have meaningful moments?
Marcela Valladolid: Try and connect with the locals. Breathe in the local color. Get out of the golden cage and explore. Make sure you pick a destination where you feel comfortable doing that. Some vacations are certainly just for relaxing, recharging and literally not moving. Done that plenty. But get out there. Talk to people. Walk the town.
Capital One actually did a lot of research on the reasons behind why people travel and what they hope to get out of their trips. They found that most of us (70 percent) place a high value on having a purposeful experience during a trip, and that connecting with family and friends (88 percent) and discovering something new about ourselves (74 percent) were among the top desires when traveling.
I’m a big believer that when purposeful travel happens – when we meet, listen, learn and love people that are a little different than we are – we make the world a little better as well.
Marcela Valladolid at Café Reconcile in New Orleans, photo provided by Capital One
CS: Often people choose travel locations less for adventure and more for relaxation, how can travelers incorporate the adventure into their next vacation?
MV: DON’T FORGET YOUR SNEAKERS AND AT LEAST ONE WORKOUT OUTFIT! Seriously. Sometimes I’ve used it as an excuse to not venture out; not having the proper gear. But get up, dress the part and have someone point you in the direction of the zipline. If my mother and father-in-law were riding vespas in their late 70’s in the South of France, so can we! It’s all about your attitude. Also, be mindful of who you’re traveling with! I know that if my sister Carina is coming, Adventure is guaranteed. There will be four-wheeler rentals, hot air ballooning and possibly parachuting. With Philip, I know I’ll go to a Michellin starred restaurant and a walk through the most glorious museum or park. I thoroughly enjoy both. Respect your travel companion and their needs and travel goals and, my usual tip, GO WITH THE FLOW!
Speaking of adventure, I recently joined forces with my friends at Capital One for the Purpose Project, an effort aimed at igniting a conversation around what it means to travel with a purpose, and inspiring others to use travel as a way to connect with themselves and the places around them. In my opinion, travel is one of the most important adventures we can take because it has the amazing ability to teach us lessons about where we come from and where we’re going all at the same time. Capital One is focused on creating products and experiences that enrich our lives, including the rewards and access offered to customers so they can have these adventures while creating meaningful moments!
CS: Many people bring home souvenirs from a trip, is there another option to remember and relive that trip experience?
MV: Sometimes I start making photo albums on the actual flight home. It’s so easy now with apps to upload and create an album in a very short amount of time. Otherwise those photos stay on your phone or computer forever.
More from FoodSided
CS: As people prepare/plan/get excited for an upcoming trip, should they start exploring flavors and foods from their upcoming destination?
MV: Goodness no! Head out with an open heart and an open mind. Heck sometimes the best idea is to not even ask what you’re eating until after you’ve tasted it! Unless there’s a life-threatening allergy, just go for it!
CS: How can a traveler find “authentic” cuisine when they are traveling?
Speak to the locals. Hotels sometimes have partnerships with certain restaurants that limit them to those suggestions. So ask your cab driver, or even your bell boy. Honestly, I don’t even trust on-line reviews. The human palate is so subjective. Every opinion you read comes from a person with a very different life experience than you and very different food expectations. Granted you want good, clean, safe food but, again, locals know best.
As part of the Purpose Project, Capital One partnered with Tastemade to create Purpose Project, The Series, where they collaborated with a diverse group of travel enthusiasts and partners, including yours truly, to bring purposeful travel to life. I traveled to New Orleans where I got to experience the soul-filling dishes of Café Reconcile, along with the greater purpose they serve in the community. It doesn’t get much more authentic than soul food in the Big Easy!
Stay tuned for my Tastemade New Orleans episode which will be airing on Tastemade Facebook Watch in late March. Hopefully it inspires you to seek out adventurous eats on your next trip and learn about the history behind the cuisine of the culture you’re experiencing.
CS: Are there any foods that found too exotic to try? Why?
MV: Not in my book…
CS: What advice would you give the non-adventurous eater who wants to explore and travel more?
MV: If you’re super picky I would probably suggest asking for sauces/condiments on the side. Order dishes to be shared so you’re not sitting with a giant plate of something you don’t love just in front of you. Maybe do just a little research to find foods that are comparable in flavor/texture so you know what you’re getting into. But stay open. You only live once!
I would like to thank Marcella Vallodolid for taking the time to speak with me. Also, I would like to take Capital One for facilitating this interview.
Are you ready for some adventurous travel? From food to experiences, meaningful moments are waiting on your next trip.
Marcela Valladolid encourages travelers to find adventurous eats
For Marcela Valladolid, food, travel and memories go hand in hand. While travel has a sense of adventure, those meaningful moments will last much longer.
Many foodies know Marcela Valladolid from the Food Network. The talented and vivacious chef has traveled the world in search of new experiences. Many of these adventures have influenced what she eats, how she lives and have continued to impact her outlook on life. In truth, travel can produce many meaningful moments long after that vacation ends.
According to a Capital One survey, “82% of people aspire to describe trips as more meaningful to them and their loved ones.” That number is astonishing. From social impact travel adventures to just recreating a favorite vacation recipe, that trip is more than the time spent away from home.
Today, the world is part of everyone’s community. Sometimes a new food can spark and interest in a different culture. Sometimes a trip can create a love affair with a new food. When a person takes the trip, they become part of that bigger communication.
Recently, Capital One has launched the concept, The Purpose Project. This program looks to encourage travelers to experience meaningful moments. More importantly, it encourages the conversation about people seeking “to travel with a purpose to improve yourself, deepen your personal connections and leave a lasting impact on the places you explore.”
Marcela Valladolid has partnered with Capital One on this new initiative. Building on her belief that exploring cultures through travel has deepened her connection to her heritage, this partnership was a perfect fit.
Marcela Valladolid visits New Orleans, photo provided by Capital One
As part of this partnership, I had the opportunity to interview Marcela Valladolid. During this conversation, we spoke about travel, being adventurous and, of course, food.
Below is a transcript of that conversation.
Cristine Struble: Sometimes a big trip is associated with a momentous event (significant birthday, honeymoon, bucket list trip), how can any trip have meaningful moments?
Marcela Valladolid: Try and connect with the locals. Breathe in the local color. Get out of the golden cage and explore. Make sure you pick a destination where you feel comfortable doing that. Some vacations are certainly just for relaxing, recharging and literally not moving. Done that plenty. But get out there. Talk to people. Walk the town.
Capital One actually did a lot of research on the reasons behind why people travel and what they hope to get out of their trips. They found that most of us (70 percent) place a high value on having a purposeful experience during a trip, and that connecting with family and friends (88 percent) and discovering something new about ourselves (74 percent) were among the top desires when traveling.
I’m a big believer that when purposeful travel happens – when we meet, listen, learn and love people that are a little different than we are – we make the world a little better as well.
Marcela Valladolid at Café Reconcile in New Orleans, photo provided by Capital One
CS: Often people choose travel locations less for adventure and more for relaxation, how can travelers incorporate the adventure into their next vacation?
MV: DON’T FORGET YOUR SNEAKERS AND AT LEAST ONE WORKOUT OUTFIT! Seriously. Sometimes I’ve used it as an excuse to not venture out; not having the proper gear. But get up, dress the part and have someone point you in the direction of the zipline. If my mother and father-in-law were riding vespas in their late 70’s in the South of France, so can we! It’s all about your attitude. Also, be mindful of who you’re traveling with! I know that if my sister Carina is coming, Adventure is guaranteed. There will be four-wheeler rentals, hot air ballooning and possibly parachuting. With Philip, I know I’ll go to a Michellin starred restaurant and a walk through the most glorious museum or park. I thoroughly enjoy both. Respect your travel companion and their needs and travel goals and, my usual tip, GO WITH THE FLOW!
Speaking of adventure, I recently joined forces with my friends at Capital One for the Purpose Project, an effort aimed at igniting a conversation around what it means to travel with a purpose, and inspiring others to use travel as a way to connect with themselves and the places around them. In my opinion, travel is one of the most important adventures we can take because it has the amazing ability to teach us lessons about where we come from and where we’re going all at the same time. Capital One is focused on creating products and experiences that enrich our lives, including the rewards and access offered to customers so they can have these adventures while creating meaningful moments!
CS: Many people bring home souvenirs from a trip, is there another option to remember and relive that trip experience?
MV: Sometimes I start making photo albums on the actual flight home. It’s so easy now with apps to upload and create an album in a very short amount of time. Otherwise those photos stay on your phone or computer forever.
More from FoodSided
CS: As people prepare/plan/get excited for an upcoming trip, should they start exploring flavors and foods from their upcoming destination?
MV: Goodness no! Head out with an open heart and an open mind. Heck sometimes the best idea is to not even ask what you’re eating until after you’ve tasted it! Unless there’s a life-threatening allergy, just go for it!
CS: How can a traveler find “authentic” cuisine when they are traveling?
Speak to the locals. Hotels sometimes have partnerships with certain restaurants that limit them to those suggestions. So ask your cab driver, or even your bell boy. Honestly, I don’t even trust on-line reviews. The human palate is so subjective. Every opinion you read comes from a person with a very different life experience than you and very different food expectations. Granted you want good, clean, safe food but, again, locals know best.
As part of the Purpose Project, Capital One partnered with Tastemade to create Purpose Project, The Series, where they collaborated with a diverse group of travel enthusiasts and partners, including yours truly, to bring purposeful travel to life. I traveled to New Orleans where I got to experience the soul-filling dishes of Café Reconcile, along with the greater purpose they serve in the community. It doesn’t get much more authentic than soul food in the Big Easy!
Stay tuned for my Tastemade New Orleans episode which will be airing on Tastemade Facebook Watch in late March. Hopefully it inspires you to seek out adventurous eats on your next trip and learn about the history behind the cuisine of the culture you’re experiencing.
CS: Are there any foods that found too exotic to try? Why?
MV: Not in my book…
CS: What advice would you give the non-adventurous eater who wants to explore and travel more?
MV: If you’re super picky I would probably suggest asking for sauces/condiments on the side. Order dishes to be shared so you’re not sitting with a giant plate of something you don’t love just in front of you. Maybe do just a little research to find foods that are comparable in flavor/texture so you know what you’re getting into. But stay open. You only live once!
I would like to thank Marcella Vallodolid for taking the time to speak with me. Also, I would like to take Capital One for facilitating this interview.
Are you ready for some adventurous travel? From food to experiences, meaningful moments are waiting on your next trip.
Dream trip: Couple eats way across world
Editor’s Note — Have you recently enjoyed an amazing dining experience? Share your photos on Instagram with the hashtag #CNNFood for a chance to be featured on CNN. For inspiration, check out our new CNN International series, Culinary Journeys.
(CNN) — Gabriella Zanzanaini and Nicolas Petit have just completed everyone’s dream trip — they ate their way through 20 countries.
Traveling by land for 306 days, from Brussels to Hong Kong, the adventurous and constantly hungry duo chronicled their delicious encounters on their popular travel blog, The Funnelogy Channel, which features enticing food porn and recipes given to them by the professional chefs/street vendors/proud grandmas they met on their journey.
It all started in Brussels in April 2014, when Zanzanaini and Petit left their nonprofit sector jobs and never looked back.
Heading toward Hong Kong, Zanzanaini’s maternal hometown, the couple passed through countries such as Greece, Iran, Turkey, Tajikistan, Myanmar and Laos, and ate unbelievable meals of exotic foods that most of us have never even heard of.
Their manifesto wasn’t about marking off a bucket list of famous dishes, but finding the surprising, little known, often humble food that travelers discover only after being invited to the table of a loving home cook.
We spoke to Zanzanaini and Petit about slow travel, their most memorable meals and how best to see Iran.
CNN: Sounds like the classic contemporary bildungsroman: quit your hateful desk job, travel world to find yourself. What kick-started it?
We both really cared about our jobs so we gave six months’ notice to find suitable replacements for us.
A lot of people were asking why don’t you just take a sabbatical, go for a year and then come back, but we knew we wanted to have the future completely open.
If you knew you were coming back to the same life at the end of the journey then it’s just like a big holiday. You’re not going out to the open with no clue of where you’ll end up.
But once you let go of the time frame, everything becomes completely open, with no past, no future — we can do whatever we want.
Arriving in a strange place, you don’t know what you’re going to see, you don’t know the pleasure you’re going to get and then suddenly something opens up — and there’s always something opening up.
It has opened a completely new creative way of looking at the world. [Zanzanaini] focused on the writing and I focused on the photography so we learned to look at the world through those media.
We are mostly interested in people, more than landscapes or monuments, so you can never be bored, you sit there looking at the people passing by . there’s so much to talk about.
It was very liberating to know that there is always something to do and it’s not related to money or job or whatever, it’s for you, you have a constant interest in the world you live in.
Zanzanaini: You could dump us in a tiny town, it’s not a picturesque village, it’s not a fancy town, but we will look at it in detail.
“We still dream about the noodles and dumplings of northwest China,” says the traveling duo. “Unlike their southern counterparts, these noodles are the closest thing to reinforce the argument that pasta comes from China.”
On this trip people were inviting us to dinner, people we don’t know. In the beginning I felt so guilty.
One of the saddest things a guy said to me was in Eastern Turkey. There was a student who was watching the hotel at night and we started chatting to him and he said, you have to come to my mom’s house for dinner, so at 11:30 p.m. we went to his house because his shift was over and when we were walking there he said, “Thank you so much for trusting me, most foreigners wouldn’t come with me, they would be scared.”
That’s so crazy, we should be thanking you and he was so happy to find people who were willing to accept his offer that showed me people are always so scared, we’ve built a fear inside ourselves.
Petit: Maybe we were very lucky, but nothing bad happened to us and it’s been 11 months now on the road.
“The more tourists you have in a place, the less connection you have with the people,” says Funnelogy co-founder Nicolas Petit.
Zanzanaini: I am obsessed with food, but the key was the idea of meeting people, even if we don’t speak the language, everybody eats, everybody cooks and most people are proud of their food, and it’s something that opens so many doors.
The second you show interest, especially in these regions where the politics and religion are sensitive issues, food was a safe choice.
There was a town with a fish market and as soon as we asked about cooking we suddenly knew all the people in the fish market and vegetable market and everybody comes and checks what you’re doing.
Tourism spoils tourism. The more tourists you have in a place, the less connection you have with the people.
If Iran was a very touristy country they wouldn’t come to you on the street and ask you to go to their home and eat with their family.
All the places that are touristy in the world were never the highlight of our journey. It’s more difficult to make connections in those places.
Many people in Iran are doing it as it is their way to meet foreigners but technically it is illegal — we had to go into this guy’s house from the car park.
This family welcomed us into their yurts and served us a meal. I remember thinking, please don’t give me yogurt, as I had been receiving this sour and gamey yogurt throughout the region.
But this yogurt was incredible, it was so creamy and had a spoon of beige cream, almost toffee colored.
Every little corner, every five minutes, we found some new street food that we just had to try. There was so much diversity.
Women in Myanmar sell everything from steamed buns to fried noodles and boiled eggs from a platter balanced on their heads.
Zanzanaini: Travel blogs out there focus on guides — 10 best of this city, where to go eat, where to go shop .
We want to tell stories to inspire people to find their own adventure, we want to tell stories that make them interested to learn cultures different from their own and then realize how similar it all really is.
You go into this gorge and there this gorgeous scene, this mountain, and you didn’t read that in any guidebook, it is like you won a prize.
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Source https://foodsided.com/2019/02/10/marcela-valladolid-encourages-travelers-adventurous-eats/
Source https://foodsided.com/2019/02/10/marcela-valladolid-encourages-travelers-adventurous-eats/#:~:text=Many%20foodies%20know%20Marcela%20Valladolid%20from%20the%20Food,have%20continued%20to%20impact%20her%20outlook%20on%20life.
Source https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/funnelogy-culinary-travelers-funnelogy/index.html?gallery=13