I don't understand people who travel purely gastronomically, who

Hear the words of Sue Perkins, who declared: “I don't understand people who travel purely gastronomically, who book a Michelin-starred restaurant three months in advance and suddenly find themselves in Copenhagen or Barcelona with a zeitgeist plate of snail porridge.” At first, these words may sound humorous, almost playful in tone. Yet beneath them lies a deeper reflection on the meaning of travel, of purpose, and of what the soul truly seeks when it leaves home. For travel that is bound only to a plate may fill the stomach, but it rarely nourishes the spirit.

The pursuit of Michelin-starred restaurants, as Perkins suggests, has become a modern ritual of prestige. To some, the act of dining at such places is itself a conquest, a trophy won through reservation and exclusivity. Yet this form of travel risks narrowing the world to a single taste, reducing the vastness of human experience into a fleeting performance of the fashionable. The zeitgeist plate of snail porridge she names is both symbol and warning: that novelty can masquerade as meaning, and that what is consumed for fashion’s sake often leaves the traveler spiritually hungry.

The essence of travel, since the dawn of time, has never been about consuming but about encountering. The pilgrim did not set out for a distant temple merely to taste the bread of that land, but to touch the divine and to be transformed. The merchant who crossed the Silk Road carried spices and silks, yes, but he also returned with stories, friendships, and wisdom from far horizons. To reduce travel to the pursuit of a single dish is to miss the banquet of life itself, which is served in people, landscapes, languages, and histories.

Consider the story of Ibn Battuta, the great Moroccan traveler who roamed the world for decades. He tasted many foods, but never once did he define his journeys by the dishes he ate. Instead, he sought the customs of people, their traditions, their laws, their prayers. From India to China, from Africa to the Middle East, his travels were not catalogues of cuisine, but chronicles of humanity. Like Perkins, he would remind us that to know a city, one must look beyond the restaurant and step into its streets, its markets, its homes.

Perkins’ critique of those who book months in advance to chase a fleeting meal also teaches us about presence. For when one’s journey is scripted too tightly, when all paths bend toward a table rather than the unexpected, one loses the joy of discovery. True travel allows the road to surprise, the stranger to teach, the chance encounter to open the heart. The one who seeks only the reservation has already missed the essence of the journey: spontaneity, wonder, and the unknown.

Yet her words are not an attack on food, but a call to remember proportion. For food is part of travel’s richness, but not its entirety. A dish of rice cooked by a family in their home, offered with kindness, can reveal more of a nation’s soul than a hundred-starred plates. The snail porridge becomes the emblem of what dazzles the eye but starves the heart. She asks us, then, to widen our appetite—not only for cuisine, but for culture, for connection, for humanity itself.

The lesson for us is clear: do not let your journeys be ruled by fashion or fleeting prestige. When you travel, eat what the land gives you, but also listen to its songs, walk its streets, learn its sorrows and joys. Carry with you not only the memory of flavors, but the weight of experiences that shape your spirit. Practically, this means leaving room in your travels for the unplanned, speaking with strangers, entering humble places, and remembering that the world is larger than the latest trend.

Therefore, children of tomorrow, remember the counsel hidden in Sue Perkins’ words. Let not your journeys be measured only by menus and reservations. For the truest banquet is not laid upon porcelain plates, but upon the great table of life: in conversations, in landscapes, in stories, and in souls. Eat, yes—but above all, taste the world itself. For he who travels only for the plate returns hungry, but he who travels for the spirit feasts forever.