Mike L's Essay

During our time in Boston, our group scanned different parts of Boston looking for not just an ordinary place to eat. We did not just search for any old restaurant; we looked for different culturally based places and menus.

My essential question that I presented to every possible restaurant was “What spices dominate each of the cultures we are exploring?” Our first stop was at a restaurant by the name of Boloco, this restaurant was a Mexican style restaurant, which happened to have a couple vegan choices for me like the soy shake. After finishing the meal, I asked the lady working the counter my essential question and she seemed kind of confused. She then sent me to another lady who had some answers. She responded by telling me that at their restaurant their dominate spices where Cajun spice, oregano, thyme, and black pepper.

That night we ventured off to Brookline near Coolidge corner and our group split in two and I happened to go to Zenna’s noodle bar, which is a Thai restaurant. Here I had a plate of steamed vegetables and soup. Our waitress was Thai and she was able to answer all of our questions, so we gave her a heavy tip. When it was my turn to ask the question she responded with a ton of ingredients. There was a total of nine dominate ingredients that she gave me; Red pepper, red onion, garlic, lemon leaf, sugar, fish sauce, shrimp paste, tamarind, and choo chee sauce. Our meals seemed to all be healthy, but at the same time very affordable.
A couple hours after finishing up our eating we headed back to the hostile and settled in for the night. When we awoke in the morning we headed off for Chinatown, where we had a late breakfast. I did not have anything to eat there and it was too complicated to ask any questions, so no one in our group got any questions answered there, this certain place however, seemed to be the hot spot because it was packed with people. Other members of the group where pressured into eating things they were not accustomed to. After the members digested the food, we shopped a little and headed off to the North End famous for its Italian food.
When we arrived at the North End we ventured for a little while looking for a place to have our late lunch. We finally found a place called Express and we settled in, the place looked like a pizza place except for it had a fancy appeal to it and it was located in the North End, which gave it an advantage over any other pizza place. It was not packed and the wait for the food was fairly short. I ordered a veggie panini. After I finished eating I asked a worker my essential question and he gave me eight dominate ingredients; Jalapeno, fresh garlic, olive oil, basil, salt, pepper, tomato sauce, and grated cheese.
Our trip to Boston opened my eyes to how others countries eat, and the way in which they go about eating. All of the places we visited where different in some way then the next, even Boloco, which we later found out was a chain restaurant. Lastly, I learned that each country grew and prospered off of what they could grow depending on their certain climate, so each country that we visited became accustomed to different kinds of food.