By popular demand, we offer this brief post about some of the awesome and unusual food we’ve sampled on our journey so far.  The most exotic prize goes to GUINEA PIG, a favorite dish in Peru, which Mark felt compelled to order for his main course on his birthday in August.  Though we don’t have great pictures of the guinea pig (which was consumed at our favorite restaurant in Cusco, Fallen Angel), we can report that it was tender, sweet and offered very little meat to the hungry birthday boy.  Even though they grow their guinea pigs fat in Peru, they don’t seem to grow them fat enough to make a grown man resist finishing the food on three other plates on the table.

Second place in the most exotic category goes to KANGAROO, which we forced ourselves to sample as we prepared a backyard barbecue at our friend Kelly’s house in Tamborine, Australia.  The kangaroo was prepared two ways:  (1) seasoned simply with salt and pepper and (2) marinated in a teriyaki sauce.  Both ways were less gamey than we thought they would be, though none of us at the table felt we ever needed to sample kangaroo again.  We all preferred the other four proteins on our barbie that night:  wagu beef, shrimp, sausages, and lamb.  Interestingly, though we were dining with native Australians, some of whom were close to sixty years old, it was the first time any of us had ever tried kangaroo.  One might deduct it’s not as popular down under as we once thought.

Now let’s move on to the food we’ve got pictures of:

1)  EGG CUSTARD IN BUENOS AIRES.  We ate at Arumburu, what is universally considered to be the best restaurant in this Argentinian capital.  They served a ten course tasting menu and around course five (after the artisinal breads, well before the three dessert courses), an egg shows up filled with a mushroom foam that we can still remember today just with a simple glance at the picture.  The meal is a three-hour event, but probably the best dinner we’ve had on the road so far.

2)  TROUT CERVICHE IN CUSCO, PERU.  The restaurant was Pacha-Papas and it’s nestled up the hill from the main square in town, near the artist’s district.  There are two things that one must order at this restaurant — the lomo (beef with peppers and gravy served over french fries, not to be missed) or this incredible trout cerviche, served with Peru’s famous unpopped corn that compliments almost any plate in that part of the world.

3)  OKONOMIYAKI IN HIROSHIMA.  We apologize for eating so much of this incredible dish before we remembered to snap a picture.  This is a must-eat local dish served in this part of Japan — most famously in Hiroshima.  It’s a savory pancake, sort of a Japanese crepe, filled with noodles, shrimp, pork, or any other savory protein you can imagine.  We thought we would eat just one, but ended up eating four of them.  The dish costs about 8 bucks, but it’s worth the price of a ticket to Japan.

4)  HOMEMADE CHOCOLATE IN CUSCO.  This gets a special shout-out because it was as fun as it was delicious (actually it was more fun than it was delicious).  Franny and Finn took an afternoon chocolate-making class at The Chocolate Museum where they ground the cocoa beans themselves, stirred the paste, crushed nuts, added salt and vanilla and turned out these mini-masterpieces.  A master could make better chocolate, but there’s something nice about doing it yourself.