The Eat Smart group tries southeastern Turkish cuisine at the Akdeniz Hatay Sofrası restaurant in Istanbul during a 2015 trip.
To Joan Peterson and Susan Chwae, the mother-daughter team behind Madison-based food tourism company Eat Smart Culinary Travel, the best way to understand and experience a different culture is by tasting it.
“Food is like a common language,” says Peterson, who launched Ginkgo Press in 1993 to publish educational guide books about the cuisines of different countries. Initially she and her husband traveled the globe conducting culinary research for the books, and eventually they decided it would be fun to lead a tour. Peterson’s favorite country was (and still is) Turkey, making the Middle Eastern country a natural fit for her first tour in 1998.
Over the years, Eat Smart began offering additional tours to places like Italy, Morocco and Indonesia, but Turkey remained the company’s signature trip, offered annually up until 2016, when Turkey’s political situation became dangerous and travelers started having difficulty obtaining visas, Peterson says.
The U.S. State Department on Jan. 12 issued a “Level 3” travel advisory for Turkey, citing “terrorism and arbitrary detentions.” Peterson and Chwae say they’ve always felt safe traveling Turkey and hope to resume the tour as early as 2019. But for this year, they’re debuting a new tour to nearby Jordan, which offers similar flavors and culture.
“The food in Jordan gets its influence from an area called the Levant — North Africa, the Middle East, Persia, the Mediterranean,” says Chwae, who first visited Jordan last year while traveling with family. Culinary staples include internationally famous foods like hummus, tahini and falafel, plus regional dishes like kibbeh (meat patties with bulgur and minced onions), zarb (Bedouin barbeque), mansaf (lamb in fermented dried yogurt sauce, the national dish of Jordan).
The State Department also has a travel advisory on Jordan, citing terrorism and the ongoing armed conflicts in neighboring Iraq and Syria, but as of Jan. 10 the warning is only at Level 2 — “exercise increased caution.” The culinary tour tries to play it safe by sticking to major tourism centers like the Dead Sea, Petra and Wadi Rum.
“The culture is so friendly and easily accessible,” Chwae says of Jordan. “Restaurants are well set up for tourists, and owners welcome [guests] with open arms.”
Eat Smart tours are intimate affairs, ranging from eight to 12 guests. Prices range from $2,500 to $3,500, which includes meals, accommodations, transportation (excluding airfare), professional guides and cultural activities. The trip to Jordan, which runs Nov. 1-9, sold out two weeks ago, but Peterson says she would consider offering another this year if enough people are interested.
“It’s really nice to be in the smaller group,” Peterson says. “We can all sit at one table. We really become a family at the end.”
