How I Turned a Sweaty Kerala Kitchen Visit Into a Vacation Strategy

I am not a professional food reporter. I am a guy with a camera phone, a vacation, and a questionable relationship with humidity. Thiruvananthapuram sits less than 600 miles north of the equator, and April there is not a season so much as a sauna with a calendar. It was 95°F, the air was soup, and I was standing in Chef Murtry’s kitchen filming him make chickpea curry while the stew pot singed my arm hairs. I had traveled to India to see a friend who was working there. No assignment. No press badge. Just a friend who asked a local restaurant if we could hang out with the chef. I was drenched, not relaxed, and having a hell of a time. Murtry was not used to anyone caring how he made his insanely delicious food, and once he started talking, he shared a technique I had never seen: deep-frying chunks of coconut in their own oil to add another layer of intensity to the stew. Somewhere between the sweat and the coconut, the puzzle pieces of Keralan cooking began to interlock. By the time the dish was ready, I had learned more than a recipe. I had begun to understand the fundamental building blocks of a local flavor. Fast-forward a few months, and I was testing a home version of Murtry’s chickpea dish for a newspaper story. That was gravy, never the plan. Back in his restaurant, all I cared about was learning something new from a guy I would otherwise never meet.

This is how I vacation. In 2026, when every app will happily sell you an ‘authentic local experience’ as if it were a souvenir fridge magnet, my strategy is simpler and much sweatier: think like a reporter. I am a terrible vacation planner. I have never understood hotel points or itinerary Tetris. But I have learned to ask why and how. I interrogate the way cities work and how eating fits into daily life. In Singapore, I wondered how a country’s egalitarian ideals square up against its complex ethnic politics, and what that means for its famous hawker centers. In San Francisco, I wondered what rising real estate costs are doing to restaurants in the East Bay. The travel industry cannot sell curiosity the way it sells hotel rooms, so you have to bring your own questions. A guidebook can tell you where to eat. It cannot tell you why the auntie at the market is laughing at your coconut technique.

Yes, I often get access that the average tourist does not. I know writers and businesspeople who can connect me with locals who have juice. I can wave credentials to wheedle my way onto farms and into factories. I mostly travel solo, with no partner or offspring to appease, and white cis-male foreigners like me do not face many issues abroad. But just as many reporting trips require no special access at all. Three years ago, Daniel Gritzer and I went to Boston and visited 45 restaurants over three days in search of the city’s best lobster roll and pho. We asked well-connected locals for recommendations, but once we hit the streets we were just hungry civilians hoofing it from lobster shack to pho counter, absorbing local culture one napkin at a time. We found one of our favorite lobster rolls at Neptune Oyster. No secret door. No VIP wristband. Just questions, walking, and a willingness to eat lunch twice.

Every reporting assignment begins with a question. To figure out what to ask, I consult sources beyond travel guides. Local newspapers usually give a better sense of a place than a glossy roundup. Obsessive bloggers are easy to reach and often happy to answer a friendly email with recommendations. And when I am tired of reading, I cook. One handy way to understand the skill in a local cuisine is by bungling it yourself at home. That is how Kerala happened. After reading dozens of recipe blogs and eating my way through New York’s Keralan kitchens, I assigned myself a question: what is it about the state’s famous food, with its abundant seafood and coconut, rich use of spice, and knack for fermentation, that makes everything taste so damn good? By good fortune, an Indian-American friend had landed a Fulbright scholarship to study the communist state’s world-renowned palliative-care practices. She had spent summers with family in nearby Tamil Nadu, and because she is also a good eater, she volunteered as translator while we spent a week asking home cooks and restaurant chefs for lessons.

Local experts like these are called fixers. Magazine journalists and TV hosts rely on them to make connections, but you do not need to work in media to find and hire one. In Mexico City, my friend Lesley Tellez has a whole company devoted to this sort of thing. In New York, slice obsessive Scott Wiener runs a specialized tour for pizza fanatics. Even with a fixer, getting into Murtry’s kitchen took persistence: several visits and carefully worded explanations that we were just curious people, one of whom happened to be a reporter, who loved his food and wanted to see how he made it. At one point we were promised entry at 6 a.m., only to show up and get turned away by another staffer who was not in the mood to humor us. So we visited a nearby restaurant and got a lesson in dosa-making instead. This is how reporting goes. You start with a list of names. You make your approach. You try another tactic when things go wrong. It takes patience and a flexible schedule, which is a luxury for any traveler, but a luxury worth striving for. I would rather spend six days in one city than two days each in three. You need to acclimate to local rhythms. You must accept a modicum of boredom while the story unfurls.

Travel writer Robyn Eckhardt once told me that at markets she would just start asking the ladies questions: What do you do with this? How do you make it? Silly stuff like that. From there, maybe she would see someone who makes bread, and hey, she is interested in bread. Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes it is no. Everyone wants to talk about food, she said, and it is non-threatening. She is not a rabble-rouser. She just wants to talk about your cheese. People trust her because she really does want to talk about their cheese. The not-a-rabble-rouser part is important. Every traveler is a guest in someone else’s home. Respect when someone is done talking to you, or if they never wanted to start. Compensate the people who help you, by paying a fixer or taking a friendly family out to lunch. In 2026, with overtourism and algorithmic itineraries making every charming alley feel like a queue, curiosity must not become entitlement.

A few months ago, I watched a travel-reporting master at work when my friend and neighbor Anya von Bremzen was reporting on the diverse foods of Queens for Airbnb Magazine. She gossiped with Bukharan bakers. She joked in Spanish with taco guys about the World Cup game on TV. They opened up, told her where they eat in the neighborhood, and offered tastes of blood sausage fresh from the griddle. She soaked it in, followed up on leads, and was always down to hit one more empanada shop with an enticing window display. It is harder work than it sounds. Plenty of intriguing angles turn into dead ends, and the empanadas are not always worth the trip. But you learn something along the way and bring a hell of a story home.

My Kerala curry did not make me an expert. It gave me a story, a recipe, a few friends, and a deep respect for cooks who work in heat that would make a lizard complain. In 2026, ‘off-the-beaten-track’ is mostly a marketing phrase. Curiosity is not. Pack questions, a flexible schedule, and an appetite. Bring sunscreen. The sweat is authentic. 🥥🔥