Travel Show: In search of great food, wherever you go

Finding good food abroad, from top Paris restaurants to Singapore’s street stalls, requires some planning, but how much?

L.A. Times restaurant critic Jonathan Gold led a panel called “Tasting Tips Around the Globe” with food bloggers Cathy Chaplin, Tomo Kurokawa and Barbara Hansen on Saturday at the Los Angeles Times Travel Show. The panel discussion continues at 2:45 p.m. Sunday (today) with another hour-long discussion of food and travel.

Chaplin, who writes a blog called Gastronomy, said she’s a big fan of spreadsheets when planning a week of serious eating in, say, Paris. Three months beforehand, she’ll schedule breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner at eateries that she doesn’t want to miss.

Kurokawa, a medical doctor who blogs about her food experiences on Tomostyle, takes a more laid-back approach. If she’s in a great food city -- Paris, Madrid, London or Tokyo -- she’ll plan one or two nice meals then wander around a bit. “I like a couple of days with no itinerary, just to walk around and go to local coffee shops and bakeries,” she said. “Those wind up being the most memorable meals.”

The panelists took questions from the audience about great places to street eat -- Singapore, India and Thailand, according to Hansen -- and talked about which ethnic cuisines appear to be on the rise. Vietnamese and Filipino food might be coming into their own, Gold said, as well as the traditional Japanese multicourse seasonal meal called kaiseki.

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