Don't Just Eat Like a Local, Eat With the Locals — in Their Homes
Wouldn’t you love to eat Vietnamese food prepared by a local? (Photo: 117 Imagery/Moment/Getty Images)
“Traveling Spoon is like having a friend’s grandmother share her family recipes and cook and eat with you, wherever in the world you might be,” says Steph Lawrence, who co-founded Traveling Spoon last year. Traveling in China had frustrated her, because she couldn’t get beyond bus tours and meals in hotel banquet halls full of Western tourists. “I just wanted to learn to make dumplings from a Chinese grandmother!”
Jay Savsani, the founder of Meal Sharing, had similar frustrations while backpacking around Cambodia. “It was one of those trips where you’re looking for deep cultural immersion, to meet locals, and learn and share a confluence of ideas with people from that country,” he recalls. “But I ran into same problem a lot of people do: Going to tourist trap after tourist trap. Everyone has the question of what the locals eat, but when you look at Lonely Planet or Trip Adviser, and it says eat next to locals.”
Krishna, a Meal Sharing host in Chicago (Photo: Meal Sharing/Facebook)
His epiphany came when he asked the manager of his hotel for help finding a home-cooked meal. The manager put out the word, and 15 people showed up in the lobby fighting for the chance to cook for Savsani. Clearly many Cambodians wanted the reciprocal exchange of an afternoon of sharing food with a foreign visitor.
And so Savsani and Lawrence became leaders of a movement of young entrepreneurs building businesses dedicated to helping travelers eat with locals. While their companies, and others, follow different models, they both respond to travelers’ insatiable appetite for authentic, educational, and memorable travel experiences (to use four overused words in a row) — and their appetite for home-made dumplings.
Related: See it, Cook it, Eat it: The Tastiest Foodie Vacations on Earth
Eating at home with a family in Cochin, India, courtesy of Traveling Spoon (Photo: Traveling Spoon)
These next-generation foodie companies can be seen as the next step in the sharing economy. Savsani explains that first there was Airbnb, and that took care of shelter. Then there were Uber and Lyft for transportation. And the third wave is food: Hence the market for Meal Sharing, Traveling Spoon, and others that introduce travelers and locals, let them rate each other, ensure safety, and simplify payments.
Here’s a look at the companies that are making those culinary connections.
Traveling Spoon founders Steph Lawrence (left) and Aashi Vel (Photo: Traveling Spoon)
The highest-end of this spectrum, this service finds and vets the best home cooks in 35 cities throughout Asia. Lawrence and her partner, Aashi Val, travel frequently to try audition meals from potential hosts, then package curated experiences (foraging for local greens and visiting the fishmonger in the hills outside Tokyo to make traditional octopus balls, or sampling home-style Shanghai wontons made in the rustic hutong home of a Ritz-Carlton chef). Traveling Spoon also offers a concierge service to match guests and hosts and focuses more on cooking than some other companies.
Related: Find the Best Local Eats: 7 Must-Have Apps for the Traveling Foodie
The kind of local dishes you’ll eat with Traveling Spoon (Photo: Traveling Spoon)
Billing itself the Airbnb of home-cooked meals, this Chicago-based company has grown to connect strangers over home-cooked meals, and some cooking classes, in homes in 450 cities worldwide, the most of any of these startups. Rather than vetting hosts, Savsani says, “We take the Airbnb approach,” using a two-way review system and links to social media to allow hosts (and guests) to build their own credibility.
Related: Where to Eat Handmade Pasta Like You’ve Never Had Before
Pasta! (Photo: Meal Sharing/Facebook)
While Meal Sharing hosts make money, most do it because they love cooking for an engaged audience, or to build experience in preparation for opening a restaurant. Right now the company is plugging ThanksSharing to connect people who might otherwise have spent the holiday alone (or eating badly cooked food with people they don’t really like).
An Italian feast in New York’s TriBeCa (Photo: Bookalokal Inc./Facebook)
This service falls somewhere in the middle, offering spontaneous and scheduled cooking and eating experiences around the world (a banana leaf Sri Lankan dinner with a Sri Lankan family in Washington D.C., dinner with an artist in her studio in Amsterdam). A private session would be just you and the hosts, while a scheduled event introduces you to more travelers. Anyone can sign up to be a host, and hosts post detailed profiles and are reviewed by other users of the site.
Chef Peter’s creations in Wiliamsburg, Brooklyn (Photo: Bookalokal Inc./Facebook)
Company cofounders Evelyne Wright and Frank Ramirez also audition hosts and give the best a “verified” status on the website. They have a strong presence in the U.S. and Brussels, but will do their best to connect travelers with hosts all over the world.
An EatWith dinner party (Photo: EatWith/Facebook)
The model at EatWith is getting travelers into private dinner parties in cities across the Americas, Europe, and Australia, plus Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Cape Town, and Tokyo. Since the groups are typically larger, you sign up for events on specific dates (“Recreating My Mom’s Recipes” in Mexico City, or a market tour and tapas cooking class in Barcelona).
Related: The Sweetest Treats Taking Over Instagram
At an EatWith dinner in San Francisco (Photo: EatWith/Facebook)
EatWith also allows you to choose a specific event that a host offers repeatedly and suggest a date to make it happen. As with Bookalokal, EatWith’s hosts post detailed profiles, get rated by diners, and are sometimes verified by the founders.
A Cookening meal (Photo: Cookening/Facebook)
This company started when founder Cédric Giorgi fell in love with Airbnb on a trip to California and thought, “It would be so great to be able to eat at people’s places all over the world, as a way to discover local gastronomy and cultures.” He started his own culinary version, with small dinner parties in his native France two years ago. There’s the usual host profiles, user reviews and secure payments). So far, it’s heavy on Paris, but the plan is to grow more international, and already English is widely spoken and special diets are always accommodated.
Indian Spices (Photo: Feastly/Facebook)
Offering non-restaurant meals in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., this startup also builds ad hoc dinner parties of “feasters” and hosts who create and market their own events. The cooks range from professional chefs trying out new recipes to passionate home cooks, and the experiences run the gamut from a fried chicken feast to an Indian vegetarian vindaloo tasting.
Black bean noodles and Mapo tofu (Photo: Feastly/Facebook)
WATCH: EatWith: The Airbnb of Home-Cooked Meals
Let Yahoo Travel inspire you every day. Hang out with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
