Home Comforts -- Number Five: Food & Drink

Fuhgedaboudit.

Ask the average expat what they most miss about home and, chances are, they’ll be drooling all over you within 30 seconds. At the same time, if they retain sufficient power over their bodily functions, you might be able to pick up strange utterings like “Irn-Bru” or “maple syrup” or “Irn-Bru bars”.

“Oh, here we go again,” I hear you cry, “another whinge about living in a place where the sun shines for more than two weeks of the year!” But this goes beyond Bolivia. Food is self-evidently a big part of what ‘home’ represents for us as human beings. And, as far as Bolivia’s concerned, this very blog has paid ready testament over the years to the world-beating quality of the steak in this corner of the world.

Beyond the steak, however, the range is somewhat limited. Red meat dominates and everything – everything – is served with fried rice. Indeed, Amanda’s first dish here went down in local infamy when she made the fatal oversight of neglecting to serve a side of rice with her pasta. For Bolivians, only two food groups exist: ‘high-carb’ or ‘very high-carb’. High time, then, that we at last returned to Scotland…where it’s potatoes with everything!

Hmmm. What we do have in the West, though, is ready access to a sufficiently wide range of cuisines. We’ve uncovered a few half-decent Asian restaurants in the bigger cities of Bolivia, but that’s about it. And worst of all, no Italian. So if you’re looking for me in about three weeks’ time, chances are you’ll find me at Sarti’s on Bath Street, doing my best Tony Soprano impersonation. After all, if you’re going to live according to the Bolivian food groups, you might as well make it tasty while you’re at it.