Look At The Plates

When travelling, there’s a long list of advice people give about how to find a good place to eat:

• Eat where the locals eat

• Avoid menus with photos

• Look for short menus

• Check Google & Trip Advisor reviews

• Avoid restaurants with someone trying to pull you inside

All of that can be useful. But there’s another signal that’s quieter and surprisingly reliable.

Look at the plates.

A hallmark of quality - flowery plates. Koh Kood, Thailand.

If the plates are old, patterned and slightly mismatched, you’re usually in the right place.

Not modern white restaurant plates - this can be a red herring. Not colourful crockery. Not uniform stoneware chosen by an interior designer. The good places often have plates that look like they’ve been there forever.

Floral prints. Gold rims slightly faded. Different patterns mixed together. The sort of plates that feel like they might have come from someone’s grandmother’s cupboard.

Veronese bollito misto - Locanda Castelvecchio

And that usually means something important. It means the restaurant probably wasn’t designed first and cooked in second. It grew slowly and. It’s probably been serving food long enough that the plates have simply accumulated over time.

Places like this tend to prioritise; home cooking, regular customers, continuity. They don’t generally do it as a concept, branding, or pure aesthetic.

Bowls of goodness in good bowls, Kuala Lumpur

Of course, pre-planning for this is not always possible. Sometimes you only notice the crockery when the food arrives and the plate lands on the table. And when that moment does come, it often brings a quiet feeling of relief. You sit back comfortably in the chair and think, “Ah. This is going to be good.”

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Fruit, Heat, Repeat

It’s hot and humid and we are stood uneasily inside a badly lit shop. Sharp knives are carelessly left on any flat surface that can be found. A large spider crawls up a wooden beam directly behind my wife and settles, part-camouflaged beneath a heap of pineapples. There’s a bucket of discarded leaves, skins and chopped ends of fruit rotting away as flies circle its circumference.

Welcome to the fruit stall.

Since travelling we’ve become attuned to what’s in season and what each place does best, and have subsequently spiralled into some kind of unnamed fruit addiction. One that now quietly drives the intent of our days.

In Thailand, mango is king. A serving at breakfast with yoghurt. A mango smoothie with lunch to cool off after a day at the beach. The ubiquitous mango sticky rice from a street vendor, shared as dessert from a plastic tray.

Mango smoothies, Koh Kood - bliss!

Dragon fruit, with its otherworldly shape and bright purple flesh speckled with black seeds. The tartness of passion fruit, enough to awaken the sleepiest mid-afternoon lull. Pineapple with its thirst-quenching sweetness.

Visiting a street market in the evening and grabbing a fruit smoothie for around 50p, freshly made in front of you, is now one of life’s simple pleasures. The quiet corner in a pub temporarily dethroned by a plastic stool in a makeshift seating area alongside endless rows of parked scooters.

Galle fruit market, Sri Lanka

In Sri Lanka, mango is readily available, but it’s much more floral in flavour. Something to be savoured rather than devoured.

Banana dominates here. Hanging from every nook and cranny of a stall. Big ones, little ones and even red ones. Sweeter and creamier than those I’m used to at home. A visit to the fruit vendor here often results in a free sample pressed into your hand as you navigate the busy streets.

Daily fruit stall rituals

Back at the fruit stall, the elderly Sri Lankan man is hacking away at a papaya, revealing pale orange flesh that reminds me of the hues of the sun setting over the Indian Ocean. The dark brown seeds are scooped away and forgotten. Eating the cool papaya feels like the perfect antidote to the most humid of days.

The stall holder hands us our clear plastic bag of fruity goodness, sticky to the touch. We pay and dodge our way back past a mound of bananas on the floor.

Another deal done. Another bag of tropical goodness secured.

The daily ritual of the fruit stall isn’t always pretty, but it is always rewarding.

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Setting Sun

Each day, everywhere in the world, the sun will set (extreme solstice points notwithstanding). Sometimes it’s visible, other times it’s hidden behind a thick blanket of overcast sky. On the motorway, outside your home, or at the beach. Often in places you’ll never return to.

The busyness of day-to-day life usually makes most of us forget this daily occurrence. Travelling allows permission to stop, and quite often provides the perfect canvas for the sun to project its palettes of reds, oranges, pinks and purples onto the most beautiful landscapes.

It becomes part of the daily rhythm around which all other activities revolve.

“Shall we eat before, during, or after?”

“Accompanying beer, or not?”

“Are you taking your camera?”

Sunset in Koh Kood

My favourite sunsets are, unsurprisingly, by the sea. The reflective glow, the ever-changing tones on the glistening water as the sun gets progressively lower.

In Sicily, sat on the balcony of an Airbnb in Ortigia, it felt theatrical. Swallows murmurating above in a large mass of black specks, a fishing boat crossing the sun on the water as it headed back to the harbour. A glass of zibibbo in one hand, a fork loaded with fresh fennel and sardines in the other.

A sun set in serenity. Ortigia, Sicily.

In Koh Kood, sunset arrives quietly, as beach revellers reluctantly filter off home, leaving the odd person to swim in the cooling sea. A group plays volleyball, seemingly unaware of the spectacle behind them. Others cradle an ice-cold Chang and look out to sea, hypnotised by the changing of the day.

Wherever you may be, sunsets don’t ask anything of you. They don’t care what you’re doing. There’s no judgement, no measure of your performance, no requirement that you have everything figured out. They simply come and go, reminding you that today is all but done.

Bang Bao beach, Koh Kood, Thailand.

And that’s somehow comforting. A reminder that endings can be gentle, even when your life is in transition.

The sun sets not as a conclusion or a performative display. Just as a pause. Tomorrow it rises once more, and we do it all again.

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A Change of Pace

I am now in Koh Kood and arriving here has been a change of pace.

After the bustle of Bangkok, and the constant movement of travelling through Australia, it is comforting to be spending a couple of weeks in one spot. To wake up without needing to think too far ahead. To let the days arrive as they are.

The good life: sunset at Bang Bao beach

Decision fatigue can creep in, even in the fortunate circumstances of travel. Eating out is a perfect example for us. In every new city, we seem to accumulate lists as long as our arms: places we’ve saved, restaurants we’ve read about, spots we don’t want to miss.

And then comes the strange work of it all. Checking menus. Opening hours. Availability. Mapping it onto the shape of the day. In bigger places, even dinner starts to feel like logistics and a chore.

I’m not complaining. We love it, genuinely. Seeking out the revered little trattoria, the neighbourhood bistro, the place that everyone swears is worth it. But after weeks of living that way, it becomes tiring in a way you don’t always notice until it lifts.

Only since arriving in Koh Kood have I felt that weight fall away.

Here, the choice is simple. Two or three places nearby, all serving good food, all more or less the same. The decision is made on mood rather than optimisation. You eat where you feel like eating. And that simplicity is oddly refreshing.

It’s a small reminder of how much quieter life is now.

Living out of a 47-litre backpack reduces the noise also. It narrows the options. It makes the essentials clearer. That doesn’t mean I want to live forever with so little, but it has shifted something in me: a renewed appreciation for how little is actually needed, and how much freedom there is in less.

I used to think freedom meant more options. More possibility. More control. But I’m starting to suspect it might be the opposite. Freedom might be fewer decisions, fewer distractions, and the ability to simply be where you are, without needing to maximise it.

A simple meal that will literally put a smile on your face

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