It is possible to argue, albeit rather annoyingly, that the geographical location of a restaurant doesn’t much matter; that if a new place serving the food of, say, Andalusia is doing an impressive enough job with the cooking, then the fact that it isn’t actually in Spain is less than relevant to the joy of the experience. And I do hold with this, up to a point. When restaurants are good, they are the best kind of cultural embassy. Of course, dinner out is not the same as travelling to the country represented by the food, but it’s a lot more than nothing. If you want to understand a culture, eat the food at its heart. I could spin that out to a mildly convincing 1,000 words.
盡管聽起來有點(diǎn)惹人煩，但確實(shí)可以爭辯說：餐廳的地理位置并不那么重要；如果一家新開的餐廳，比如主打安達(dá)盧西亞菜，在烹飪上足夠出色，那么它不在西班牙這一事實(shí)，與體驗(yàn)的愉悅關(guān)系并不大。在某種程度上我也認(rèn)同這一點(diǎn)。餐廳做得好的時候，它們就是最好的文化使館。當(dāng)然，外出吃飯并不等同于去到那道菜所代表的國家，但絕不止于無。如果你想理解一種文化，就去吃它的靈魂之味。關(guān)于這一點(diǎn)，我可以寫一篇大約一千字、多少還算有說服力的文章。