Food Stories

Shawarma met Mexican chilies and pineapple to create one of Mexico City’s signature street foods.

The name comes from an English earl, but meat and bread existed together long before him.

Vanilla comes from an orchid, and it took a twelve-year-old boy to solve how to pollinate it by hand.

Milk tea with chewy tapioca pearls began in Taiwan in the 1980s and then spread around the world.

Paella is named after its pan and began as a rice dish of the farmlands around Valencia.

Crisp, green inside and loved across the Middle East, falafel may have started in Egypt with fava beans.

Chickpeas, tahini, lemon and garlic: hummus is loved across the Middle East, and its origin is warmly debated.

Did Marco Polo bring noodles from China to Italy? Historians say the story is a myth, and the real history is more interesting.

Curry reached Japan through the British in the nineteenth century and became a comfort food loved by schoolchildren and adults alike.

Wheat noodles in broth arrived in Japan in the nineteenth century and became one of the country’s best-loved foods.