Atlas Trail
Four dishes carried across an ocean or a border by people who left home and remade a national cuisine when they arrived: tacos al pastor, brought by Lebanese immigrants to Puebla and turned Mexican; tandoori chicken, invented by a Peshawar restaurateur and carried to Delhi by partition; croissant, an Austrian kipferl remade with French puff pastry after a Vienna baker opened shop in Paris; and ramen, built in Tokyo from a borrowed Chinese name and a Cantonese-style broth into something distinctly Japanese. Each dish is proof that a national cuisine is rarely a closed room.
Stop 1 of 5.
Dishes
Falafel travels a different direction on this trail, an Egyptian dish claimed today across the modern Middle East.
Stop 2 of 5.
Dishes
Puebla, 1930s: Lebanese shawarma meets Mexican adobo and pineapple on the same vertical spit.
Stop 3 of 5.
Dishes
Peshawar to Delhi: a restaurant, not a royal kitchen, invented this one, and partition carried it east.
Stop 4 of 5.
Dishes
Vienna to Paris, 1839: the Austrian kipferl remade in French puff pastry.
Stop 5 of 5.
Dishes
Tokyo, 1910: a borrowed Chinese name, a Cantonese-style broth, and a dish that became unmistakably Japanese.
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