Online - June 25, 2008

Global Table

Destination Dinners Food Kits

Some people travel to find unsigned Picassos. Some for remote white sand beaches. Others for the secret Marc Jacobs outlet outside Paris.

You, you travel for the food. (And, okay, the pretty face attached to the accent across the table.)

Too bad tumbling dollars and sky-rising gas prices are keeping you close to home and far from the illegal spices you like to smuggle past the INS.

But you can bring the world’s table to your kitchen with Destination Dinners recipe and cooking kits. Decide where your belly wants to go — Thailand, Jamaica, Lebanon — and order online.

Here’s a taste of what you’ll find on the menu: jambalaya (New Orleans), chicken garam masala (Bangladesh), falafel with hellfire harissa sauce (Israel), black cod in miso marinade (Japan).

The tissue-wrapped dinner-in-a-box takes the guesswork out of meal prep and shopping with easy cooking instructions, a grocery list (for meat, fruits, and veg), trivia about the destination, and a cardboard sheet onto which are attached boxes of premeasured portions of every dry ingredient you’ll need. (The design is amazing — very Japanese sleek.)

Kits cost only $25 each. Which is less than you’d spend to check your suitcase onto a long-haul flight.

Available online at destinationdinners.com.

  Foodies, Travel Tips