How we win when chefs travel abroad

You or I might come back from vacation with a cheesy T-shirt. Chefs, however, often bring back inspiration that changes their techniques and menus.

David Schuttenberg and Tina Heath-Schuttenberg of Kwei Fei and Beautiful Southwent to Hong Kong and China in October 2025 “to make sure we’re not doing a disservice to the (Cantonese) food,” at Beautiful South. They took a similar scouting trip for Kwei Fei in 2019 The couple brought back several menu ideas.

For Malika Canteen’s Maryam Ghaznavi, born in Pakistan and raised in Saudi Arabia, this summer’s visit to Saudi Arabia was a chance to show her children where she grew up.

“I had been wanting to introduce my children to my culture, to show them the diversity and to take them down memory lane,” she said. “My brother brought his family, and it was so wholesome to see the next generation discovering it together and pointing out where we used to come with our parents.”

Re-creating memories plays a part in why the French-born Nico Romo – of Nico’s, Bistronomy by Nico, Laura and Kersey House – takes his family to Europe every summer.

“Every year, it’s a different trip, a different region of Europe,” Romo said.

Beautiful South’s David Schuttenberg and Tina Heath-Schuttenberg brought back new inspirations from Hong Kong and China | Photo by Andrew Cebulka

Maryam Ghaznavi’s summer visit to Saudi Arabia led to new, flavorful experiences at Malkia Canteen in Mount Pleasant | Photo by Andrew Cebulka Credit: Andrew Onion

French-born chef Nico Romo said he takes his family to Europe every summer to reconnect with his roots | Photo by Andrew Cebulka

Transformational experiences

Michael Toscano, chef and owner of The Butterflies, Porchetta ShopBlanca Estrada and the seriouslyfirst went to Italy while working for Eataly in New York. Restaurant founder Oscar Farinetti took his executive staff to Torino, Italy and around the Piedmont region so that they’d know the roots of the restaurant brand.

“There was a moment we ate at Guido in Pollenzo, at the time connected to the University of Gastronomic Sciences,” Toscano said, his voice softening with the memory. “It was absolutely fine dining and very skilled execution, but you ate the classic dishes of the Piemonte.

“The agnoletti a la table came out naked, no sauce, simply boiled and placed in a napkin, dipped in Parmigiano. I had never had those textures. In Italy, it’s the slow technique of taking very few ingredients with restraint and skill, to the highest level. It’s a moment I will never forget. It was the benchmark for perfect pasta.”

Romo had a similar transcendental experience on an early trip to France.

“I was driving to show (some staff members) an old castle in my neighborhood when we passed this restaurant,” Romo said. “It served the classics – frog legs, au gratin potatoes – and we saw all these workers’ trucks parked there for lunch, so we said, ‘let’s go there.’

“It turned into a three-hour lunch. They made the au gratin with this cream from the farm down the road. The flavor of that cream was so incredible. I mean, wow, potatoes au gratin is just cream, salt, pepper, but you can eat something like that every day of your life. It just speaks to you as a chef, a simple cream from a local farm with the cows right down the street.”

These pivotal memories become obsessions that find their way onto chefs’ menus back home.

Showing up at home

For Romo, it’s that potatoes au gratin.

“That dish has been on my menu since I opened,” he said.

For Toscano, Le Farfalle offers a duck confit version of the agnolotti, and da Toscano in New York offers a lamb neck version.

Schuttenberg found that hairy crabs – tiny Chinese crabs with hairy-looking claws – were in season. The roe was used in noodle dishes. Schuttenberg has adapted that dish to use a local crab roe in a gravy that drapes his crab-fried rice.

“People have gone bonkers over it,” he said.

Ghaznavi said she brought home more of an attitude change than a specific dish. Seeing the diversity of cultures in Saudi Arabia inspired her to challenge her diners with dishes plated in a Pakistani create-your-own experience style, versus the already-composed version she served in early days.

“I am actually going to take a lot more risks with my cuisine,” she said.

Sourcing at home

For every chef, the Holy Grail of finding a beloved dish abroad is challenged by the realities of Charleston ingredients.

Ghaznavi said she misses the carrots.

“Sometimes you can find things imported by ethnic stores in small quantities,” she said. “We used to have these red and purple carrots, not like the orange carrots you see here. They were sweeter, so we would make desserts with them in winter and a beef stew. And we had purple carrots that were super-tart and we’d make pickles with them and my aunt and grandma would make this super-refreshing drink with them, Kanji, like a tamarind drink.”

For Schuttenberg it’s the hairy crab roe, something he said is superior to the local roe.

“It was just so fatty, so rich, and had that oceanic, perfect seafood flavor,” he said. “I’ve done my best to re-create it, but I don’t know that I’ll ever have something as clean and rich as that.”

Toscano says he misses the dairy.

“In Europe, it’s second to none,” Toscano said. “They have the highest quality dairy and it translates into cheese. I remember drinking unpasteurized, raw milk in Italy and it was like having the perfect peach for the first time, or an in-season tomato for the first time. It just tastes the most like itself.”

Romo agreed that the creamy dairy of his homeland is what he misses.

“You can’t get that kind of dairy here,” Romo said. “I will say that, from 25 years ago when I came off the boat, we can get a lot more than we used to, like you couldn’t get fresh beets or haricots vert but now they’re everywhere. It’s more of a cost issue now. Like, when it comes to frog legs or escargot, yes, but it will cost a fortune. When it comes to shrimp, well we have a local shrimper we work with and I’m not going to get shrimp from France.”

Even if the ingredients were available, not everything will translate to a crowd more used to shrimp and grits than escargots.

Schuttenberg said he had a delicious “curry brisket” noodle dish in China.

But Asian brisket isn’t American brisket. The Chinese version included tough, chewy beef tendon, which is what Schuttenberg used when he re-created the dish back home.

“I was working on adapting it for this winter’s menu and I served it to a bunch of chefy friends and more than half of them said, ‘Nah’.”

Turns out, even chefs have friends who don’t appreciate every souvenir they’ve brought back.