Eating wisely is a big part of eating well

While reading David Shaw’s “Eating Well on the Road” [Feb. 1], I wasn’t sure if the article referred to eating gourmet or simply to eating well.

During 40-plus years of travel to Europe, I’ve used two basic approaches to finding a place where I can eat well at a reasonable price. In smaller towns and villages, menus posted outside most restaurants are updated regularly to show what’s being offered, including the specials of the day, complete from soup to dessert, at a fair price.

In larger cities -- such as Amsterdam; Vienna; Berlin; Munich, Germany; and Zurich, Switzerland -- I talk to folks, not the ones listed in the article but mainly clerks at hotels where I’m staying.

If you ask them to recommend a place, they may assume you want a restaurant catering to tourists, but if you ask them where they eat, they almost always suggest a good place in the neighborhood.

Finally, because the hotels often provide a buffet breakfast, we usually eat only breakfast and an evening meal, with fruit as snacks during the day.

Don Heidt

Ojai

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Shaw’s story reminded me of the trip our family took to Paris three years ago. Our 9-year-old son wanted to try escargot (snails), which he had learned about in a video.

This presented a three-part challenge: finding a restaurant that served them, having it fit in our budget and making sure they had other food he would eat in case this experiment didn’t work. We found success at a brasserie in the Montparnasse section of Paris. And we didn’t even need the backup food -- he loved the escargot so much that he didn’t want to share them with his parents.

Phillip Hain

Glendale