I’ve just got back from South Africa. The hottest restaurant in Cape Town? Jardine, where truffles and foie gras rule, and are flown thousands of miles for our delectation. But I didn’t want to eat French food in South Africa; I wanted to eat South African food, made with South African ingredients.

Eventually I found a good pan-African restaurant, Moyo, in Stellenbosch, outside Cape Town. It was packed with locals, and served delicious, authentic nosh, but it took some finding among the five-star dining rooms and tourist wheezes.

It’s the same story when I travel to many other parts of the world. To Buenos Aires, Argentina, where everyone is falling over themselves to bag a table at restaurants such as El Bistro at The Faena, and where I was confronted with miso-marinated octopus and pineapple relish; and in Santiago, Chile, where a desperate search for something even vaguely local ended in the city’s finest restaurant, Puerto Fuy, where I ate abalone wrapped in pasta and swamped in a champagne sauce. It’s just not right — on so many levels.

I visited the Caribbean for the first time before Christmas. I scanned the new Zagat guide to Barbados, plotting which restaurants to visit. There was a handful that claimed Caribbean cooking but most were boasting international cuisine – eclectic, they called it. I gave some of them a go, but they just confirmed my worst fears: most of the ingredients were imported, and too much of it was clumsily handled. I ended up seeking the advice of assorted locals, from taxi drivers to bank clerks.

So thanks, Joseph, my hire-car operator, for directions to Mustor’s, a small café in Bridgetown that served a mean chicken stew with rice and field peas. I washed it down with a locally brewed Banks beer, while I watched the tourists down the street munch on pasta with Canadian salmon and sip overpriced Chilean wine.

And thanks to my villa cook, Diana, I really got to understand local ingredients. “I can cook whatever you want — most of my guests ask for what they are familiar with, but I’m happiest cooking what I know — Bajan cuisine,” she announced when we arrived.

I spent the next ten days poking around market stalls, buying ever more curious-looking fruit and vegetables for Diana to cook. With a long, hairy, stick-like root (cassava), and cinnamon and coconut, she made a delectable dessert (pone); with a spiky cannonball (breadfruit), she made a lunch dish that knocked the socks off cauliflower cheese; and with a curious piece of inedible-looking bark (mawby), she brewed up a refreshing sweet and sour drink.

In fact, the Caribbean is changing its ways. Sue Hurdle runs the Travel Foundation, a charity launched in 2003 that encourages the travel industry to adopt responsible, green measures (www.thetravelfoundation.org.uk). Part of its work is to encourage hotels and restaurants to find and use local produce. The Travel Foundation has had particular success in Tobago, and was Highly Commended in last year’s Responsible Tourism Awards.

“There are so many reasons to eat locally — starting with supporting the local economy. And then there’s the environmental perspective: if you have to fly in food from the other side of the world the carbon footprint alone is just scary,” she says.

Hurdle has been working closely with farmers in Tobago, encouraging them to tighten up farming practices. “They weren’t confident enough to approach hotels such as the Hilton but we’ve bridged that gap now,” she says.

There are now 24 producers working with the Hilton, providing mostly salad. “But more fruits and vegetables will come,” says Hurdle. “We’ve helped them to produce year round, even through the rainy season. The most important thing for chefs is that they get a consistent, reliable source and they’ve been really pleased with it so far. It all tastes so much better than the stuff that is flown in once a week.”

The Travel Foundation even employs a full-time agricultural co-ordinator. The next phase is to encourage and promote “added value products” — for example, flour milled from local cassava root — wheat doesn’t grow well in the Caribbean, nor is it native.

Barny Haughton knows all about eating locally. The Bristol chef opened Europe’s first “eco-gastronomic” restaurant, Bordeaux Quay — which is built from sustainable materials, aims to achieve zero waste, and uses only organic produce — last summer, pledging to source as much as he can from the West Country.

So would he eat sushi in San Salvador? “Food miles aside, this touches on one of the most difficult challenges any good restaurant or chef faces, which is that people expect the wow factor to come from luxury and expensive ingredients,” says Haughton. “They mostly fear anything vaguely different or unusual and are instinctively suspicious of a culinary language they don’t understand.

“But when people experience, with an open mind, the strange local fish and spices cooked over a funny-looking stove in a slightly grubby kitchen by someone who can’t speak a word of English, the experience goes beyond food. It broadens the mind and lifts the soul — like travel itself.

“The food that you eat in a certain place should come from that place — food culture at its best is inseparable from the people and the land.”

I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Fron pho to potjiekos: dishes to try around the world

Mauritius: Try poisson vindaye (curried fish) and street snacks such as dholl purees, thin pancakes filled with split peas. For dessert, don’t miss gâteau batate, with sweet potato and coconut pastry.

Bali: Babi guling (crispy grilled suckling pig), and bebek betutu (duck slowly baked in banana leaves with herbs and spices) are popular specialities. For dessert, try bubuh injin (black rice pudding).

Caribbean: Don’t miss freshly caught lobster, crab, shrimp and kingfish at a weekend fish-fry, eaten with hot cakes — grilled patties of unleavened bread. Jamaica’s jerk dishes are deservedly famous — barbecued meat or seafood cooked with spices. Plantains make a tasty side dish. Most islands distil their own rum, while the best Caribbean beers are Jamaica’s Red Stripe and St Lucia’s Piton lager.

Argentina: Locro is a stew made with meat, tripe, sausage, corn, potato and beans. Also look out for parrillada, a mixed grill of blood sausage, ribs and other meat, and asado con cuero, whole roasted beef complete with hide and hair. For a hearty filler, try empanadas: pastries filled with meat, cheese or corn. To finish, dulce de batata is a sweet-potato preserve.

Vietnam Rice and noodle dishes with lemongrass and coriander are staples. Also try hot pot — a broth for dipping meats, fruits and vegetables wrapped in edible rice paper. Pho is a simple dish of rice noodles in broth; bun rieu is a noodle soup topped with crab and shrimp paste. Try adding nuoc cham, a spicy condiment. Che is a dessert made from beans, or sticky rice, and fruit.

South Africa Ostrich, crocodile and kudu are all on the menu. A fantastic snack in Durban is bunny chow, a hollowed-out loaf filled with curry. Bobotie is spiced minced meat baked with a custard topping. Also check out potjiekos — meat and vegetable stew cooked over an open fire. For pudding go for melktert, which is like a cheesecake made with milk.

Catherine Bennion-Pedley

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