Feasts for the Senses

Chef Olivia Tiedemann shares her favorite culinary memories and how to eat well wherever you land

- PAUL RHODES

ONE OF OLIVIA TIEDEMANN'S MOST MEMORABLE meals was a simple dish of spaghetti with tomato sauce. Her grandfather, Frank Marotta, made it at his cabin at Hunter Mountain in upstate New York for her and her brother, Sam, when she was 7.

"It's kind of an odd memory," the private chef turned social media star explains over a video call from her home in Austin, Texas. "I remember that day very vividly. He made it. And it was so funny watching him cook spaghetti in comparison to my mom, who's, like, a great cook. He's kind of just slopping it around and, like, slopped it on a paper plate. I think he actually made us get it ourselves too and then clean it up after as well."

"The weird part about it is I don't even remember eating it. I think I just remember how I felt about that experience as a whole and how it was not, like, food for pleasure, it was food for function.

Like, I'm feeding you because tomorrow we need to go skiing. I don't know, it was just a different way of eating."

Food often plays an important part in how we remember special events or going to someplace new: the sharpness of the mustard on a hot dog at a ballpark or the richness of a cone of chocolate ice cream on a warm day at a beach. Ahead of summer vacation season, Tiedemann spoke with Newsweek about her favorite food memories from her travels and how to get the best dining experiences when visiting somewhere new.

One of her tips is to make the most of local ingredients, whether you are cooking for yourself or family and friends at a vacation rental or heading to a restaurant. Tiedemann had to take this advice to heart when she was doing community outreach work in Madagascar after she had finished high school and before she became a chef.