Just finished reading a great food travel book called Noodle Pillows by fellow New Zealander Peta Mathias. Published in 2003, this is an account of Peta’s journey through Vietnam as a single woman, eating everything that stood in her way. It’s always nice reading a Kiwi perspective of food from a faraway location. Full of recipes and at only 182 pages, it’s a very easy read. Some of my favourite bits: Nobody could communicate with anybody, so he took the Russians into the kitchen and pointed to things. They were delighted and wanted everything, absolutely everything. The meal went very well and a light snapped on in the entrepreneurial Vy’s brain. The very next morning she put a sign outside the Mermaid, listing what the customers had eaten the night before – this was their first menu. ‘Vietnamese don’t use menus. It’s like songs. Everyone knows all the dishes and they just ask for what they feel like that day.’ Have you ever been to a restaurant where there was no menu? Where the chef …