Trevor, the curious traveller

He is an explorer. More precisely, a food explorer! For the pure love of food, Trevor James aka The Food Ranger goes places to explore the local cuisine and film his experiences, before posting them on his YouTube channel The Food Ranger.

In August, Trevor had came down to explore the local Kerala cuisine. His video on the cuisine was shared over 35,000 times and garnered more than 30,000 likes on Facebook alone. “I chose Kerala because I heard about its beauty and amazing food. On the airplane descent to Cochin, I knew it was the right choice — everything was green! There were so many forests and it was such a huge contrast from Mumbai. It really got me excited to go and explore Kerala. And I remember the first time I tasted local food in Cochin at a toddy shop, it blew me away, especially all the spices!” says Trevor.

Trevor, originally from Canada, was working in a resort that was only open during the summer season. “I was a tour guide, and when the resort closed, I would have a few months off to go travel with the savings. It was these first few years of working like this that really inspired me to try and have a life full of travel and food. Once, I took a four-month trip from Singapore to Beijing with a friend, mostly by train, and during the trip, I found that the food we were eating attracted me much more than almost anything else we were doing.”

“I decided that in my future trips, I would mainly travel for food, I would food hunt or go ‘food ranging’ for the best food wherever I went. Now, I have a base in Chengdu, China, where the food is numbing. (Yes, it numbs your mouth!) and spicy. I travel around to nearby countries for food whenever I get the chance to film for The Food Ranger,” shares Trevor.

On his experience in India, he says, “My experience in India was completely amazing. It was my first time in India and I had no idea what to expect and I tried to go in without any ideas of what things should be like and just try to learn for myself and taste new flavours.”

Something more was in store for him in the form of a friend. “After finishing all that amazing food at Mullapanthal toddy shop, I met and befriended Aleeja, who invited me to his family home. I would have to say that the homecooked meal I had with Aleeja and his family was the best meal I have had in India. All the thick gravies, fresh shrimp from the backwaters, and wow, the spices! I loved how a lot of dishes had coconut flavour to them. It completely blew me away. I like to travel slow and take my time seeing a place,” says Trevor.

Talking about one of his most relished dishes in India, he says, “The Karimeen I had at one of the local toddy shops, the amount of spices and flavour infused into that fish was really spectacular.”