Food has always been my thing. I’m a greedy boy at heart.

But it wasn’t until I lived in the French Alps, China and Spain in my 20’s that I began to understand just how much a plate of food can tell you. About migration and memory. About family, identity and belonging. About the history of a neighbourhood and the people who call it home.

That curiosity eventually led me to study Anthropology at Goldsmiths in London, where I found a language for something I’d been fascinated by for years: the relationship between food, culture and identity.

Today, I design bespoke luxury journeys for a living, with food at the heart of many of the trips I create. And I can tell you wholeheartedly that the most special experiences are rarely behind the doors of celebrated restaurants or luxury hotels.

They’re found where food opens a door into a culture: tasting mezcal with a master mezcalero in Mexico and learning about the land and generations of knowledge behind it; free-diving for scallops with the people who know those waters; sitting down to a candlelit dinner in a temple of literature with a historian bringing its past to life; or gathering around the table for a medieval feast in Estonia.

Sometimes it’s much simpler: a family-run restaurant serving the food of home, a morning spent mushroom hunting with someone who has known the landscape all their life.

These are the experiences I find myself drawn to most, not simply because of what you eat or drink, but because of the people you meet along the way. The growers, cooks, foragers, historians, craftspeople and local experts who give food its context and, in doing so, help you understand a the relationships at play.

That’s why I started Food Dialect.

It’s a place I tell stories.

Think of Food Dialect as part restaurant discovery, part travel journal and part anthropology, a way of exploring the world through what, where and how people eat.

Josh.