It is possible to argue, albeit rather annoyingly, that the geographical location of a restaurant doesn’t much matter; that if a new place serving the food of, say, Andalusia is doing an impressive enough job with the cooking, then the fact that it isn’t actually in Spain is less than relevant to the joy of the experience. And I do hold with this, up to a point. When restaurants are good, they are the best kind of cultural embassy. Of course, dinner out is not the same as travelling to the country represented by the food, but it’s a lot more than nothing. If you want to understand a culture, eat the food at its heart. I could spin that out to a mildly convincing 1,000 words.
尽管听起来有点惹人烦，但确实可以争辩说：餐厅的地理位置并不那么重要；如果一家新开的餐厅，比如主打安达卢西亚菜，在烹饪上足够出色，那么它不在西班牙这一事实，与体验的愉悦关系并不大。在某种程度上我也认同这一点。餐厅做得好的时候，它们就是最好的文化使馆。当然，外出吃饭并不等同于去到那道菜所代表的国家，但绝不止于无。如果你想理解一种文化，就去吃它的灵魂之味。关于这一点，我可以写一篇大约一千字、多少还算有说服力的文章。