A Global Nomad: Travels With A Gourmet

Nov 5

Living abroad wasn’t something I planned. I have been on the move, so to speak, since 1992. It’s come to a point now that I have lived overseas much longer than I have lived in my birth country. Moving constantly and being a global nomad has presented many challenges, foremost being that packing and unpacking a house is probably one of the most stressful things one can do. Imagine having to do this eight times every couple of years? Stressful doesn’t even begin to describe it. But I have no regrets.

I was born in Manila. My food memories are vivid with most of them spent in my grandparents’ home – eating green mangoes off the tree, having fresh coconuts which we stuck straws into to sip the sweet juice, enjoying al fresco meals of grilled meat and fish by the pool. I also remember our Sunday lunches with the assortment of Filipino food prepared by my Lola’s (grandmother) cook Alice, from whom I learned many recipes that I still use today.

After completing a journalism degree, I started taking French at the Alliance Francaise de Manille with the hopes of living in Paris one day. I signed up for a cuisine and pastry course at Le Cordon Bleu Paris (remember that in the early nineties there was no Internet yet). I found out about Le Cordon Bleu from magazines and from a brochure I ordered via snail mail. I realised that I could make better use of my journalism degree to write about food and travel instead of the news.

A year of French lessons later, I enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu Paris and left Manila in 1992. This was when my expatriate journey started – first as a student of culinary arts in Le Cordon Bleu and of French civilization at the Sorbonne. Several internships in the vineyards of France and Napa Valley followed and, finally, a restaurant job in, of all places, post-perestroika Moscow.

After five years of studying and working, I moved back home to help in the family wine importation business. I also opened my own restaurant, Beluga Bar and Bistro, with a modern European menu. It was during the pre-opening that I met Alejandro, an Argentine, who was then the food and beverage director of the Hyatt Regency Manila. Because of a mix-up, I had to bring him a replacement bottle of wine for the hotel’s Valentine menu and the rest, as they say, is history.

We got married in the spring of 2000 in the Napa Valley overlooking the vineyards and surrounded by family and close friends. The venue fit perfectly with our love for food and wine. We continued being expatriates since then.

*Auberge du Soleil in Napa Valley, April 2000*

Part of being a hotelier's wife means having to accept that, usually, each new job opportunity involves a move to a new country. Our first posting was to Santiago de Chile. Santiago was a surprise for me as I had been expecting a vibrant European-style metropolis like Buenos Aires. Instead I got a quieter, small city surrounded by mountains. Although I had taken a few basic Spanish classes in university, my knowledge of the language was basic, and it was difficult for me to communicate. I signed up for Spanish lessons at Berlitz and immersed myself in learning Spanish properly. Being able to converse while doing my errands and speak with locals helped make settling in easier. Here, I managed to do a few restaurant-consulting jobs helping with menu planning and concept creation.

Two years and a half went by quickly and our son was born in Chile. Six months later, we moved from the middle of the South American winter to the scorching summer of the Middle Eastern desert. Dubai in 2002 was not the big, brash, skyscraper-filled city it is now. There were long stretches of open desert, quiet public beaches and just a few pockets of modernity. We spent two and a half years in Dubai where I worked first as a restaurant manager then later as an administrator for a boutique start-up. Time passed quickly and it was easy to fit in as there were so many expatriates living in the Emirate. Everyone spoke English and Dubai was an open and welcoming city despite being in the Middle East.

Next posting was an enjoyable, though quick, year and a half in wintry Montreal. My French came in handy once again. We enjoyed the compact European-style city, Francophone experience and amazing food offering.

A long streak of five years in the south of Spain came next where we spent days at the beach having paella and doing road trips to other Spanish cities: Sevilla, Granada, Cadiz, Madrid and Barcelona. We also took advantage of being so close to Portugal to spend a week exploring Lisbon and Sintra. Our daughter was born in Marbella in 2008 and we moved again soon after. In Marbella, I felt the time had come to start something of my own. That’s when I had the idea to create my blog Travels with a Gourmet – which was meant to be a diary of all the places we lived in, the amazing restaurants we discovered and what we learned from every move to a new country.

From Marbella, island years followed with two years of tropical jungle life in Bali where our half-open house presented several challenges and exotic religious ceremonies were part of daily life. To have breakfast on the terrace meant competing with monkeys so we learned to finish our meal in 7 minutes but later conceded the outdoor ritual and ate indoors instead. A year and a half in the Caribbean came next where we lived by the beach in Dorado, Puerto Rico. Here, we learned about local customs and food and discovered the Puerto Ricans’ zest for dance and music. Our final island posting was four years in Singapore where we lived on Sentosa island, again by the beach. I made the best of our posting with an amazing bunch of friends enjoying frequent “porkluck” feasts and trying new restaurants. We have come full circle now and are back in Dubai since 2017 after crisscrossing the globe.

Three decades of being a global nomad has taught me resilience and to always accept the new: a new city, a new language, a new culture, a new home and new friends. In the first few years, I tried to continue my restaurant career by doing consultation, catering and even private cooking lessons, but with each subsequent move it got harder as I needed to first find a place to live, make it home and help the children settle into their new schools and new life. I got tired of starting something and giving it up after a few years.

For my husband the moves were simpler. From city to city, job to job, he left one country to begin a new position in a new hotel as soon as we arrived. I, on the other hand, had to start over with every single move.

The constant traveling and relocating that comes with being an expat encouraged me to start something I could bring with me whenever and wherever we packed up and moved to. I started chronicling my food and travel experiences in March 2007 in Marbella. Since then, I’ve been writing about my travels, offering restaurant recommendations, sharing recipes and giving tips and tricks to settling into many different countries. I also wrote about the multiple places we had travelled to as expats. Luckily, I made lots of friends from all over and hopefully inspired others to travel more, eat more, discover more places and consider the expatriate life.

My blog finally gave me a chance to use my writing to express myself and share my love for food and travel. At best, it would serve as a guide for others who were looking for suggestions of places to visit and restaurants to try. At worst, it was a visual online journal of our expatriate life and experiences. Travels With A Gourmet has since evolved into a social media journal on Instagram. Fifteen years later, I’m still chronicling my food and travel experiences and helping others enjoy their travel and food adventures all over the world.

Family, food and travels have been a constant in my life for the past 29 years. Despite the initial strain of the moves though, adapting to a new culture, learning a new language, meeting new people and making new friends have all proven to be invaluable and have made the years of moving worth it.

*Roselyn’s kitchen corner with a poster of host countries*

Our children are not only third culture kids but are also exposed to the wider world and to different cultures. Our son, who is now in university in London, once said that all the different schools he attended and the different places he has lived in, although difficult, really helped him adjust to life in a new country and being on his own. Our daughter has also made new friends in Dubai and still managed to keep in touch with all her other friends from Singapore.

Would I recommend being a global nomad to anyone? Yes, but always remember to have an open mind, an enthusiasm for the unknown and an eagerness to learn from others. Everything else usually falls into place.

Roselyn Sugay Helbling | guest contributor | ws

(Images: @travelseithagourmet, @rshelbling)

Fluent in five languages (English, Spanish, French, Russian and Pilipino), Roselyn Sugay Helbling’s life as a global nomad is filled with ambrosial adventures. Cordon Bleu graduate, former restaurateur, polyglot, serial expat, hotelier wife, slummy mummy, part-time blogger and full-time gourmet traveller Roselyn is currently living in Dubai. Travels With A Gourmet is a chronicle of a food lover’s travels, memorable meals, culinary trials and gastronomic experiences.

Roselyn Sugay Helbling

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