Saying we love trying food and restaurants would probably be the understatement of the century. At least once a week (usually more), you can find us trying a new restaurant and dropping upwards of $40 on a meal 🙁. Oftentimes, it is an excuse for us to hang out with friends or spend quality time with others. We have found that food is an experience rather than simply eating food, but, you may be wondering how our restaurant adventures even started, and it’s a little different for both of us.
For Saanvikha – I quite literally grew up watching Food Network – Giada, Chopped, The Pioneer Woman, Holiday Baking Championship – you name it, and I’ve probably watched it with my mom. I loved testing new recipes, and it honestly is a little scary that I knew words like caviar, pâté, paris-brest at the age of 7. However, I didn’t really have the interest or the freedom to try restaurants until we studied abroad in Cortona.
Dawson’s story is a little different – I grew up the pickiest eater you’d ever meet. Coming from a military background in rural Missouri, the closest restaurant we had to modern civilization was a McDonalds. Similarly, studying in Cortona, Italy expanded my horizons, exposing me to rabbit, duck, pasta types and sauces, and I became entranced. Moreover, I spent the summer in Washington D.C. and fell in love with the food scene, often preferring to eat out than warm up some microwavable chicken.
Now that you have a little look into the origin of this newfound passion, let’s dive into something wonderful that came out of it – the discovery of Beli! Subtle flex, but we have introduced the app to so many people and practically forced them to download it. So, to all of our friends that now use Beli, you’re welcome for getting you into it. And to Beli, please sponsor us 🙂. For the rest of you, follow us at @dawsontemplin + @ssaravanan.
We’ve absolutely loved using Beli to track all the food we’ve eaten from literally across the globe. It’s so useful to look back on and see what you’ve eaten and liked in the past, but it also is incredible for recommendations. It gives you a recommendation score for restaurants, cafes, and more based on your taste and rankings in the past for categories of (1) restaurants, (2) bars, (3) bakeries, (4) coffee & tea, and (5) ice cream & dessert. It is also great to remember when you ate at a restaurant and allows you to bookmark a place you have been wanting to try, a wonderful feature for when attempting to decide where to eat. If you follow us on Beli, you know that we give our honest thoughts and opinions about each place, but some of these highlights on Beli don’t have the full story behind everything we have tried. A lot of you have been asking for more fun stories so we will jump right in.
The Chase for Fine Dining
Starting off strong, let’s head to Paris. This was during one of our weekend trips while studying abroad at Oxford University, so as you can imagine, it was chaotic and planned last-minute. We had a lot of places on our list to try, but we didn’t really account for the fact that we would need reservations for most restaurants on the fancy-ish side in Paris. So, while on the Eurostar train to Paris (which we barely made it on as Dawson had to run back to the house to get his passport), Saanvikha somehow was able to get a reservation at La Renommée for that same night. The catch was that we had about 30 minutes from the time we got to our Airbnb to make it to the restaurant but it was an hour walk away. Instead of taking the metro like normal people would, we decided to quite literally RUN to make our reservation (which we made) with time to spare. Shoutout La Renommée for introducing us to the best fries in existence.
The four days that Dawson visited New York over the summer were PACKED. Another restaurant is featured in the next section, but we decided to try out Le Jardinier, a French restaurant. What made this so memorable was getting to talk to a sommelier about her experiences and various alcoholic and non-alcoholic champagnes and wines. This sparked Dawson’s own interest in wine culture but also taught us to ‘appreciate wine as a food,’ a phrase we’ve heard often since Italy.
London is famously known for its Indian cuisine, and when we got to London, we knew we wanted to try it out. Well, maybe reserve three months in advance. With our squad that pre-traveled the UK, we decided to make a reservation at Gymkhana, a 2** Michelin restaurant for Diwali, despite not knowing our class schedule or whether any of us could make it. For both of us, it is still one of our favorite meals to date.
Unexpected Discoveries
These three stories are ones we will probably mention a few more times, so get pumped. First, we wanted to recount our rabbit soup at Osteria del Teatro. This rabbit soup, to put it bluntly, looked extremely unappetizing. However, we were recommended to just try it, and it turned out to be the best dish out of 5 for that night. Osteria del Teatro was one of the first dining restaurants that really allowed us to expand our horizons.
Second, comes the pesto gnocchi at Nocello, a restaurant just south of central park in New York City. To this day, this pasta is both of our number one ranked dish on Beli. When I tell you this was life changing, it literally changed our lives. Saanvikha heard of this restaurant from a mentor of hers, and we decided this restaurant out of a list of three when Dawson was in NYC the summer of 2024. Although it also looked like vomit, to put it lightly, it was a wonderfully unexpected discovery that has been a fun story to tell our friends about.
Third, you never know what to expect when you enter a new city. While in Oxford, we took a scenic rail from Tirano, Italy to Chur, Switzerland on the way to Geneva. While waiting for the four hour train, we stopped at Leti, a local pizzeria. It was incredible pizza, it was amazing. The entire pepperoni and margherita pizzas were devoured on the trains, and it was a wonderful beginning to our scenic ride.
Well, there you have it. We cannot share too many meals or restaurants or else you wouldn’t read anymore, and well, we still need to save stories to write about in the future. But, hope you enjoyed and possibly feel inspired to use Beli and see food as an experience and art rather than just something to consume. Be on the lookout for more food flicks to come!
