GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Yesterday a friend and I recalled frog’s legs and snails. She has become a vegetarian but says she’s always loved meat and stopped because she was eating too much of it. She waxed poetic over the remembered delicacy of frog’s legs. I recalled that my father, a true blue American, was horrified when he visited me in Paris, where I was living several years ago. They really do eat snails and frog’s legs, he said with a shudder as we read the menu.

And then I remembered serving buckwheat pancakes with maple syrup for Sunday brunch to some Chinese journalists who had just arrived in Geneva in 1988. They were polite about the meal but must have suffered.

Now a friend, a Canadian of Chinese extraction who has struggled with but enjoyed multicultural eating for all her life, sends me this from Fuchsia Dunlop, one of my favourite food writers because she turns Chinese cuisine into something both extraordinary and understandable: “Culture Shock” from the 2005 archives of Gourmet magazine. Dunlop takes some of her Chinese chef pals out for a top of the top French dining experience in California.

Here’s a sample, and there is plenty more food for thought and vice versa in this delightful, long article:

“There are strong taboos I haven’t anticipated. The most striking is the visceral dislike of rawness. In China, the consumption of raw foods was historically viewed as a barbarian habit, and most everything is still eaten cooked. The chefs are horrified by the rare, bloody meat they are offered in America. And after two days of buffet lunches at the school, they are even tiring of salads…”