Today we’d like to introduce you to Dan Thomas.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Growing up as the second of four kids to a poverty-stricken single parent, I knew nothing about travel, fine dining, or the joys that those experiences could elicit. We grew up on welfare and lived in a small, two-bedroom basement apartment. The entryway flooded every time it rained. To say that we didn’t have much is probably an understatement.
One thing we did have, though, was my mom’s home cooking. No matter how busy she was, she found a way to ensure that we had a home-cooked meal in the fridge waiting for us. As a result, for me, food has always been about love – the love and hard work that my mother put into cooking for us and the love we felt for her as a result.
As a poor family, though, food was also, and perhaps primarily, about survival. Which meant that meals were designed to be (a) calorie dense, (b) something that you could make in bulk (so as to have available for much of the week), and (c) cheap. As a result, most of our meals were of the same mid-century American mold – heavy on the carbs, chicken, pork, or a cheaper cut of beef and a few canned vegetables. I knew food to be love but didn’t know it had variety. I didn’t yet know that it could be exciting, an alchemical combination of art and science.
As I grew older, so too did my circle of friends and with it, the scope of my experience with food. All of my friends came from a similar lower income background and were largely first or second-generation Americans. So, while their mothers also cooked for them to feed and nourish and keep them alive, their home cooking was a world apart from mine – in style, in method, and in ingredients involved. My oldest friend’s Korean family introduced me to bulgogi and kimchi (a combination of flavors that was wholly foreign to me and, thus, exciting (I still love it)). My immediate neighbors were Hispanic and Caribbean, and so I was introduced to Arepas, Tajadas, goat stew, and rice and beans. In addition to being a form of love, I began to see food as a journey, one that was uniquely tied to one’s family history and place of origin.
Nonetheless, being from a lower socio-economic background, we never traveled or went on vacation and very rarely dined out at restaurants. As a result, my circle of gastronomic experience expanded only slightly beyond my house, my street, my school. It was limited to what I could reach out and touch.
This began to change when, through some hard work (and, let’s be honest, luck) I was able to go to college. Although my studies had nothing to do with the culinary arts, they opened up my mind to possibility – to cultures and cuisines from far-flung parts of the world.
But, in order to get there, I knew that I needed to double down with my education so as to claw my way out of a multi-generational history of poverty. So, I kept studying, eventually earning both a master’s and a law degree. Graduating from law school with decent grades jettisoned me into a new, extremely unfamiliar circle – that of a young attorney at a very large international law firm, working on transactions all around the world. And when we met clients and colleagues, we’d often meet over lunch or dinner at high-end restaurants of an ilk I didn’t know existed. It was only then that I caught a glimpse of how truly varied and beautiful cuisine could be– Japanese barbeque (where I first had grilled chicken neck), Turkish restaurants (delicacies like saksuka, dolma, and Kisir), Vietnamese Banh Mi, Spanish-styled tapas, and well-curated wine lists. I knew nothing about the food, who made it, or what it took to get there. What I did know, though, was that food was a bridge between people – the cook and the eater, between you and the person sitting across the table from you, between you and everyone else in the room. Food could be delicious, beautiful, and creative, and bond forming. It was art of the most consumable variety.
I knew I wanted to find some way to share this new-found knowledge, but I didn’t know how. And I had law school debt to pay, so back to work I went, focusing on the bills and planning a culinary-based life sometime in the future. Food took a back seat, something to daydream about while I worked long, often grueling hours.
That all changed in 2017. My younger (and only sister), 31 at the time, was diagnosed with cancer in March of that year. We were extremely close. It was supposed to be curable. Eleven months later I sat next to her bed as she took her last breath. That raspy gasp is a sound I will never forget. We had planned to do so much together after we got settled (she was in school at the time, planning a future career in pharmacology). We were going to go to Europe, to South America, to Asia together. We planned to eat at some of the world’s best restaurants, drink some of the most curated wine. We planned to show her daughter all the things we, as poor kids in suburban America, had never even known existed.
I realized at that moment, however trite that this might sound, that I couldn’t keep planning to live in the future; I needed to do it now while I had the chance. Even if it was only one small bite at a time. A short while later I booked my first cross-country trip to Seattle, I trip I’d take alone to a city I’d never been, but with a picture of my sister as the bookmark in whatever book I was reading at the time (a practice I still engage in). And I ate whatever I could find. Nothing was off limits. If my sister hadn’t had the chance to try it, I would try it for her: geoduck and sea urchin, it didn’t matter what it was, I wanted it. My travels and my eating have continued ever since.
The blog, website, and eating/travel tips came about later. I’m type A, so I plan constantly. As I was traveling more (and traveling specifically to eat at certain restaurants or try certain cuisine), I found that I was already making schedules and taking pictures of everything I ate for my own sake and to show my friends where I’d been and what I’d shoveled into my mouth. Eventually, I realized that there might be other similar people out there, kids who grew up like me, adults who came to travel later in life (as of the time of writing, I am 42), who might not have had access to this stuff, might not know what they are missing, might not know where to start. I was already doing the research, finding the great restaurants in whatever town or city I was going to, keeping detailed notes, etc., and so it occurred to me that I might as well share this information, not for self-indulgent reasons, but because it might be helpful to someone else. Why not help others experience the love and excitement that food brought to me? Why not help them indulge in the varied beauty that cuisine could offer? A lofty goal in a crowded market, I know, but if I could help to open one person’s eyes to the delicacies this world had to offer, it was worth it.
But, of course, most of us had day jobs. So, I couldn’t just drop everything and travel to Bora Bora or Paris or South Africa every other weekend. I’d start smaller, small towns, short trips, etc. I’d try to show people that taking any bite out of this world was worth it, no matter how small.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
It certainly hasn’t been a smooth ride. I’d never travelled anywhere (indeed, I was about 30 the first time I got on a plane) and so had no idea how to prepare. Any many of my closest people (with whom I often travel) grew up similarly, so we are all going into this as blank slates – without the knowledge and confidence that frequent travelers possess. We make missteps – booking hotels in rough neighborhoods that looked nice online, not realizing that you need reservations for certain tourist attractions or national parks, or being way behind the times in how far in advance very well-known restaurants need to be reserved.
I am also one of the more open-minded of the eaters in my group, so there’s a fair amount of gentle cajoling of people to get them try new things (but it always pays off and is, indeed, the very reason we’ve started this site). And there are so many culinary varieties out there with which we have absolutely no experience – you never can know what you are getting into (but that is part of the fun).
Finally, and the largest obstacle of all is that, with my sister gone, I’m constantly reminded that I’ve lost one of my key travel people, that she isn’t getting to see what I am seeing or eat what I’m eating. But that is also what drives me to do this in the first place.
As you know, we’re big fans of Small Bites, Big Planet. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
We are a new food and travel blog/website, focused not so much on already frequent travelers or self-described foodies, but on ordinary people, like us, who feel that there is a delicious world out there, but might not know how to approach it. Our hope is not so much to wow people with hyper-glamourous trips and meals at often unattainable restaurants but to show them that there is beauty and creativity right down the street from them, in their own towns and neighborhoods. Our goal is largely to focus on smaller towns and cities and shorter, more attainable trips (although we do have some bigger events coming up – including our first overseas trip). As we progress, we intend to provide practical advice to travel and food newcomers- tips and tricks as we learn them in real-time. We want people to know that food and travel doesn’t have to be out of reach. That no matter your budget or available time, there are ways to get out into the world, to try cuisines outside of your comfort zone, and meet people you’d otherwise not have met. We want to inspire people to broaden their palates and, thus, their minds. We believe food and travel help us to break down barriers and become more connected by experiencing the colors, the sounds, and smells that form the places in which others live and work.
It is from these basic tenets that Small Bites, Big Planet was born. We are a small group of people who discovered that we were at our most present and our most connected when experiencing, with others, the joy of some new dish served by people we’d never met in a place we’d never been. In those moments, we feel love in a way that few other moments can match. We hope that in sharing our experiences we may plant in others the desire to get out there, go someplace and meet someone new, and take a least a small bite out of this beautiful and delectable world.
Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
I love watching people approach a dish tentatively and, with some coaxing take that first bite, only to see the joy and excitement wash over their faces when they realize it’s delicious in a way that they had never experienced before. I feel most connected to people in those moments when they first experience a flavor or method of cooking or ingredient. It’s like watching a newborn try ice cream for the first time. It’s beautiful and we love it!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.smallbitesbigplanet.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/small_bites_big_planet/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100087946786885
