"Every day for three weeks I put on my chef's coat and went to work at this restaurant in Thailand. They spoke no English and I spoke no Thai, but we could still communicate about food," says chef/restaurateur Mary Sue Milliken.

Food may be the true universal language, crossing barriers of culture and ethnicity. Those who are passionate about food also typically have a hunger to learn as much about the subject as they can, which leads many restaurant professionals on an exploration of the cuisines of the world. And once they get a taste for what can be discovered while traveling — whether to a distant country or to a nearby city — they get hooked, it seems.

For example, look at Milliken and her partner, Susan Feniger. Both women began traveling for their careers before they owned a restaurant and before they were partners. Both spent time working at restaurants in France. After they owned their own restaurant, a small operation in Los Angeles called City Cafe, Feniger took her first official research trip as a restaurant owner. She went to India in 1982 and spent three weeks working in the kitchen of a vegetarian restaurant. "Our menu at the time was country French," says Milliken, "but when she came back, she was so excited she put several things on the menu, and it turned out that people ordered them and liked them. Her enthusiasm came through." Soon after, Milliken took off for Thailand.

Now the two own Border Grill in Santa Monica, and Ciudad, a Latin-inspired restaurant slated to open in downtown Los Angeles in the fall. They are also the hosts of two food shows on television, "Too Hot Tamales" and "Tamales' World Tour," and are the authors of four cookbooks. When Milliken and Feniger decided to open their Mexican restaurant, Border Grill, in 1985, they took an employee up on his offer to stay with his family in Mexico City. "Then we got into a VW bug and drove all over Mexico, tasting and eating food," says Milliken. "We didn't have any itinerary, but after three weeks in that car, we had done all the menu planning for our new restaurant."

The original Border Grill opened and a second Border Grill continues to operate to great acclaim: the restaurant was named one of the 40 best restaurants in the area by the Los Angeles Times, one of the best restaurants in America by Gourmet and, last year, won an Ivy Award from Restaurants & Institutions magazine.

More than ever before, American restaurant-goers, many of them experienced travelers themselves, are interested in and knowledgeable about different cuisines and cultures. To keep one step ahead of these sophisticated diners, many chefs and restaurateurs travel to expand their own knowledge and to bring home fresh, exciting ideas for their operations.

Sending staff on safari

Culinary expeditions are beneficial not only for restaurateurs but also for their employees. Every year for the past nine years, Rick Bayless, owner of Frontera Grill and Topolobampo in Chicago, takes his staff — usually a group of 30 to 35 people — to Mexico over the Fourth of July weekend. "One of my goals is to put our menu into a cultural context, rather than to come up with something new, something totally from our heads," says Bayless, who lived in Mexico for several years and has written two award-winning cookbooks on Mexican cuisine. "Yet, more than 50 percent of our customers think that we've made up this food. Therefore, it's very important to me that the staff is able to talk to them about what they experienced in Mexico."

Mark Miller, chef/owner of several restaurants, including Coyote Cafe in Santa Fe and Las Vegas; Red Sage in Washington DC; and Loong Bar in San Francisco, also believes in sending his employees globe-trotting. "The chef for my newest restaurant [the Asian-inspired Loong Bar] recently spent one solid month visiting 13 cities in Asia," he says. Miller, who himself goes abroad five or six times a year, also recently spent four days in New York City with one of his managers, trying about 200 food products at the annual Fancy Foods Show and going out to New York restaurants. He also takes employees from his Coyote Cafes on annual trips to Mexico.

"The trips train their palates, give them good taste memories, and are great motivators and morale-builders," he says. "They get a feel for the culture, the history, the people, the ambience. It's a holistic experience that you can't get from cookbooks or TV shows."

Marilyn Tausend, owner of Culinary Adventures in Gig Harbor, Washington, puts together Bayless' annual staff trips. "They work till midnight before going to the airport. Once they arrive in Mexico, we have them going full speed. They get back to Chicago around midnight [four days later] and go to work the next morning," she says.

"We try to have as many different experiences as we can," explains Bayless. "Restaurants, going to people's homes, going to markets, cooking demonstrations." For this year's trip, Bayless' group visited a village, known for its tamales, that threw a fiesta in the group's honor.

Buca, Inc., a Minneapolis-based company that runs 15 immigrant Southern Italian restaurants — all called Buca di Beppo — sends employees to Italy and to several "Little Italy" neighborhoods around the United States, several times a year. During the trips to Italy, Buca staff members travel all over the country, eating out every night (sometimes at several restaurants in one evening), visiting food producers, going to wine tastings and buying objects to decorate the restaurants back home.

Joe Micatrotto, president and partner of Buca, estimates that each 10-day trip costs $3,000 to $4,000 per person but says it is well worth the price. One of Buca di Beppo's best-selling menu items, "Rigatoni Positano" — a pasta dish made with sauteed chicken, eggplant and mozzarella — was inspired by one of the company's trips. "That item alone probably pays for several trips," says Micatrotto, who points out that the decorations and artifacts the company gets during its trips also makes them worthwhile. "Some of the things we just couldn't get otherwise," he says about the objects — including everything from Pope memorabilia from the Vatican to soccer scarves — that decorate the Buca di Beppo restaurants. "Other things, like the soccer scarves, are much less expensive there. We can get those scarves for a couple dollars each during our trips; in stores here, they're $25 to $30 — and that's on sale."

Travel can be taxing

It may ease the bite to remember that many of the expenses of a research trip can be considered business expenses and be deducted on your tax forms. The key, according to Carl La Greca, partner at Forman, Itzkowitz, Berenson & La Greca, PC, an accounting firm in Newton, Massachusetts, that specializes in the restaurant industry, is to make sure the trip is primarily for business and not for pleasure.

If you fly to visit your mother, for example, but just happen to eat at a restaurant while there, you shouldn't expect to be able to deduct your travel expenses, says La Greca, although you may be able to deduct half of the cost of the meal. Currently, only 50 percent of the cost of meals and entertainment can be deducted on taxes. If, however, you fly somewhere to take a cooking class — even if your mother just happens to live nearby — you can deduct the travel costs as well as the cost of the class.

La Greca's rule of thumb is that at least 80 percent of the trip should be business-related in order to justify deducting the cost of traveling there. He points out that even if you don't deduct the travel expenses of a trip, you can deduct other expenses, such as the cost of a class, that are related to your business. He also suggests keeping a diary or log during your trip, using it to list the expenses, their business purposes, who you were with and the date.

Tasteful itinerary

When it comes to planning a trip, many of these operators advise taking advantage of all your industry contacts. Food-and-beverage purveyors can often set up tours and other events. Tony Balassone, the chef and (with his wife Leslie) owner of Calico Restaurant & Patisserie in Rhinebeck, New York, got planning assistance for their last trip to France from the company that prints their wine list. For their next trip, a wine company has offered them the use of a guest house at its winery. Balassone, who is a guest lecturer at the nearby Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, also taps the expertise of friends, including a dean at the culinary school. "He has a Rolodex that's bigger than the New York City phone book," says Balassone.

Reading up on the destination in trade and consumer magazines and in culinary guidebooks can also be helpful. That's especially beneficial for trips within the United States when, for example, you might want to find the newest and most interesting restaurants in a particular city.

Yet, some of these travelers warn not everything can be planned from here. Buca's Micatrotto suggests tapping the expertise of the concierge at the hotel where you are staying, for example. "And you have to leave room for discovery, for picking out restaurants that you just happen to see," he says.

Unearthing unexpected treasure is part of the adventure of travel research for Feniger and Milliken. They suggest starting at the markets in a city or town and make a point of sampling the foods sold on the streets. "In Barcelona we found these little bars — they measured about 5 feet by 3 feet and a husband and wife would be cooking in them — that served what was probably some of the best Spanish food I found," says Milliken.

Some chefs have found that the best way to see a country is to work with a culinary-tour guide. Even though Bayless lived in Mexico and had planned his employees' trips for the first three years, he eventually found it beneficial to turn the planning over to Culinary Adventures. "I wanted to go to a different place every year," he explains. "It depends on how many contacts you have in an area. Unless you have a way to break through the tourist barrier, it's going to be fairly difficult to see the real world."

Julie Sahni, a former executive chef and cookbook author based in New York City, organizes trips to India twice a year that often attract restaurant chefs. "We go to places ranging from villages with ovens made of clay, hay and crushed stone, where houses have mud floors and people and cows live together, to hotels that are like palaces," she says.

Many chefs and restaurateurs have also found that going on trips offered by others can be educational. The Culinary Institute of America, through its Greystone campus in California, for example, offers trips/classes for both culinary professionals and amateurs. The trips for amateurs, which last for nine days, generally cost about $3,300. One of the professional-level trips, a trip to Mexico led by Rick Bayless, costs $695 not including travel. The Greystone campus also offers professional-level classes (that do not include trips) on the foods of different regions.

In some cases, companies catering to the restaurant industry and the trade organizations that represent them will invite restaurant professionals on tours of their countries — and will pick up the tab. "A trip we went on, with eight other chefs, through Foods of Spain was very cool," says Feniger.

Regardless of who is paying the tab, research trips can represent a lot of effort. "In the daytime, we never eat," says Micatrotto, of the trips Buca employees make to Italy. During the day, the Buca travelers might visit cheese producers, city food markets and wineries just to soak up Italian atmosphere by visiting famous places. "We save wine tasting for the end of the day," says Micatrotto, "and the real eating begins after 7 p.m." The group visits as many as four or five restaurants in a single evening.

But the investment is worth it, according to traveling restaurateurs. "The biggest things we get out of our trips are legitimacy and genuineness," says Micatrotto. "And if you come away with a great food item, something that will result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales, how much is that worth to you?"

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