Top Chef Masters crowned a new champion this week, if you hadn’t noticed. The winning chef was from Africa, which starting today, is the continent hosting the World Cup, a celebration of what the world calls football (read: soccer).

South Africa is expecting some 350,000 visitors to their country, all of whom will eat, sleep, and breathe football (soccer). Actually, that’s just a dumb expression because try as one might, you can’t eat, sleep, or breathe anything but food, time, and air. Time and air are not problems, no matter where you are. But where to find the food that best pleases your particular palate, can be problematic for the foreign visitor unaccustomed to the culinary ways of the locals.

My advice after several trips to Africa myself: try the goat but stay away from the ugali. Be daring and do look for local flavors—something you can’t find at home (except the ugali). That’s good advice for any seasoned traveler.

So it was for my TNT crew and I when we roamed the Italian countryside in the run-up to the World Cup in 1990 looking for an authentic Italian meal that didn’t include foil-wrapped mints with our check and the words “Authentic Italian” on the menu.

Fortunately, my Turner colleague, Karen D’Uva, just happened to have family in the mountains of southern Italy and they graciously opened their home—and their kitchen—to three hungry Americans.