Here are the countries that I have visited ranked by their food. I spent a day watching corporate training videos and needed some way of maintaining my sanity and this was it — at least that’s how it started. I have since updated it ans I traveled to more countries. I have excluded the US and microstates such as the Vatican, San Marino, etc. I have also excluded Uruguay and Brasil because I spent so little time there. I should note that I tend to eat pretty local, I probably don’t know where to get the best burger in Bangkok. Update: by food I really mean cuisine. My rankings are based on the local food, not the availablity of chains from other countries. Variety figures very high in my rankings. You can yse whatever criteria you feel appropriate.
Peru: It has a cuisine that I could subsist on long-term. Ceviche, Pollo a la brassa, and parilla. Wonderful street food including these wonderful little donuts made of sweet potato flour called picarones. I went on a ceviche bender that caused a gout flareup. I don’t know what they do to rotisserie chicken but pollo a la brassa is amazing. There are also some wonderful stews like Aji de Gallina.
Vietnam: An outstanding food tour in Ho Chi Mnh City. Whether it’s Pho, Banh Mi or Bun, not all of the best foods in the world come from Vietnam just five or six of them. Note: there is no rice flour in the Banh Mi. The crispy crust is made by misting with water during baking.
Mexico: An amazingly diverse cuisine. All you really need to be happy are street tacos in Mexico City, but there’s so much more. Churros from Churreria El Moro, Sanborn’s for nostalgia, the seven moles of Oaxaca….
Thailand: Great stir fries, great curries. Thailand is a bit of a crossroads with Islamic and Hindu influences as well as Portuguese. They are not afraid of spice, but not all Thai food is spicy.
Morocco: I had the most amazing tajine for my first meal in Marrakesh and many other great meals followed. The biggest issue with food the great desert band that stretches from the Sahara through Arabia into Uzbekistan is that the food is all similar and kind of changes along a continuum. I think couscous is unique to Morocco and I don’t recall seeing any falafel there. So, the biggest knock would be less variety, but still very good.
Colombia: The down side is that the food is generally lightly spiced. The upside is that there are many fruits not found anywhere else and some interesting cross-cultural influences including Sephardic Jews, Africans, indigenous, and t eh Spanish. Many good bakeries, seafood and bunuelos. The country appears to be celebrating its own cuisine now. Reflecting on this post a year later and I just keep coming back to the fruit. It is like none other.
Turkey: Morocco, Turkey and Jordan are basically tied. I think Turkey may have more variety than the other two. There’s a lot of grilled meat on sticks and flat breads. There’s also the world’s best desert — kunefe.
Jordan: Hashem. Everyone will tell you to go to Hashem. Well guess what? Go to Hashem. It lives up to its billing. Jordan also has kunefe and falafel and meat on stick as well as many other lovely foods.
Ethiopia: The food is wonderful and among the most unique on the planet — not even bordering countries share that much with their cuisine. It was the original coffee culture and the only country in the world that grows teff.
Trinidad: Trini has influences from all over the world. Their Indian food is not Indian, their Chinese is not Chinese, their Middle Eastern (note: the British sent the best ME cooks to Mexico), their African is not African. It all comes together to make a unique cuisin.
Greece: Greek food is also similar to that middle eastern continuum, but they have pork and shellfish.
Portugal: Many lovely things to eat here. They have brought many things back from the colonies which has helped their cuisine, I stayed in a suburb of Lisbon and a Mozambique guy cooked at the restaurant across the street from me. We talked over Google Translate. He would ask me general questions about things I liked and come up with something. He made a wonderful Peri Peri sauce. There was also great seafood though most of the fish eaten in Portugal are from places other than Portugal.
Bolivia: Bolivia struggles with it’s culinary identity. It was once part of Peru and has Peruvian influences ex-seafood in the west and Argentian and Brazilian influences in the east. The south’s main source or meat are llama and chicken.
Grenada: Grenada is the spice island and uses spices in unexpected way. I particularly liked a bun that was spiced with nutmeg, some grilled chicken that was perfectly charred, and the chocolate is as good as it gets.
Argentina: Argentina does many things well and some things hardly at all. There are three essential ingredients to Argentinian cuisine: meat, cheese, and bread. The bakeries are nonperiel. The pizza is excellent. I was a little diappointed in the parrilla as they tend to overcook (order: jugoso). There’s just not enough use of fruits and vegetables, or fish to push it higher.
Spain: Tapas and paella, what else do you need. Jamon Iberico, I suppose.
France: It’s been a while since I was there and that was mostly Paris.
Barbados: This could be higher had I known that Saturday was pickle day and also chicken feet day. I wasted it on a food tour. There are some good things here, but they really don’t know what spice is.
Israel: This is also part of that Middle East continuum.
Italy: Naples had great food, Milan not so much and everywhere else was in between. Italy is really a bunch of little places, each having its own cuisine. It’s more German to the north and better to the south. Naples was once one of the two Sicilies and controlled by Spain.It’s where good pizza comes from.
Poland: We had some excellent meals in Krakow. Perogies, jelly donuts, the ancestor of the bagel and much more.
Czechia: The food is pretty heavy and surprisingly similar to French in some instances. The Garlic soup is a favorite.
UK: I moved the UK up on the strength of Scotland’s haggis. Overall, the food is bland and has a lot of meat pies and scones and tea with milk. The best food here is Indian and good cood from the former empire is everywhere. Only American tourists eat British food these days.
Ireland: This food is very familiar to me, though I had no corned beef while there. The food was generally good but unremarkable to my palate.
Germany: I unwittingly showed up at the beginning of Spargel season once. The Germans sure do lover their asparagus.
Slovakia: I only spent one night there, but had a cherry-poppy seed strudel that was so good I had a second.
Ecuador: We ate at several high end restaurants that were in Quito. We also had nachos at the highest German brew in the world. We should seen that coming. Oh, and chicken ceviche.
Panama: This is a tough one. We spent four days there and most of that time was spent in the San Francisco area of Panama City, so we had little authentic Panamanian food. We did have some excellent seafood at Mercado del Marisco and Panamanian food at Diablicios. Probably not a great sampling.
Belgium: Mostly I remember drinking there, but the food must have been good too.
Austria: Very short trip to Austria.
Hungary: I got a little tired of the Hungarian fare, but Budapest has the largest Chinatown in Europe and I had a wonderful conversation with the widow of a former diplomat who spent a lot of time in China and Virginia.
Azerbaijan: It’s also part of the continuum. They have a flat bread they call Naan, plov and a lot of meat on sticks.
Georgia: There are some excellent dishes here and their wine alone maybe should place them higher. I have to say that the dish they are most famous for Khachapuri is not very good. It’s basically cheese bread — and not very good cheese bread. If you want good cheese bread, go to Naples. They call it Margherita and you can get it anywhere. The Ojakhuri is excellent and the wine is outstanding.
Cyprus: Similar to Greek.
Uzbekistan: At the far end of the continuum.
Kazakhstan: The transition from Arabic to Chinese occurs here.
Netherlands: They overuse sprinkles on bread.
Canada: Tim Hortons and poutine are their greatest culinary contributions. Canada may also suffer from being close to the US and I overlook it. It also is a place with a lot of international options that don’t really count as “Canadian”.
Nigeria: There are really two things that I don’t like about Nigerian food, (1) texture and (2) smoked fish. Not every country cuts its meat the same. In much of the world, tough, gristley meat is prized and it is butchered for that. They also put fish bones in their soup which I can’t get past. The smoked fish is a strong flavor that is difficult for me to like. Other than that, the flavors and the spice level are pleasant. I could see Nigerian food get popular, but it needs to go through a westernizing process first.
Ghana: I feel that I should give it another shot. It wasn’t much to my tastes, but this was our first trip to the developing world, so maybe it was me.
South Africa: We had Italian, Mexican, Portuguese, burgers, Ghanaian, Ethiopian, Cameroonian. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of South African and that’s too bad. So, there is good food. just not South African.
As I said, I try to eat as local as possible. And this list is obviously subjective. Some of these places, I was only in a short time and others for longer periods and that may have affected my opinion as well.
