World Food Guides

Best Local Dishes and Street Food

Exploring local food and markets has always been one of our favorite ways into a place and to connect with local people. Two decades of travel has taught us that you often learn more about a country at its local restaurants, street-food carts and market stalls than almost anywhere else.

So our food guides aren't restaurant roundups. They highlight different local dishes, culinary traditions and the food culture to help you explore deeper by knowing which dishes to ask for or which food specialties to seek out. And we bet that your curiosity will most likely be rewarded through delicious meals and fun interactions with local people along the way.

Understanding and exploring place through its food is something we do for travelers here in our food guides and for the destinations and travel companies we advise. Our belief that local cuisine is one of the most authentic expressions of its culture shapes how we help destinations better position their culinary strengths and tour operators develop food experiences, culinary tours, and cooking-class offerings that showcase local producers and traditions.

Most of our food guides are built around a single country, city, or region, from Georgian food to the markets of Oaxaca. But if you only read one piece first, make it our guide to the best street food we've found around the world. It's where our love of eating locally is most at home, and where we get into why we think food is the best way to understand a place.

Food Guides to the Best Local Dishes Around the World

Our comprehensive food guides are organized by place and features our first-hand experiences seeking out local dishes and food experiences from our time spent in local restaurants, food markets, street stalls, and even in family homes. Each one covers what to eat, where to find it, and the dishes you shouldn't leave the place without trying,

Even more food guides and related stories:

FAQ: Exploring Local Foods When You Travel

Food serves as a natural gateway to connect with other people, and it often offers a deeper understanding of culture and history, and place. We all need to eat, which in some ways makes food something that unites all of us. Sharing a meal breaks down stereotypes faster than almost anything as barriers and inhibitions break down once you've eaten similar food or shared a table together.

In our experience, people take pride in their local cuisine and love talking about their traditional dishes. So showing curiosity about local food and asking questions about it is often a great conversation starter and “safe” topic to engage with people. And asking people about their favorite local dishes and where to eat them is usually the best way to get great restaurant or street food recommendations.

You can find the full answer to this question at the top of our Best Street Food article.

Is sounds a bit cliché perhaps, but follow the locals and if you see a restaurant or street food stall with a long line filled with local people then that's a good sign there is probably something good to eat there. When asking local people for recommendations, be specific and ask where they like to eat. Otherwise, they may recommend a place they think you want to eat as it is more tourist oriented of famous.

And we also use Google maps as well. If there is a particular local dish we want to try we'll search for that in Google Maps and then read the reviews, both the best and the worst. But often it's best to just walk to the restaurant or street stall than judge it by online reviews.

Don't be put off by the places with no English or foreign language menus. Nowadays the translation apps do a pretty good job or our favorite is to point to dishes on other tables or that are coming out of the kitchen that look good to be sure you get what you want.

We also enjoy eating at food markets as there are often stalls or restaurants along the edge serving up local dishes made from fresh market ingredients. We often prefer short menus serving a few local specialties or seasonal dishes.

In our experience of eating street food for over 20 years in close to 100 countries, we've found that it is usually quite safe to eat and often offers some of the best food and experiences. However, we recommend you follow a few basic precautions and principles, especially in countries where tap water is not potable. Here is our full list of staying healthy on the road, including when eating street food, but a few tips are below.

  • Double check the cutlery and glasses. In many countries, local people will clean cutlery at restaurants or street food stands with napkins to make sure they are clean. Do as the locals do.
  • Opt for cooked food over raw as the heat will often kill any bacteria.
  • Be careful of ice in drinks or herbs / vegetables / fruit washed in water unless you are certain that the water is purified.
  • Choose stalls that are busy with local people and have a high turnover so you're not eating food that has been sitting out.
  • Opt for vegetarian options vs. meat, especially in hot countries where the meat is not usually refrigerated. Just fewer sketchy bacteria to deal with when you take a veg-first approach. If you do choose to eat meat, be sure it is fully cooked and not sitting out.
  • Double check the cutlery and glasses. In many countries, local people will clean cutlery at restaurants or street food stands with napkins to make sure they are clean. Do as the locals do.

If language is really a barrier, then simply pointing at a dish that looks good — whether it's coming out of the kitchen, at another table, or on the grill at a stand — is usually quite efficient and effective. Everyone knows there is a language barrier so it's not considered rude and often results in some smiles and laughter. This was our main way of ordering food we traveled across China for several months prior to smartphone translation apps, sometimes even going into the kitchen and pointing at things that we liked (e.g., certain vegetables or seafood). And we used it on a recent trip to Taiwan when the translation app didn't always catch the nuances of the Mandarin menus so when we saw delicious dishes being brought out around us we just pointed to them and our server understood perfectly.

That said, the translation apps have become much better in the last years. We used Deepl quite a lot on our trip to Taiwan and it was quite remarkable to point a smartphone camera at a fully Mandarin menu and have it immediately translate into English. The translation is not always perfect, but you can often get a feeling of whether a dish has vegetables, meat, fish or other ingredients.

Learning a few words in the local language like “delicious,” “thank you,” “what do you recommend?” goes a long way. We've found that showing genuine curiosity about the food is its own universal language as it's easy to connect over the love of a dish even without verbal language.

Learning about and then seeking out local dishes are usually the first things we do when we arrive in a new place. We also usually visit the local fresh market to get a feel of the food culture and local vegetables, fruits, spices or other specialties. Another great way to learn about local food is to take a cooking class, ideally in a family home. In addition, taking a food walking tour where you have a chance to sample local dishes together with a guide explaining the culinary traditions and history is another fabulous way to immerse yourself in the local cuisine.

Sometimes a family guest house or homestay will offer the option to order meals. This usually means a home-cooked meal which is not only delicious, but it supports the local family as well. By showing curiosity and asking about the cooking process, we've also been invited into the kitchen at times to see what a local kitchen looks like and also learn about local cooking techniques.

We are very fortunate that we don't have any food allergies and we do eat everything, but we do often prefer vegetarian food. Although an understanding of vegetarian and vegan food is growing, it can still be difficult sometimes to explain in very meat-heavy cuisines. So in these situations we will either learn the translation in the local language or use a translation app to explain that we don't eat meat.

For people with celiac disease and other severe food allergies, it's not only important to explain the allergy in the local language, but also to express the severity of it as in some countries they might not realize the physical consequences of eating the wrong foods. For example, one friend with a severe lactose intolerance will ask the server if they know where the nearest hospital is because if she consumes lactose they will need to take her there. This may sound extreme, but they take her request seriously vs. thinking that she is a high maintenance customer.

For people with celiac disease or gluten intolerance, we recommend checking out our friend's Gluten Free Travel Cards that are in 23 languages (and growing) that you can use at restaurants or street food stalls. These not only explain the intolerance, but also highlight some common examples in that cuisine where gluten might slip in unintentionally — e.g., sharing the same frying oil, using soy sauce, etc.