The Best Destinations for Travelers Who Plan Their Trips Around Food

Food is one of the most appealing things about travel. When you journey to a new part of the world, you naturally expose yourself to the cultures that prevail there – and it makes sense to experience the most powerful expression of that culture, which is often food.

Food now shapes the way many people travel

Local dishes might offer you a great understanding of the forces that have helped shape a given region. Food-based adventures also grant you the opportunity to be spontaneous. If you see a market or a restaurant that you like the look of, and that’s been recommended, then you can make the time for it, even if it never featured in your original itinerary.

Street food often creates the most memorable experiences

At the high level, many of the world’s restaurants could be transplanted just about anywhere. Michelin-starred dining in London might be indistinguishable from that of New York, Tokyo, or Abu Dhabi.

At street level, however, the different approaches to cuisine become a lot starker. For this reason, many tourists seek out the busiest food stalls and cheap cafes. The food scenes in Bangkok and Mexico City have become vibrant and popular precisely because they offer an authentic food experience that can’t really be found anywhere else.

Some countries are best explored through regional dishes

In some cases, food isn’t just a worthwhile component of your travel experience, but a peerless means of experiencing the region through which you’re travelling. You might not really feel the difference between different parts of a country unless you’re eating local food. Cornish pasties, fish and chips, hot pot, haggis, and other regional dishes – these all define various parts of the UK. You might take Vietnam tours that acquaint you with dishes between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, and there are similar options available in Italy, Japan, and a host of other great locations.

The best food destinations feel authentic

The advent of social media has made it easy to share every detail of a given trip – and the food we eat tends to be very photogenic. But it’s fair to say that oversharing the food we eat is going out of fashion, since restaurants that over-optimize for Instagram tend to lose out on the qualities that really make them appealing. A strong food culture tends to be an authentic culture in which the food and drink really speak for themselves.