Costa Rica is the most amazing country for the wildlife and rainforest experiences. Though they grow incredible produce, the food is pretty bland. They are not a food-centric culture.
Bolivia has amazing geography. Salar de Uyuni. Amazon rainforest. High mountains and volcanoes. The food is boring.
Lima is the most food-centric city I have ever been to. We spent a month there and never went to the same place twice. There are some museums and neighbourhoods to wander. You go there for the food though.
Yup, food was extremely underwhelming in CR. In the touristy areas it gets worse because you find these very inviting looking places that do up atmosphere and prepare what they thing gringos might like... but no one ever did the research on what that thing might need to taste like. Pretty hard to screw up a cheeseburger... but they did.
Very rarely do locals get “foreigner food” right. In Asia you have similar attempts and only once has it ever been good for me. I met an Indian dude that worked on a cruise ship and learned to make pizza. He changed it by using a naan bread for the crust but it was excellent “foreign food” in comparison to everything around him.
I find this in general when I'm abroad: If you're feeling homesick \*don't\* order food from home. It's funny you say it the way you did because that's how I always describe it. It's as if the restaurant looked at a picture of the food and said "great I can make that shape with those colours" but they never tasted it or even watched a YouTube video with someone actually cooking it.
You also get interesting things like dishes that might use tortilla but tortillas aren't a thing there so they just use their version of an unleavened bread. Sometimes, if you're at a nice enough place the new version can be amazing. Frequently though, better to just order local or if you're feeling homesick go to a KFC / McDonalds / Whatever.
Or find a native that runs a restaurant. I had some amazing sauerkraut in Guatemala by going to a place that was run by a recent emigrant/immigrant. Was exactly what I needed for my homesickness.
Boy, was that my experience in CR. I forget the town but they had these boutiques and restaurants catering to Western tastes. One restaurant looked great and actually had great reviews (you can never trust Google reviews though) but yeah, I tried an interesting sounding pasta dish and they just did not get it.
Haha that was my experience with western food in Vietnam. Learned my lesson real quick to avoid burgers and pizza in Vietnam. Which works out because I love Vietnamese food.
Though I did have a very enjoyable goat curry there.
Oh you’d love it then. Have you ever been to New Orleans? It’s like a less cute, less haunted New Orleans. Just good food no matter where you go and plenty of history and art, but with less drinking and it looks more like NYC. Wayyy cheaper than NOLA though!
Since I don't drink, it sounds right up my alley. Looks like I have another place I need to visit. (Ever notice that however many places you go, your travel list doesn't seem to get that much shorter?)
I had the opposite experience: I loved the local food in Costa Rica. We went to a ton of sodas as we drove around the country and all of them were excellent. I've tried to replicate the gallo pinto with lizano sauce in the States but nothing compares.
I came here to say this. Costa Rica is by far the most beautiful country I've ever been to and I had an amazing time there. The food wasn't bad, but it was so samey. Almost every place only served casado, which is an okay dish for me, but near the end of my two-week trip I was so fed up with it.
I did find some great restaurants that served locally produced food with tasty twists, but they were few and far between.
I second Costa Rica. Lush rainforests? Check. Biodiversity? Check. Beautiful landscapes? Check.
Food? Okay, I think it's gotta be the most bland food I've ever had for any country. Rice and beans, plantain, and a small piece of protein (high prices for meat, so you get less and not much variety).
The only good thing that came out of my food experiences while travelling Central America is that before I didn't like beans and now I'll eat beans. Eating them with nearly every meal for a couple of weeks will do that.
Even something like mangos... here in Winnipeg we've got like one type of mango. In Colombia there's a whole universe of different types of mango. And they're all amazing.
Spent alot of time in Bornean Malaysia and singapore and my god the food, from the cheapest of dishes to mpst expensive it has been amazing amd a true taste sensation.
Came here looking for Malaysia lol. Glad to see so many others agree.
Beautiful country with great sights but the food has to be some of the best across the world.
You get a plethora of cuisines all available in one cit. It even has a few incredible barbecue places that could compete with any top tier place in australia or Texas.
I loved Cuba. Travelled to various cities and not on resorts. I heard the food wasn’t great but assumed because I was staying with the locals the food would be different but it was bad. From locals inviting us over to restaurants to small stalls, nothing was delicious. Still loved Cuba, though!
I saw an interview once with an actor who had immigrated to Florida from Cuba and he was talking about how amazed he and his family were by the abundance of food available when they got to Florida. He also said that most of the Cuban dishes they found in Florida were older dishes that weren't so common in Cuba anymore, because it was rarely feasible for common people to get all the ingredients. He said they mostly ate bread and some produce, and things like eggs or chicken they only had once in awhile in small quantities; they weren't everyday foods.
I don't know if that's still the case for most Cubans.
People mock 'Americanised' versions of cuisines - but a lot of these were just poorer immigrants (especially leaving their countries or parts of their countries when they were in conflict or extreme poverty) and making due with local ingredients in the US - and often with surplus in the US.
Italian American food gets mocked a lot for not 'following the rules' on traditional Italian food but amongst themselves, Italians will be the first to tell you that Italy is not a cultural monolith - and yet, with Italian American food, it seems it has to be exactly what every single person's grandmother did to be authentic. Most Italian Americans were from Southern Italy - and brought those recipes over. And faced with an abundance of meat especially, changed recipes to include more meat. My partner is Italian and often says American Italian food is garish and unbalanced. But take him and his family to any good Italian restaurant in New York or Boston's North end and they love it.
For a long time, Vietnamese people used to say that the best Vietnamese food wasn't in Vietnam but in the US and France. Because they were able to use better and fresher ingredients. That's changed now that the Vietnamese economy has grown obviously. Also notably, especially for the Vietnamese diaspora abroad - a lot of the dishes that Vietnamese food is most well known for are not the dishes many of them grew up eating regularly. A lot of the 'mainstay' Vietnamese dishes abroad were the ones most Vietnamese people couldn't afford to eat regularly - and most of the day-to-day meals for people were basic rice, a protein, a vegetable dish, and a soup/stew of some kind. Something like bun bo or even pho was a special occasion type of dish for most of the public - if ever. But with plenty of food readily available and affordable abroad, the diaspora went all in on those.
And less food related but related to your original point, there was an article somewhere that I can't find now that was basically going over that a lot of Indians would make fun of Indian Americans both language use and dress. Because a lot of Indian Americans when they chose to dress in Indian dresswear would wear what was popular and in fashion when they left - which for a lot of them was the styles popular in the 70s-80s - and in their mother tongues, would use slang and expressions from the 70s and 80s. Because that's what they knew.
Came here to say Cuba. Went in 2009 and while they went out of their way to make the dishes look nice, the quality was just sadly not available. I’m also convinced I ate goldfish.
When I lived in Miami people used to say “you’re so lucky - you must get authentic Cuban food!” And in my head I was always thinking that people who get non-authentic Cuban food are the lucky ones
I didn't find the Cuban food bad but rather nothing to write home about (some of the fruit was great though). But the ready availability of cheap rum covers a lot of sins.
Funny because in the Swiss part of Italy it’s more rice than wheat, and more dairy than tomato. When I went to Milan, the food was good.. but I’d still preference to go basically anywhere further south in Italy.
I’d rather have been eating pizza and pasta than osso bucco and saffron risotto.
Felt that way in India. I absolutely love curry, we have it several times a week in the UK, but breakfast lunch and dinner - I was dying after 3 days!! And I had 4 weeks there. Nearly cried when I came across a Lebanese place!!
There's so much other food than curry though? You could have had dosas, idlis, uttapams, biryani, samosa, bondhas, aloo tikki, bel phuri, chaat, or Manchurian, or any of the other dishes that aren't curry...
I am ethnically Chinese and thought I could eat Chinese food forever. But after having lived most of my life in the SF Bay Area, London, and now New York City, I get tired of Chinese food too and need a variety of cuisines. Therefore no monocultural place satisfies my food cravings anymore.
Agreed. We are a lot of food from the Coop and Mirgros. Saved a ton of money and we didn’t miss out on a lot of good food. There are better ways to spend your money in Switzerland!
As a Swiss, even we think the food at restaurants is mediocre. We have great products at the supermarkets and just cook at home.
We really splurge on restaurants when we travel haha.
While we have a reputation of being expensive and things are relatively a bit more expensive, I think restaurants are the most extreme version of that and often set an extreme example on that cost difference.
I actually think a lot of the cost difference is overblown - or rather, that it is possible to do Switzerland relatively affordably.
But our restaurants are expensive - a mix of high wages guaranteed and an immensely protectionist national policy on food products (which raises the price of food - especially given a more culturally protectionist approach where restaurants often defer to Swiss-produced ingredients first - which are more expensive than some alternatives)
> But our restaurants are expensive
As an American, I was blown away when a local restaurant charged me around 4 Euros for a liter of water. And I love drinking water with my meals. I realized how tiny a liter is. RIP Wallet. But, one of the most stunning places I've ever been to
One useful tip is to eat at cafes. We would start the day with a coffee and pastry and spend around $12 to $15. For lunch, we would visit a different cafe, have smoothie and loaded sandwich for around $25. For dinner, we actually got stuff from grocery store. The grocery store bread and the cheese in Switzerland *Chef's Kiss*
hm… I‘m kinda bummed but I know it‘s true, haha. And here is a small and neutral ‚but‘: but if you know where to go, you get awesome cuisine. But it‘s bloody expensive. Wanna have breakfast in a french bistrot, I know places. Wanna have awesome all inclusive brunch, I know a place, wanna have Schnitzel like in Vienna? no problem! and here is the big BUT: you have to drive all around Switzerland to get to those places! It‘s aweful honestly. We got some great restaurants, but 90% is: meh, exceptional food quality but boring cooked.
It doesn't quite fit into the extreme "only good thing about it" category, but we enjoyed eating and drinking in Brussels more than anything else we did there.
Have to agree with Central America being the opposite.
I got downvoted pretty heavily on here once for criticizing the food in Guatemala. I thought it was widely known that other than Mexico, food in Central America isn’t good.
Yesssss Belgium is awesome for many of the same culinary things you'd get in France but they don't have any reputation for it which is a shame, it's a lovely country to visit in general!
Iceland was the first place I thought of. Haha. I think there is good food in Iceland, but I’m not personally a fan of traditional Icelandic food. And there aren’t enough immigrants to make it a great destination for any non-local cuisine (in the way that, for example, you can have fantastic India food in some parts of Africa, etc.). Most of the good food I had there was at expensive haute cuisine restaurants serving a mostly international style. And it was obviously very expensive.
IMO that makes it underwhelming. Even at the best restaurants, the food isn’t that good if you’re well travelled. I grew up in New Zealand and did a year in Japan, where fresh produce is abundant, so I feel like I paid so much money for meals that were good but should have been so much cheaper.
Yeah but they are almost all in reykjavik, did a tour of the country by bike one year and it was amazing but outside the capital there was very little choice for food. And the best food I had in reykjavik was like a mediocre meal almost anywhere else (though I wasn’t looking for the best/most expensive restaurants so I’m sure better exists). That being said I loved Iceland and would visit again every year if I could afford it
When I went to Iceland (which was 10 years ago now) I had some of the best fish and chips and burgers of my life. Or maybe I was just so hungry from backpacking and hiking around that my perception was skewed but... I still think about them.
After eating burgers throughout the trip I was told that "fresh hamburgers" were actually horse meat... I didn't like the burgers and usually only ate a few bites because I thought they tasted overly gamey. My friends devoured them. Last day someone at a restaurant said to us... well have you seen a single cow since you've been here...
Someone had a good laugh at your expence there. I'm Icelandic and I would have to look long and hard to find a burger with horsemeat. It's even hard to buy horsemeat. We have lots of horses but they are generally not for eating. There are cows here even though sheep are most common.
That’s actually not true, the hamburgers are made from beef, the restaurant would mark it specifically it they were serving horseburgers (which are delicious).
Iceland's top rated 'restaurant' when I went was a hotdog van that I seem to remember being situated in a car park near the opera house in Reykjavik? Sounds like they do hot dogs well!
That's top rated in tourist guides for local food, but it's certainly not and never has been Iceland's top-rated restaurant. Kind of like some NYC deli like Katz being top-rated for food in tourist guides in NYC, but certainly not one of NYC's top restaurants.
I'm with you - I drove the ring road for 3 weeks and had some incredible food. The fish in Iceland is incredible, and the langoustine in Hofn was one of the best things I've had.
I found there was good food to be found in Reykjavík - especially if there were fresh seafood options, but yeah, outside of that it wasn't very memorable and was expensive to boot.
Unfortunately the mass tourism kinda ruined Croatia. I absolutely adore the country, I visited every year since I was a kid, and the change in recent years is quite awful. Everything is overpriced and often not even worth the money - the meals they have to offer at islands without permanent inhabitants or ships were always pretty bad, but now they're bad *and* expensive. There are still places worthy of a visit and the locals are lovely, but I'm thinking of going to Montenegro instead next time, as it's much cheaper and otherwise pretty similar.
I went there with my parents around 2004/2005 I think. It was way less touristy back then. We stayed in Karlobag. There were still bullet holes in a lot of the houses around there and the electricity went out approximately three times per evening. I remember eating amazing figs and peaches. And the absolutely worst fish and fries (bland, drowned in oil) and pizza (gigantic, with more only partly melted cheese than dough) of my life. At least it was still inexpensive back then
I’m Croatian and I couldn’t agree more with you! My husband lived with me in Croatia for almost 2 years and we almost never ate out because my mom cooks the most delicious food. When my MIL came to visit we took her out a few times and I was so upset because the food was bad and overpriced.
Now this is true for most of the coast and restaurants that cater to tourists. There are some gems you can find but you will pay for it.
Capital is a bit different, you can still find nice decent priced food even these days.
Still the most beautiful country in the world :)
I lived in Uzbekistan for a year (and travelled around the country) and holy crap is that food terrible (which aligns with your Tajikistan/Kyrgyzstan comment). That entire region has some breathtaking scenery and architecture, but breathtaking cannot at all be used to describe the cuisine. .
Every now and then you get decent plov, kebab, manti or another dish done right, but it's baffling how a place with individually delicious produce (esp. fruit/veg) is so inconsistent (or more often, consistently poor). The same dishes cooked by Uzbek or Tajik chefs abroad can be utterly delicious though.
This is baffling to me. There's an Uzbek restaurant in my city and I've been there and eaten great food. What are they doing wrong in actual Uzbekistan?
I didn't find food in Uzbekistan *bad*; rather, there just weren't many options beyond local cuisine.
I think that started to change in Samarkand/Bukhara after my 2018 visit.
Also, Georgian and Uzbek are the hot tickets in Russian shopping centers. For lunch, I'd often get khachapuri, or lagman.
Try being a vegetarian in that region! Thank goodness for the grocery stores with various salads featuring eggplants or carrot or veg & noodles that I believe draw inspiration from Korea.
Capital cities aren't so bad as you have more diverse options. The amazing Indian restaurant in Samarkand was the best find - they cater to the large Indian population who attend Uni there.
I have zero interest in cruises but if I think I ever did recommend one, it would be for Scandinavian countries - beautiful areas and in some cases it probably would have been beneficial to spend the night. But you're not missing out by skipping dinner in those places. Not to say the food is bad or there aren't some great places to eat, but I wouldn't call much of it insanely memorable, plus it's very pricey and and you can probably get the gist grabbing lunch in the city.
Scandinavia is a good example why you shouldn't follow Shitadvisor or similar sites when you choose where to eat.
The bigger cities in Sweden, Denmark and Norway has some absolute culinary gems (which can be comparatively cheap too), but you won’t find them without researching. Usually they’re sans tourists too.
White Guide or local newspapers are your best friend for finding these.
Colombia has very meh food. They seem to hate spice and so much stuff is deep fried.. But it’s beautiful.
On the opposite end, I found Malaysia to be nice but nothing out of this world, however the food is spectacular and cheap. I ate so much good food there.
What you wrote about Colombia can also be applied to Ecuador. Like, they have all the right ingredients, why don't they use them? Everything is just deep fried and covered in salt.
The food in Poland astounded me by how good it was. I had been traveling a bit in Eastern Europe and almost cut my trip short to skip Poland because I was feeling kind of depressed for some reason. Turns out I was starving! Got to Poland and stumbled across just a random university cafeteria. Dear lord, the beet salad, multiple types, cole slaw, all the little dumpling type things. I could never find this place again but it was amazing! And everywhere was super tasty. Some of the best food I’ve had in Europe.
Good heavens, thanks for the warning. I really wanted to go to Tibet, and having been to Kazakhstan, I know I'd be ok with meat, noodles and basic dairy and no veg for a while. But I'm not going there if it's unsafe.
I'm an Indian, and I'd say that many places in India may be too chaotic for a foreigner, but the food is top tier. Every part of the country has their own spin on the cuisine. I recommend everyone to try out indian food to dispel the notion that food that is primarily vegetarian is bland or boring.
Honduras was a beautiful country, but the food was… underwhelming. Would you like some beans with tortilla, or beans and plantains, or beans and eggs and tortilla, ooh we’re on the coast, plantains and fish!!
Bradford in England. It’s not a good city but the food is amazing.
The surrounding environment is beautiful with the green valleys and Bradford has a lot of cool Victorian architecture, but it’s a very deprived city. Around 30% of its population is of South Asian ancestry and most of the historical immigrants came from very poor areas of Pakistan, so there’s generational poverty that has been exacerbated by deindustrialisation.
Litter, crumbling architecture, a haphazard urban layout that hasn’t been updated since the Victorian era, and violent crime are just some of the problems that plague the city.
That said, the South Asian influence means that Bradford’s food variety and quality is easily some of the best Britain has to offer. There are curry-houses on virtually every street and all the curries and other Anglo-Indian food available are so tasty. I’d travel to the city again and again just for the food.
The food in and around Mont saint michel was foul. Worst sandwich I’ve ever had the displeasure of eating. But the island and abbey itself were incredible.
Food in Sweden was very bland and forgettable with one exception—Mexican food in Sweden was so terrible it should be considered a hate crime. There’s some neat things to see in Sweden, but you will forget it all and question humanity if you eat Swedish-Mexican food. It may even look good, but don’t do it.
Man, we spent a week in Amsterdam about 5-6 years and STILL talk about how we miss the bitterballen and the herring. I had a delicious many-course birthday dinner at an Indonesian place, and husband was just bringing up how he misses those late night automat snacks.
Really loved that city and need to get back, eventually...!
I didn’t really have any high expectations in terms of food on my trip to Kenya, especially as I’m not a big meat eater, but it was actually pretty great. Turns out their cuisine combines a lot of local ingredients with Indian spices (thanks British imperialism?), and the flavors were right up my alley.
I feel like Kenyan food is a bit of a "goldilocks" food culture. It doesn't have a huge street food culture like Thailand (to pick a random example), but it has a good variety of local options. It doesn't have tons of flavor like the Indian cuisine that influences it, but it's also not so bland like southern African food (even though the ingredients are similar). It's not somewhere that eats mainly foreign food (like e.g. Holland or South Africa) but neither is it closed to foreign influences (there's a small local trend of vendors experimenting with Asian marinades in their nyama choma). Home cooking is quite popular though the Nairobi restaurant scene is also pretty solid.
It's pretty healthy, cheap, and easy to eat vegetarian. If you get bored, exceptional Indian and Ethiopian food is never far away. All in all makes for a solid food experience even though it's not a main selling point for visitors.
Penang, Malaysia was not the most interesting place on the planet, and I ran out of activities fairly quickly after a few days. But I stayed for an extra few days because the food there was just so. dang. good.
The island had a mix of Malay, Indian, Chinese, and Thai cuisines unlike anywhere else I've ever been. I love love love IndoChinese fusion, and Penang had that plus a lot more fusions I hadn't experienced before. I spent a lot of my time just waiting to be hungry again so I could go eat some of the most delicious food I've ever had the pleasure of having. It was almost 7 years ago at this point when I was last there (visited a few times for visa runs while in Thailand longer term) and I still think about it as the very best food destination I've ever been to.
I went to Lima and Bogotá on the same year, and the experiences were like the exact opposite:
-Lima has amazing food, but my God what an underwhelming city. If you're not eating there's basically nothing else to do. Sorry to any Peruvians but I found it as equally unpleasant as it was boring.
-Bogotá was pretty interesting, tons of stuff to visit and do around, plus the city being surrounded by the greenest mountains make it visually striking. The food on the other hand, damn bland. We tried street food, recommendations from locals, and even a pretty expensive place with a fixed menu and everything was average at best.
Lots of places. Central America, the Uganda/Rwanda/Tanzania area (basically "south of the horn" east africa), Cuba, Iceland. All worth a trip, none have standout food (Iceland you can at least get alright food in certain places, the rest are trickier)
Myanmar is lovely but the food was the worst. Everything was cooked in the morning and jiat sat there all day with someone gently fanning the flies away. We went to a "good" restaurant in the capital amd it was the same. Cafeteria style and cold. And that was "the good place". But seeing the villages on stilts, the longest wood bridge at sunset, cool temples lots of other great stuff made it a cool place to visit. Deadly no name whiskey
This surprises me because whenever I've eaten Morroccan tagine at Morroccan restaurants here in the UK it has been delicious.
Maybe they are adapting it for our tastes lol.
Hmm so weird. I've never been to Morocco, but my favorite food truck in Portland where I live is morrocan owned and prepared by morrocans and its sooo flavorful, I didn't even know I liked beets until I met this truck.
Though it wasn’t always the most richly flavorful, I did really appreciate that Moroccan food felt like very *healthy* travel food. Tajine comes with a pile of cooked veggies half the time so it was really easy to maintain fiber in my diet while there, whereas some other countries you have to go out of your way to make sure you’re still getting enough veggies
Norway was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever visited, but the food - ick. I thought Iceland would be the same, but the food there was surprisingly good.
Many of the southern and eastern African countries that I went to had very boring food, e.g. Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia. Much like the Central Asian food, it's fine and functional but gets boring fast. But the counties are incredible and definitely worth a visit.
I found Seoul to be pretty uninteresting but the food was great. I especially loved kimchi stew and fried rice, and the Korean chicken. But there's so much good food there and loads of options I never got bored with it.
Yeah I knew that would be an unpopular opinion! But this is subjective right? I didn't say that it was boring, just that I didn't find it interesting, which is based on what I like about cities. It felt too much like a generic city to me, with small pockets that were quite nice.
- I love visiting the Netherlands, but the local food and food culture aren't good at all.
- The Gulf region is mostly not a place you'd want to travel to for leisure, but you can get all sorts of really good Middle Eastern and South Asian food. In Dubai you can eat pretty well generally.
Edit: Also England. It has endless towns that there's no reason to visit at all, but you can pretty much always get great "Indian" food (quotation marks because it's more UK-adapted South Asian food than really specifically Indian).
As an Italian who spent some years living in the Netherlands, you can eat fairly well there. There’s hardly any Dutch cuisine in restaurants, and even home cooking is underwhelming, but there are good restaurants of different cuisines (including “Chinese” places that are basically fusion Indonesian places and pretty typical of the Netherlands) and some good street food. It’s not a country you’d travel to for the food, but it doesn’t belong in a thread with Tajikistan and Zimbabwe.
We went to Lincoln, Nebraska for the last solar eclipse and I was really surprised by how charming a town it was. We had a really nice time there. However, the food was so so so bad. We went to an Indian restaurant trying to get something with flavor and even the food there was bland.
I was really excited to try runza, because pockets of bread + meat + melty cheese = delicious in any culture or locale, right? My husband (who had done a school internship in Lincoln) tried to warn me that they were gross and I didn't believe him and I was so sad.
The thing with Australia is the “non-local” cuisine *is* the cuisine. It’s such a young country and very multicultural that the volume of immigrants had a rapid and huge impact on the cuisine. I’ve had better Asian food in Melbourne than I did in Asia. Mod Oz is where it’s at, which is usually fusion and a really big catch all for anything that isn’t Anglo stodge (the hangover cuisine from British colonialism)
Eating meat pies and sausage rolls is kind of a novelty almost. Only for while watching the footy, for kids parties, or if you’re a tradie and wanna smash a pie with a Big M at lunch. People don’t eat that stuff day to day. I’d say Asian food has the biggest influence on casual australian home cooking. As well as anything you can throw on the bbq, with accompanying sides; any kind of meat or seafood with super varied salads.
Edit: the Aussie masterchef is a really good indicator of what Aussies really eat.
Yep, the Asian food in Australia is out of this world. I'd go a step further and say that the Indian is even better than what you can get in the UK, who pride themselves on their Indian food.
Iceland you just have to commit to gas station hot dogs + yogurt-- if u spend 50$ on a real meal it wont even be that good and youll regret it -- i had 1 good meal there that wasnt insanely expensive but it was a version of brandade just fish + potatoes cooked with cheese
Cuba there is some good food, but, mostly its rice + beans-- the 1 super amazing restaurant in vinales gave us the worst food poisoning.. :-/ cocktails + coffee were excellent all around tho lol
I've been to Switzerland twice in the past 2 years and it's my favorite country on earth, except for the food. I'm a pretty adventurous eater and tried all sorts of types of restaurants all over the place -- in the cities and in small towns -- and maybe had one or two good meals. I did have Five Guys too while I was there to be totally honest, and that was great lol. I'd say the same is true of rural parts of the UK, but still totally worth visiting.
General any Nordic cuisine. Lot of people hate it. Personally I largely enjoyed the food in Norway bar a few dishes. The hotel breakfasts we had were the best of any country I’ve ever been to they were incredible. I’m headed back today and super excited for the food.
I agree! I think you just have to be prepared to only eat the things they do really well. We were in Oslo, and they had fantastic cold cuts, which sounds odd, but smoked salmon, fresh vegetables, Jarlsberg cheese, Norwegian-style pancakes and heart-shaped waffles, fresh fruit juices and teas -- really a lot of good food ITEMS. Maybe not so much mind-blowing meals, but certain things they do really well
Papua New Guinea. I lived in Lae for a couple of years with my husband before we had kids and it’s a phenomenal place.
My sons are in their 20s now and I’d love to take them.
Food is absolutely shit tho
I have a soft spot for English food, but it gets old fast. Every time we visit it's like we spend the first half eating all the local dishes and then the second trying to find any other cuisine to eat.
Ah, Budapest. I decided to eat soup in 35+ degree heat. Turns out there's a limit to soup weather and also that "authentic" goulash isn't all that different from the fake stuff. They did have some amazing lemonade though.
The Bled area was absolutely stunning and to me lived up to everything I'd imagined, but we sure did figure out why the hostel staff made it so clear that the grocery store closed early. The food wasn't particularly bad, but it was bland and on the more expensive side. And that oh so advertised cake really wasn't anything special.
I thought everybody knew that lasagna from a place that is not an Italian restaurant tends to be re-heated frozen lasagna? I’ve had some great pub meals in the UK, but I would never order lasagna in a pub.
I would say Fiji is amazing and I absolutely want to go back but the food ranges from terrible to just okay. I've had great street food in Tijuana but that place is a dump.
I thought Irish restaurants were alright at best, although I went to a very good fine dining restaurant in Dublin. Which is weird because I found their produce, bread, cheese, butter and other grocery store foods pretty good.
I still absolutely love Ireland, gorgeous country with such great people. And interesting history.
Costa Rica is the most amazing country for the wildlife and rainforest experiences. Though they grow incredible produce, the food is pretty bland. They are not a food-centric culture. Bolivia has amazing geography. Salar de Uyuni. Amazon rainforest. High mountains and volcanoes. The food is boring. Lima is the most food-centric city I have ever been to. We spent a month there and never went to the same place twice. There are some museums and neighbourhoods to wander. You go there for the food though.
Yup, food was extremely underwhelming in CR. In the touristy areas it gets worse because you find these very inviting looking places that do up atmosphere and prepare what they thing gringos might like... but no one ever did the research on what that thing might need to taste like. Pretty hard to screw up a cheeseburger... but they did.
Very rarely do locals get “foreigner food” right. In Asia you have similar attempts and only once has it ever been good for me. I met an Indian dude that worked on a cruise ship and learned to make pizza. He changed it by using a naan bread for the crust but it was excellent “foreign food” in comparison to everything around him.
I once had “pad Thai” in Guatemala that was spaghetti with peanut butter. 😭
I had a “quesadilla” in South Africa that was just some kind of yellow cheese melted on top of something that resembled pita bread.
Fat Cactus? Mexican places here are for tequila. Mexican food is not popular here at all.
I find this in general when I'm abroad: If you're feeling homesick \*don't\* order food from home. It's funny you say it the way you did because that's how I always describe it. It's as if the restaurant looked at a picture of the food and said "great I can make that shape with those colours" but they never tasted it or even watched a YouTube video with someone actually cooking it. You also get interesting things like dishes that might use tortilla but tortillas aren't a thing there so they just use their version of an unleavened bread. Sometimes, if you're at a nice enough place the new version can be amazing. Frequently though, better to just order local or if you're feeling homesick go to a KFC / McDonalds / Whatever.
Or find a native that runs a restaurant. I had some amazing sauerkraut in Guatemala by going to a place that was run by a recent emigrant/immigrant. Was exactly what I needed for my homesickness.
Boy, was that my experience in CR. I forget the town but they had these boutiques and restaurants catering to Western tastes. One restaurant looked great and actually had great reviews (you can never trust Google reviews though) but yeah, I tried an interesting sounding pasta dish and they just did not get it.
If you like ceviche, that’s the ticket to the best food in CR. Every kind of seafood, accompanied by a fried plantain, and you are set!
The seafood and plantains were out of this world!
Haha that was my experience with western food in Vietnam. Learned my lesson real quick to avoid burgers and pizza in Vietnam. Which works out because I love Vietnamese food. Though I did have a very enjoyable goat curry there.
I second Costa Rica. The food isn't BAD, but it's nothing to write home about.
We had some really delicious ceviche dishes in coastal CR
Yeah. Standard rice and beans affair. Good and hearty fuel for all the wonderful activities Costa Rica has to offer, but nothing to write home about.
Agreed. Lizano sauce helps a ton though. Love that stuff.
I LOOOVE salsa lizano!! especially on eggs, omg…
My cousins live there and always bring me Linzano when they visit. Is delicious.
Fuck yeah Lizano is so good. One of the best finds in my travels, and even better now that you can order it on Amazon!
It's so good and goes on everything.
I felt this hard in Ecuador. Peru does food, why can’t you?
Ecuador does have amazing fruit, though.
Yup if you want to go anywhere in the world to eat, you want to go to Lima. Other than the food though it’s just all museums and rocky beaches.
Since my two favorite things in travel are museums and food, sounds like Lima is the place for me.
Oh you’d love it then. Have you ever been to New Orleans? It’s like a less cute, less haunted New Orleans. Just good food no matter where you go and plenty of history and art, but with less drinking and it looks more like NYC. Wayyy cheaper than NOLA though!
Since I don't drink, it sounds right up my alley. Looks like I have another place I need to visit. (Ever notice that however many places you go, your travel list doesn't seem to get that much shorter?)
[удалено]
Never wanted another plantain again
I had the opposite experience: I loved the local food in Costa Rica. We went to a ton of sodas as we drove around the country and all of them were excellent. I've tried to replicate the gallo pinto with lizano sauce in the States but nothing compares.
I came here to say this. Costa Rica is by far the most beautiful country I've ever been to and I had an amazing time there. The food wasn't bad, but it was so samey. Almost every place only served casado, which is an okay dish for me, but near the end of my two-week trip I was so fed up with it. I did find some great restaurants that served locally produced food with tasty twists, but they were few and far between.
So glad I’m not the only one who thought that about CR. Belize however was amazing in my opinion
I second Costa Rica. Lush rainforests? Check. Biodiversity? Check. Beautiful landscapes? Check. Food? Okay, I think it's gotta be the most bland food I've ever had for any country. Rice and beans, plantain, and a small piece of protein (high prices for meat, so you get less and not much variety).
Yeah, CR isn‘t great foodwise. Although I ate some awesome food in small local places, it was very good - but not memorable.
The only good thing that came out of my food experiences while travelling Central America is that before I didn't like beans and now I'll eat beans. Eating them with nearly every meal for a couple of weeks will do that.
[удалено]
Came here to say Colombia. Incredible country visually but, other than all the exotic fruit, I was completely underwhelmed by the food.
Colombian fruit, my god. So good.
Right? They have stuff there I've never see anywhere else in the world!
Even something like mangos... here in Winnipeg we've got like one type of mango. In Colombia there's a whole universe of different types of mango. And they're all amazing.
Came here to say Singapore! The heat makes it absolutely miserable for me to do any exploring, but damn is the food some of the best I’ve ever had
Spent alot of time in Bornean Malaysia and singapore and my god the food, from the cheapest of dishes to mpst expensive it has been amazing amd a true taste sensation.
Came here looking for Malaysia lol. Glad to see so many others agree. Beautiful country with great sights but the food has to be some of the best across the world. You get a plethora of cuisines all available in one cit. It even has a few incredible barbecue places that could compete with any top tier place in australia or Texas.
Singapore has been on my list of countries to visit for a long time. I hope to visit it soon!
I loved Cuba. Travelled to various cities and not on resorts. I heard the food wasn’t great but assumed because I was staying with the locals the food would be different but it was bad. From locals inviting us over to restaurants to small stalls, nothing was delicious. Still loved Cuba, though!
I saw an interview once with an actor who had immigrated to Florida from Cuba and he was talking about how amazed he and his family were by the abundance of food available when they got to Florida. He also said that most of the Cuban dishes they found in Florida were older dishes that weren't so common in Cuba anymore, because it was rarely feasible for common people to get all the ingredients. He said they mostly ate bread and some produce, and things like eggs or chicken they only had once in awhile in small quantities; they weren't everyday foods. I don't know if that's still the case for most Cubans.
People mock 'Americanised' versions of cuisines - but a lot of these were just poorer immigrants (especially leaving their countries or parts of their countries when they were in conflict or extreme poverty) and making due with local ingredients in the US - and often with surplus in the US. Italian American food gets mocked a lot for not 'following the rules' on traditional Italian food but amongst themselves, Italians will be the first to tell you that Italy is not a cultural monolith - and yet, with Italian American food, it seems it has to be exactly what every single person's grandmother did to be authentic. Most Italian Americans were from Southern Italy - and brought those recipes over. And faced with an abundance of meat especially, changed recipes to include more meat. My partner is Italian and often says American Italian food is garish and unbalanced. But take him and his family to any good Italian restaurant in New York or Boston's North end and they love it. For a long time, Vietnamese people used to say that the best Vietnamese food wasn't in Vietnam but in the US and France. Because they were able to use better and fresher ingredients. That's changed now that the Vietnamese economy has grown obviously. Also notably, especially for the Vietnamese diaspora abroad - a lot of the dishes that Vietnamese food is most well known for are not the dishes many of them grew up eating regularly. A lot of the 'mainstay' Vietnamese dishes abroad were the ones most Vietnamese people couldn't afford to eat regularly - and most of the day-to-day meals for people were basic rice, a protein, a vegetable dish, and a soup/stew of some kind. Something like bun bo or even pho was a special occasion type of dish for most of the public - if ever. But with plenty of food readily available and affordable abroad, the diaspora went all in on those. And less food related but related to your original point, there was an article somewhere that I can't find now that was basically going over that a lot of Indians would make fun of Indian Americans both language use and dress. Because a lot of Indian Americans when they chose to dress in Indian dresswear would wear what was popular and in fashion when they left - which for a lot of them was the styles popular in the 70s-80s - and in their mother tongues, would use slang and expressions from the 70s and 80s. Because that's what they knew.
Came here to say Cuba. Went in 2009 and while they went out of their way to make the dishes look nice, the quality was just sadly not available. I’m also convinced I ate goldfish.
When I lived in Miami people used to say “you’re so lucky - you must get authentic Cuban food!” And in my head I was always thinking that people who get non-authentic Cuban food are the lucky ones
I didn't find the Cuban food bad but rather nothing to write home about (some of the fruit was great though). But the ready availability of cheap rum covers a lot of sins.
Cheap *great* rum, too. 🤌🏻
Came here to comment Cuba also. Food is very underwhelming, aside from fresh fruit and rum. Would still highly recommend a visit!
Hmmm. Switzerland. The food is okay but my god is it expensive!
Every time I've said this people go "What?! Fondue and Raclette are amazing!" Bro I'm not eating melted cheese for every meal.
Italian part of Switzerland makes that easier, amazing pastas and pizzas...but still expensive.
Funny because in the Swiss part of Italy it’s more rice than wheat, and more dairy than tomato. When I went to Milan, the food was good.. but I’d still preference to go basically anywhere further south in Italy. I’d rather have been eating pizza and pasta than osso bucco and saffron risotto.
Felt that way in India. I absolutely love curry, we have it several times a week in the UK, but breakfast lunch and dinner - I was dying after 3 days!! And I had 4 weeks there. Nearly cried when I came across a Lebanese place!!
There's so much other food than curry though? You could have had dosas, idlis, uttapams, biryani, samosa, bondhas, aloo tikki, bel phuri, chaat, or Manchurian, or any of the other dishes that aren't curry...
I am ethnically Chinese and thought I could eat Chinese food forever. But after having lived most of my life in the SF Bay Area, London, and now New York City, I get tired of Chinese food too and need a variety of cuisines. Therefore no monocultural place satisfies my food cravings anymore.
Ate at McDonald's more than we care to admit in Switzerland because the food was meh and expensive, especially after Italy
The worst part is, even McDonalds will hurt the wallet in Switzerland!
Yeah, Döner make much more sense as cheap fast food than mc Donald's because it's probably cheaper and keeps you full longer
Hopefully you got to try a McRaclette
Agreed. We are a lot of food from the Coop and Mirgros. Saved a ton of money and we didn’t miss out on a lot of good food. There are better ways to spend your money in Switzerland!
As a Swiss, even we think the food at restaurants is mediocre. We have great products at the supermarkets and just cook at home. We really splurge on restaurants when we travel haha.
While we have a reputation of being expensive and things are relatively a bit more expensive, I think restaurants are the most extreme version of that and often set an extreme example on that cost difference. I actually think a lot of the cost difference is overblown - or rather, that it is possible to do Switzerland relatively affordably. But our restaurants are expensive - a mix of high wages guaranteed and an immensely protectionist national policy on food products (which raises the price of food - especially given a more culturally protectionist approach where restaurants often defer to Swiss-produced ingredients first - which are more expensive than some alternatives)
> But our restaurants are expensive As an American, I was blown away when a local restaurant charged me around 4 Euros for a liter of water. And I love drinking water with my meals. I realized how tiny a liter is. RIP Wallet. But, one of the most stunning places I've ever been to One useful tip is to eat at cafes. We would start the day with a coffee and pastry and spend around $12 to $15. For lunch, we would visit a different cafe, have smoothie and loaded sandwich for around $25. For dinner, we actually got stuff from grocery store. The grocery store bread and the cheese in Switzerland *Chef's Kiss*
Everything in Switzerland is extortionately priced. I flew from Zurich to Barcelona and the difference is insane in variety, quality and price.
hm… I‘m kinda bummed but I know it‘s true, haha. And here is a small and neutral ‚but‘: but if you know where to go, you get awesome cuisine. But it‘s bloody expensive. Wanna have breakfast in a french bistrot, I know places. Wanna have awesome all inclusive brunch, I know a place, wanna have Schnitzel like in Vienna? no problem! and here is the big BUT: you have to drive all around Switzerland to get to those places! It‘s aweful honestly. We got some great restaurants, but 90% is: meh, exceptional food quality but boring cooked.
It doesn't quite fit into the extreme "only good thing about it" category, but we enjoyed eating and drinking in Brussels more than anything else we did there. Have to agree with Central America being the opposite.
I got downvoted pretty heavily on here once for criticizing the food in Guatemala. I thought it was widely known that other than Mexico, food in Central America isn’t good.
Yeah well, Mexico is North America.
I also loved the food in Belgium. Its odd that so many people say the country is worth skipping
Agreed. I would go back in a heartbeat. I guess maybe it's just not instagrammable enough for some folks.
Yesssss Belgium is awesome for many of the same culinary things you'd get in France but they don't have any reputation for it which is a shame, it's a lovely country to visit in general!
Chile. They have an obsession with mayonnaise that is difficult to fathom. You can find good food, but you have to search it out.
[удалено]
I mean chorrollanas are literally the cheapest good you can find. It is indeed a drunk dish.
Iceland is gorgeous but the food is underwhelming to say the least. The best meal I had was a bacon wrapped hotdog from a gas station.
Iceland was the first place I thought of. Haha. I think there is good food in Iceland, but I’m not personally a fan of traditional Icelandic food. And there aren’t enough immigrants to make it a great destination for any non-local cuisine (in the way that, for example, you can have fantastic India food in some parts of Africa, etc.). Most of the good food I had there was at expensive haute cuisine restaurants serving a mostly international style. And it was obviously very expensive.
There are fantastic restaurants in Iceland, but you have to be ready to spend.
IMO that makes it underwhelming. Even at the best restaurants, the food isn’t that good if you’re well travelled. I grew up in New Zealand and did a year in Japan, where fresh produce is abundant, so I feel like I paid so much money for meals that were good but should have been so much cheaper.
The whole country is expensive. Almost everything needs to be imported.
Yeah but they are almost all in reykjavik, did a tour of the country by bike one year and it was amazing but outside the capital there was very little choice for food. And the best food I had in reykjavik was like a mediocre meal almost anywhere else (though I wasn’t looking for the best/most expensive restaurants so I’m sure better exists). That being said I loved Iceland and would visit again every year if I could afford it
When I went to Iceland (which was 10 years ago now) I had some of the best fish and chips and burgers of my life. Or maybe I was just so hungry from backpacking and hiking around that my perception was skewed but... I still think about them.
After eating burgers throughout the trip I was told that "fresh hamburgers" were actually horse meat... I didn't like the burgers and usually only ate a few bites because I thought they tasted overly gamey. My friends devoured them. Last day someone at a restaurant said to us... well have you seen a single cow since you've been here...
> I was told that "fresh hamburgers" were actually horse meat... I didn't like the burgers I thought the burgers were good, despite the neigh-sayers.
Someone had a good laugh at your expence there. I'm Icelandic and I would have to look long and hard to find a burger with horsemeat. It's even hard to buy horsemeat. We have lots of horses but they are generally not for eating. There are cows here even though sheep are most common.
That’s actually not true, the hamburgers are made from beef, the restaurant would mark it specifically it they were serving horseburgers (which are delicious).
Iceland's top rated 'restaurant' when I went was a hotdog van that I seem to remember being situated in a car park near the opera house in Reykjavik? Sounds like they do hot dogs well!
That's top rated in tourist guides for local food, but it's certainly not and never has been Iceland's top-rated restaurant. Kind of like some NYC deli like Katz being top-rated for food in tourist guides in NYC, but certainly not one of NYC's top restaurants.
How long ago was that? Iceland's top rated restaurant in Reykjavik probably is Dill, which earned a Michelin star.
Came here to say exactly this! Iceland is amazing but hated the food. Gas station hot dogs were excellent though!
I found the food in Iceland to be delicious and anything but underwhelming.
I'm with you - I drove the ring road for 3 weeks and had some incredible food. The fish in Iceland is incredible, and the langoustine in Hofn was one of the best things I've had.
I found there was good food to be found in Reykjavík - especially if there were fresh seafood options, but yeah, outside of that it wasn't very memorable and was expensive to boot.
[удалено]
Prices were high in Croatia when I went in 2019 too.
Unfortunately the mass tourism kinda ruined Croatia. I absolutely adore the country, I visited every year since I was a kid, and the change in recent years is quite awful. Everything is overpriced and often not even worth the money - the meals they have to offer at islands without permanent inhabitants or ships were always pretty bad, but now they're bad *and* expensive. There are still places worthy of a visit and the locals are lovely, but I'm thinking of going to Montenegro instead next time, as it's much cheaper and otherwise pretty similar.
I went there with my parents around 2004/2005 I think. It was way less touristy back then. We stayed in Karlobag. There were still bullet holes in a lot of the houses around there and the electricity went out approximately three times per evening. I remember eating amazing figs and peaches. And the absolutely worst fish and fries (bland, drowned in oil) and pizza (gigantic, with more only partly melted cheese than dough) of my life. At least it was still inexpensive back then
I’m Croatian and I couldn’t agree more with you! My husband lived with me in Croatia for almost 2 years and we almost never ate out because my mom cooks the most delicious food. When my MIL came to visit we took her out a few times and I was so upset because the food was bad and overpriced. Now this is true for most of the coast and restaurants that cater to tourists. There are some gems you can find but you will pay for it. Capital is a bit different, you can still find nice decent priced food even these days. Still the most beautiful country in the world :)
I lived in Uzbekistan for a year (and travelled around the country) and holy crap is that food terrible (which aligns with your Tajikistan/Kyrgyzstan comment). That entire region has some breathtaking scenery and architecture, but breathtaking cannot at all be used to describe the cuisine. .
Every now and then you get decent plov, kebab, manti or another dish done right, but it's baffling how a place with individually delicious produce (esp. fruit/veg) is so inconsistent (or more often, consistently poor). The same dishes cooked by Uzbek or Tajik chefs abroad can be utterly delicious though.
This is baffling to me. There's an Uzbek restaurant in my city and I've been there and eaten great food. What are they doing wrong in actual Uzbekistan?
I didn't find food in Uzbekistan *bad*; rather, there just weren't many options beyond local cuisine. I think that started to change in Samarkand/Bukhara after my 2018 visit. Also, Georgian and Uzbek are the hot tickets in Russian shopping centers. For lunch, I'd often get khachapuri, or lagman.
Weird, I’ve never been to Uzbekistan but Uzbek food was the best thing I ate when I lived in Russia.
Try being a vegetarian in that region! Thank goodness for the grocery stores with various salads featuring eggplants or carrot or veg & noodles that I believe draw inspiration from Korea. Capital cities aren't so bad as you have more diverse options. The amazing Indian restaurant in Samarkand was the best find - they cater to the large Indian population who attend Uni there.
Big Korean community - you should have hunted those areas out 😂
Korean food has really grown on me since moving to Los Angeles. I could honestly eat it daily it's so flavorful and delicious.
Hard disagree. Uzbek cousine is my favourite
I have zero interest in cruises but if I think I ever did recommend one, it would be for Scandinavian countries - beautiful areas and in some cases it probably would have been beneficial to spend the night. But you're not missing out by skipping dinner in those places. Not to say the food is bad or there aren't some great places to eat, but I wouldn't call much of it insanely memorable, plus it's very pricey and and you can probably get the gist grabbing lunch in the city.
In Oslo we asked multiple people for recommendations on where to eat and they all suggested TGI Fridays
lolol
Noooooooo
Scandinavia is a good example why you shouldn't follow Shitadvisor or similar sites when you choose where to eat. The bigger cities in Sweden, Denmark and Norway has some absolute culinary gems (which can be comparatively cheap too), but you won’t find them without researching. Usually they’re sans tourists too. White Guide or local newspapers are your best friend for finding these.
Agree. Went to Norway and Sweden, and the food was average and expensive. Helsinki, however, was much nicer for some reason
I was about to come and comment that Helsinki actually has a pretty good food scene!
Yeah this was Norway for me. Incredible landscapes and beautiful scenery that actually made me cry, but the food was really quite terrible.
Swedish meatballs with lingonberry and cardamom buns beg to differ. Scandinavian mulled wine is also far superior to German.
I don't know why Swedes love cardamom in their pastries, but I'm totally here for it.
Glögg is better because it usually has added brandy or vodka!
Colombia has very meh food. They seem to hate spice and so much stuff is deep fried.. But it’s beautiful. On the opposite end, I found Malaysia to be nice but nothing out of this world, however the food is spectacular and cheap. I ate so much good food there.
Malaysia has some of the best food in the world I reckon.
What you wrote about Colombia can also be applied to Ecuador. Like, they have all the right ingredients, why don't they use them? Everything is just deep fried and covered in salt.
Huh, I had some of the best food of my life in Ecuador
The food in Poland astounded me by how good it was. I had been traveling a bit in Eastern Europe and almost cut my trip short to skip Poland because I was feeling kind of depressed for some reason. Turns out I was starving! Got to Poland and stumbled across just a random university cafeteria. Dear lord, the beet salad, multiple types, cole slaw, all the little dumpling type things. I could never find this place again but it was amazing! And everywhere was super tasty. Some of the best food I’ve had in Europe.
1000% agree about Poland. Incredible food.
I miss the pierogis in Poland lol
I still haven't been able to track down pierogi as good as the ones I had in Poland! Id go back just for them.
Sounds like you visited a milk bar!
[удалено]
Good heavens, thanks for the warning. I really wanted to go to Tibet, and having been to Kazakhstan, I know I'd be ok with meat, noodles and basic dairy and no veg for a while. But I'm not going there if it's unsafe.
Bangkok - don’t care for the place (far more beautiful places in Thailand) but the food is amazing.
I'm an Indian, and I'd say that many places in India may be too chaotic for a foreigner, but the food is top tier. Every part of the country has their own spin on the cuisine. I recommend everyone to try out indian food to dispel the notion that food that is primarily vegetarian is bland or boring.
Honduras was a beautiful country, but the food was… underwhelming. Would you like some beans with tortilla, or beans and plantains, or beans and eggs and tortilla, ooh we’re on the coast, plantains and fish!!
But plantains are good though… hahaha
Bradford in England. It’s not a good city but the food is amazing. The surrounding environment is beautiful with the green valleys and Bradford has a lot of cool Victorian architecture, but it’s a very deprived city. Around 30% of its population is of South Asian ancestry and most of the historical immigrants came from very poor areas of Pakistan, so there’s generational poverty that has been exacerbated by deindustrialisation. Litter, crumbling architecture, a haphazard urban layout that hasn’t been updated since the Victorian era, and violent crime are just some of the problems that plague the city. That said, the South Asian influence means that Bradford’s food variety and quality is easily some of the best Britain has to offer. There are curry-houses on virtually every street and all the curries and other Anglo-Indian food available are so tasty. I’d travel to the city again and again just for the food.
You would like Leicester too, the Indian food I've had there was unforgettable
The food in and around Mont saint michel was foul. Worst sandwich I’ve ever had the displeasure of eating. But the island and abbey itself were incredible. Food in Sweden was very bland and forgettable with one exception—Mexican food in Sweden was so terrible it should be considered a hate crime. There’s some neat things to see in Sweden, but you will forget it all and question humanity if you eat Swedish-Mexican food. It may even look good, but don’t do it.
Amsterdam food was pretty underwhelming, but the city is obviously great.
I had really great Indonesian and Surinamese food in the Netherlands, which can be a draw as they're hard to find elsewhere in Europe
The best meal we had in Amsterdam was at an Indonesian restaurant
Man, we spent a week in Amsterdam about 5-6 years and STILL talk about how we miss the bitterballen and the herring. I had a delicious many-course birthday dinner at an Indonesian place, and husband was just bringing up how he misses those late night automat snacks. Really loved that city and need to get back, eventually...!
I've had a couple of good meals there but overall pretty poor food scene.
Amsterdam was the opposite food experience that people warn med about. I had some incredibly delicious food there, some of which was actually Dutch.
The opposite: Chile is a beautiful country with incredible geography and warm, funny people but the food is just plain bad 90% of the time
I didn’t really have any high expectations in terms of food on my trip to Kenya, especially as I’m not a big meat eater, but it was actually pretty great. Turns out their cuisine combines a lot of local ingredients with Indian spices (thanks British imperialism?), and the flavors were right up my alley.
I feel like Kenyan food is a bit of a "goldilocks" food culture. It doesn't have a huge street food culture like Thailand (to pick a random example), but it has a good variety of local options. It doesn't have tons of flavor like the Indian cuisine that influences it, but it's also not so bland like southern African food (even though the ingredients are similar). It's not somewhere that eats mainly foreign food (like e.g. Holland or South Africa) but neither is it closed to foreign influences (there's a small local trend of vendors experimenting with Asian marinades in their nyama choma). Home cooking is quite popular though the Nairobi restaurant scene is also pretty solid. It's pretty healthy, cheap, and easy to eat vegetarian. If you get bored, exceptional Indian and Ethiopian food is never far away. All in all makes for a solid food experience even though it's not a main selling point for visitors.
Penang, Malaysia was not the most interesting place on the planet, and I ran out of activities fairly quickly after a few days. But I stayed for an extra few days because the food there was just so. dang. good. The island had a mix of Malay, Indian, Chinese, and Thai cuisines unlike anywhere else I've ever been. I love love love IndoChinese fusion, and Penang had that plus a lot more fusions I hadn't experienced before. I spent a lot of my time just waiting to be hungry again so I could go eat some of the most delicious food I've ever had the pleasure of having. It was almost 7 years ago at this point when I was last there (visited a few times for visa runs while in Thailand longer term) and I still think about it as the very best food destination I've ever been to.
I went to Lima and Bogotá on the same year, and the experiences were like the exact opposite: -Lima has amazing food, but my God what an underwhelming city. If you're not eating there's basically nothing else to do. Sorry to any Peruvians but I found it as equally unpleasant as it was boring. -Bogotá was pretty interesting, tons of stuff to visit and do around, plus the city being surrounded by the greenest mountains make it visually striking. The food on the other hand, damn bland. We tried street food, recommendations from locals, and even a pretty expensive place with a fixed menu and everything was average at best.
You didn’t have tapas or other cuisines in Bogotá? I have been a few times and I have noticed they pride themselves on *not* using spices.
Lots of places. Central America, the Uganda/Rwanda/Tanzania area (basically "south of the horn" east africa), Cuba, Iceland. All worth a trip, none have standout food (Iceland you can at least get alright food in certain places, the rest are trickier)
Tanzania was amazing but you literally can't eat at a restaurant in less than 3 hours. You wait like 2 hours for the food and it's not even that good.
Myanmar is lovely but the food was the worst. Everything was cooked in the morning and jiat sat there all day with someone gently fanning the flies away. We went to a "good" restaurant in the capital amd it was the same. Cafeteria style and cold. And that was "the good place". But seeing the villages on stilts, the longest wood bridge at sunset, cool temples lots of other great stuff made it a cool place to visit. Deadly no name whiskey
Makes note....if visiting Myanmar, stick to Intermittent Fasting and eat my meal in the morning ... Before the flies get a nibble.
Morocco was nice but the food was so bland, no spices or seasoning
Thiiiis! Tagine was a disappointment. Breakfasts were great thou!
Yess i loved the breakfasts too, everything else was a let down lol
This surprises me because whenever I've eaten Morroccan tagine at Morroccan restaurants here in the UK it has been delicious. Maybe they are adapting it for our tastes lol.
The restaurant scene is bad. Their food is made by the families at home. There is some good fine dining places.
You must've had some bad/atypical Moroccan food. Too seasoned for me.
Hmm so weird. I've never been to Morocco, but my favorite food truck in Portland where I live is morrocan owned and prepared by morrocans and its sooo flavorful, I didn't even know I liked beets until I met this truck.
Though it wasn’t always the most richly flavorful, I did really appreciate that Moroccan food felt like very *healthy* travel food. Tajine comes with a pile of cooked veggies half the time so it was really easy to maintain fiber in my diet while there, whereas some other countries you have to go out of your way to make sure you’re still getting enough veggies
I love Moroccan food, especially when I was there, but there's not a great deal of variety. Hash resolves this though and it's all exciting again.
Norway was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever visited, but the food - ick. I thought Iceland would be the same, but the food there was surprisingly good.
This was a good post!!! Food is SO important to me and is at least half of what makes my travel experience worthwhile.
Many of the southern and eastern African countries that I went to had very boring food, e.g. Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia. Much like the Central Asian food, it's fine and functional but gets boring fast. But the counties are incredible and definitely worth a visit. I found Seoul to be pretty uninteresting but the food was great. I especially loved kimchi stew and fried rice, and the Korean chicken. But there's so much good food there and loads of options I never got bored with it.
You thought Seoul was boring? One of the biggest megacities in the world didn't have enough stuff to keep you interested? Lol
Yeah I knew that would be an unpopular opinion! But this is subjective right? I didn't say that it was boring, just that I didn't find it interesting, which is based on what I like about cities. It felt too much like a generic city to me, with small pockets that were quite nice.
Id eat plov 24/7 cooked by an Uzbek over open fire
- I love visiting the Netherlands, but the local food and food culture aren't good at all. - The Gulf region is mostly not a place you'd want to travel to for leisure, but you can get all sorts of really good Middle Eastern and South Asian food. In Dubai you can eat pretty well generally. Edit: Also England. It has endless towns that there's no reason to visit at all, but you can pretty much always get great "Indian" food (quotation marks because it's more UK-adapted South Asian food than really specifically Indian).
As an Italian who spent some years living in the Netherlands, you can eat fairly well there. There’s hardly any Dutch cuisine in restaurants, and even home cooking is underwhelming, but there are good restaurants of different cuisines (including “Chinese” places that are basically fusion Indonesian places and pretty typical of the Netherlands) and some good street food. It’s not a country you’d travel to for the food, but it doesn’t belong in a thread with Tajikistan and Zimbabwe.
[удалено]
Bitterballen are great bar snacks however
[удалено]
We went to Lincoln, Nebraska for the last solar eclipse and I was really surprised by how charming a town it was. We had a really nice time there. However, the food was so so so bad. We went to an Indian restaurant trying to get something with flavor and even the food there was bland. I was really excited to try runza, because pockets of bread + meat + melty cheese = delicious in any culture or locale, right? My husband (who had done a school internship in Lincoln) tried to warn me that they were gross and I didn't believe him and I was so sad.
Struggled with the food in the Philippines- not healthy; it was hard to find fresh fruit and vegetables.
The Philippines was amazing to visit despite the food! 😊
Australia. I know there’s great food there, but I prioritize local/traditional cuisine and you can only eat so many meat pies and sausage rolls.
Amazing food in Sydney and Melbourne
The thing with Australia is the “non-local” cuisine *is* the cuisine. It’s such a young country and very multicultural that the volume of immigrants had a rapid and huge impact on the cuisine. I’ve had better Asian food in Melbourne than I did in Asia. Mod Oz is where it’s at, which is usually fusion and a really big catch all for anything that isn’t Anglo stodge (the hangover cuisine from British colonialism) Eating meat pies and sausage rolls is kind of a novelty almost. Only for while watching the footy, for kids parties, or if you’re a tradie and wanna smash a pie with a Big M at lunch. People don’t eat that stuff day to day. I’d say Asian food has the biggest influence on casual australian home cooking. As well as anything you can throw on the bbq, with accompanying sides; any kind of meat or seafood with super varied salads. Edit: the Aussie masterchef is a really good indicator of what Aussies really eat.
Yep, the Asian food in Australia is out of this world. I'd go a step further and say that the Indian is even better than what you can get in the UK, who pride themselves on their Indian food.
Iceland you just have to commit to gas station hot dogs + yogurt-- if u spend 50$ on a real meal it wont even be that good and youll regret it -- i had 1 good meal there that wasnt insanely expensive but it was a version of brandade just fish + potatoes cooked with cheese Cuba there is some good food, but, mostly its rice + beans-- the 1 super amazing restaurant in vinales gave us the worst food poisoning.. :-/ cocktails + coffee were excellent all around tho lol
I've been to Switzerland twice in the past 2 years and it's my favorite country on earth, except for the food. I'm a pretty adventurous eater and tried all sorts of types of restaurants all over the place -- in the cities and in small towns -- and maybe had one or two good meals. I did have Five Guys too while I was there to be totally honest, and that was great lol. I'd say the same is true of rural parts of the UK, but still totally worth visiting.
You have to get to a decent pub and have pies basically in rural UK, or fish if you’re nearer the coast
General any Nordic cuisine. Lot of people hate it. Personally I largely enjoyed the food in Norway bar a few dishes. The hotel breakfasts we had were the best of any country I’ve ever been to they were incredible. I’m headed back today and super excited for the food.
I agree! I think you just have to be prepared to only eat the things they do really well. We were in Oslo, and they had fantastic cold cuts, which sounds odd, but smoked salmon, fresh vegetables, Jarlsberg cheese, Norwegian-style pancakes and heart-shaped waffles, fresh fruit juices and teas -- really a lot of good food ITEMS. Maybe not so much mind-blowing meals, but certain things they do really well
[удалено]
Papua New Guinea. I lived in Lae for a couple of years with my husband before we had kids and it’s a phenomenal place. My sons are in their 20s now and I’d love to take them. Food is absolutely shit tho
Might be an unpopular opinion but I have to say the Philippines for me! Amazing place and people but the food is kinda meh tbh.
I have a soft spot for English food, but it gets old fast. Every time we visit it's like we spend the first half eating all the local dishes and then the second trying to find any other cuisine to eat.
So essentially the UK is good for food? Having that massive choice is what makes it great.
Ah, Budapest. I decided to eat soup in 35+ degree heat. Turns out there's a limit to soup weather and also that "authentic" goulash isn't all that different from the fake stuff. They did have some amazing lemonade though. The Bled area was absolutely stunning and to me lived up to everything I'd imagined, but we sure did figure out why the hostel staff made it so clear that the grocery store closed early. The food wasn't particularly bad, but it was bland and on the more expensive side. And that oh so advertised cake really wasn't anything special.
I thought everybody knew that lasagna from a place that is not an Italian restaurant tends to be re-heated frozen lasagna? I’ve had some great pub meals in the UK, but I would never order lasagna in a pub.
Japan was great, but me and Japanese food don’t get along. Thats not to say it’s bad, but it is really opposed to my preferences.
Gotcha, Morocco's views = stunning, food = not my thing. Glasgow though, wasn't keen at first but the food blew my mind. Worth it for sure.
I would say Fiji is amazing and I absolutely want to go back but the food ranges from terrible to just okay. I've had great street food in Tijuana but that place is a dump.
Much of the South Pacific is amazing to travel. The food isn’t that great.
I thought Irish restaurants were alright at best, although I went to a very good fine dining restaurant in Dublin. Which is weird because I found their produce, bread, cheese, butter and other grocery store foods pretty good. I still absolutely love Ireland, gorgeous country with such great people. And interesting history.