The Endless Road Trip: Our Top 5 Favorite Cities for Eating

At Endless Simmer, we love to travel, and when we travel, we love nothing more than eating. In fact, when we do visit a new place we almost can’t think of anything to do except for EAT. Museums? Um, sure…maybe if you need to kill some time in between meals. In our travels across six continents, we’ve sampled street food and Michelin-starred cuisine in hundreds of cities. But these five stand out as the very best for foodies.

5. Melbourne

Australia often gets a knack for having bland food, but that bad rep is not deserved. From deep-fried dagwood dogs to burgers with the works—which redefine what the works are—those Aussies come up with some pretty crazy concoctions. And super-hip Melbourne, more than anywhere, makes good use of the upside-down continent’s year-round harvest, with over-the-top farm-to-table meals on seemingly every street corner.

4. Paris

People (whiny Americans like us, mostly) love to complain about how Paris cuisine ain’t what it used to be. You can’t get a good steak frites anywhere these days; the croissants are often of middling quality; and the bistro are too packed with…well, whiny Americans like us. But despite the perception, eating in Paris has never really been about the fancy restaurants. It’s about popping into random boulangeries, grabbing a fresh-baked loaf of bread and a stinky hunk of cheese from the nearest fromagerie, and sitting in an otherworldly pristine park all day. Oh, and it’s about the macaroons. Obviously.

3. Copenhagen

It’s no secret that Denmark has become the Avant Garde international darling of the food world, and there’s plenty of good reason why. From foraged flowers to haute hot dogs and picture-perfect open-faced sandwiches, the New Nordic food movement really is worth all that hype. They even have good bagels. I mean, come on. Is there anything these people can’t do perfectly? They also always look beautiful, which doesn’t hurt.

2. New York

I mean, um, it’s New York. NYC may not have any one iconic dish, but it’s so diverse that anytime we native New Yorkers go abroad and discover an exciting new food, we’re almost bound to find out that they already have it somewhere in New York. (It can be kind of disappointing actually!) But it’s not disappointing to live here, with everything from Sri Lankan to Cambodia to British Columbian and Basque to be found on the street corners here. There’s no cuisine too small or undiscovered that you can’t taste it in NYC.

1. Tokyo

 

Eating in cities like London and Rome is always reliable, but eating in Tokyo is an ADVENTURE. You really never know what you’re going to get. And what you end up getting can be really, really weird. From shrimp head soup to pigs’ heart and other parts, to what is most definitely the world’s most exciting fish market, you’re guaranteed to find something you’ve never seen before. For a serious food trip, you can’t beat that.