100 Dishes to Try Before You Die
A culinary journey across the globe — street food and fine dining, ancient recipes and modern classics, every one a reason to book a flight.
Trip Stops
- 1
Omakase at a counter with just eight seats, a chef who trained for a decade, and fish from that morning's market. Nothing else comes close.
📍 Tokyo, Japan
- 2
San Marzano tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, fresh basil, wood fire. The original, still the best. Eat it standing up at a street window.
📍 Naples, Italy
- 3
Lacquered, roasted over fruitwood, carved tableside. Crispy skin in thin pancakes with hoisin and scallion. Six centuries of refinement.
📍 Beijing, China
- 4
Pork marinated in guajillo and achiote, turned on a vertical spit, shaved onto a small corn tortilla with pineapple and cilantro.
📍 Mexico City, Mexico
- 5
Stir-fried rice noodles with egg, tofu, bean sprouts, peanuts, and lime — cooked in a wok so hot the noodles smoke before they hit the plate.
📍 Bangkok, Thailand
- 6
Beef bone broth simmered for twelve hours, rice noodles, rare beef, and a jungle of fresh herbs. Breakfast in Vietnam, transcendence everywhere.
📍 Hanoi, Vietnam
- 7
Butter, layers, a shattering crust that rains flakes when you bite. In a Parisian boulangerie at 8am, it is the perfect food.
📍 Paris, France
- 8
Paper-thin filo, crushed pistachios, clarified butter, and sugar syrup. Karaköy Güllüoğlu has been making it since 1820.
📍 Istanbul, Turkey
- 9
Scotch bonnet and allspice paste, slow-smoked over pimento wood. The smoke is inseparable from the dish — only here does it taste right.
📍 Boston Bay, Jamaica
- 10
Raw fish cured in lime juice with ají amarillo and red onion, served with corn and sweet potato. Peru's national dish and its greatest gift to the world.
📍 Lima, Peru
- 11
Tonkotsu ramen — milky pork bone broth, thin noodles, chashu pork, and a soft-boiled egg. Fukuoka's Hakata style is the richest of all.
📍 Fukuoka, Japan
- 12
Bomba rice cooked in a wide pan over orange wood, with rabbit, chicken, and green beans. The socarrat — crispy rice at the bottom — is the prize.
📍 Valencia, Spain
- 13
Tandoor-charred chicken in a silky tomato and butter sauce with fenugreek. Invented in Delhi in the 1950s, now beloved everywhere.
📍 Delhi, India
- 14
A slow-cooked stew of black beans and every cut of pork — served on Saturday with rice, farofa, and orange slices. Brazil in a pot.
📍 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- 15
Lamb slow-cooked with preserved lemon and olives in a conical clay pot over coals. Saffron, ginger, and ras el hanout perfume every bite.
📍 Marrakech, Morocco
- 16
Flaky filo pastry coiled around spiced ground meat, baked until golden and eaten with cold ayran. The Balkan soul food.
📍 Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
- 17
Har gow, siu mai, cheung fun, egg tarts — Sunday morning yum cha in Hong Kong is a ritual as much as a meal.
📍 Hong Kong, China
- 18
Beef cooked over glowing charcoal on long skewers — picanha, costela, linguiça — brought to the table and carved in an endless procession.
📍 Porto Alegre, Brazil
- 19
A pot of mussels steamed in white wine, garlic, and cream, served with golden Belgian frites and mayonnaise. A Thursday evening in Brussels.
📍 Brussels, Belgium
- 20
Beef slow-cooked in coconut milk and a paste of lemongrass, galangal, and chilli until the liquid is gone and the meat is dark and intensely flavoured.
📍 Padang, Indonesia
- 21
A boat-shaped bread filled with molten cheese, topped with a raw egg and butter. Stir, tear, dip. One of the world's great comfort foods.
📍 Tbilisi, Georgia
- 22
Deep-crimson beet soup with pork, cabbage, and potato, served with a dollop of sour cream and dark rye bread. A Central European winter staple.
📍 Kyiv, Ukraine
- 23
Battered cod fried until blistered, thick-cut chips, mushy peas, malt vinegar — eaten from newspaper wrapping on a sea wall.
📍 London, United Kingdom
- 24
A sauce of thirty-plus ingredients — three types of dried chilli, dark chocolate, charred onion, and a dozen spices — over turkey. A day's work to make.
📍 Oaxaca, Mexico
- 25
Knuckle and claw meat, barely dressed with mayo and celery, piled into a toasted split-top bun. Simple, cold from the Atlantic, perfect.
📍 Portland, United States
- 26
Dense rye bread piled with pickled herring, smoked eel, or roast beef — each open-faced sandwich is a small composed work of art.
📍 Copenhagen, Denmark
- 27
Spongy sourdough flatbread used as plate and utensil, topped with a slow-cooked chicken stew in berbere spice. Eaten communally, always.
📍 Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
- 28
Hand-cut fries, fresh cheese curds, and brown gravy. A Québec invention that transcended its origins to become Canada's most beloved dish.
📍 Montréal, Canada
- 29
Battered octopus balls cooked in a special iron mold, turned with a pick until perfectly round, topped with mayo and bonito flakes that dance in the heat.
📍 Osaka, Japan
- 30
Rice, seasoned vegetables, a fried egg, and gochujang in a sizzling stone bowl — scrape the crispy rice from the sides and mix everything together.
📍 Seoul, South Korea
- 31
Fragrant, fiery prawn soup with lemongrass, galangal, kaffir lime, and chilli. The flavour is simultaneously sour, spicy, and herbal.
📍 Bangkok, Thailand
- 32
Indonesian fried rice with kecap manis, shallots, and chilli — topped with a fried egg, crackers, and satay. The world's most eaten breakfast.
📍 Seminyak, Indonesia
- 33
Freshly ground chickpeas with tahini, lemon, and olive oil — still warm, served with pita at a no-frills hummusiya. Nothing from a supermarket compares.
📍 Akko, Israel
- 34
Veal pounded thin, breaded, and pan-fried in clarified butter until the coating puffs and billows. Served with a slice of lemon and nothing else.
📍 Vienna, Austria
- 35
A paprika-red beef stew of Hungarian cattle herders — hearty, warming, and deeply savoury. Best in a cast iron pot by the Danube in winter.
📍 Budapest, Hungary
- 36
Dense, slow-churned, with a fraction of the air of American ice cream — pistachio and hazelnut, or a rotating selection at Gelateria dei Neri.
📍 Florence, Italy
- 37
A hollowed-out loaf of white bread filled with curry — bean, lamb, or chicken. Durban's Indian community created it; no city has claimed it since.
📍 Durban, South Africa
- 38
Saigon-style pho is sweeter and bolder than Hanoi's — a bigger bowl, more herbs, bean sprouts, and hoisin and sriracha on the side.
📍 Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
- 39
Eggs poached in a spiced tomato and pepper sauce, eaten straight from a cast iron pan with challah to soak up every drop.
📍 Tel Aviv, Israel
- 40
Cross-cut veal shank braised in white wine, broth, and gremolata. The marrow in the hollow bone is the chef's private reward.
📍 Milan, Italy
- 41
Hollow crispy shells filled with spiced potato and chickpea, then flooded with cold tamarind and mint water. Eaten in one bite, standing at a cart.
📍 Mumbai, India
- 42
Spicier, darker, and more complex than pho — this lemongrass and shrimp paste broth from Vietnam's former imperial capital is criminally underrated.
📍 Hue, Vietnam
- 43
An Argentine barbecue is a philosophy, not a meal — hours of wood and coals, no rush, the whole animal, and wine that flows continuously.
📍 Buenos Aires, Argentina
- 44
Pounded yam or cassava dough, eaten with a fragrant soup of ground melon seeds, leafy greens, and smoked fish or goat meat.
📍 Lagos, Nigeria
- 45
A southern Thai curry of Persian origin — beef and potato in a mild, fragrant sauce of cardamom, cinnamon, and peanuts. Once named the world's best food.
📍 Bangkok, Thailand
- 46
Pork grilled on a skewer, wrapped in warm pita with tzatziki, tomato, and onion. Eaten standing up in Monastiraki at any hour of the night.
📍 Athens, Greece
- 47
Ridged fried dough, crisp outside, soft within, dunked into thick hot chocolate so dark it barely pours. A 6am ritual after a night out.
📍 Madrid, Spain
- 48
Poached or roasted chicken, ginger rice cooked in chicken fat, cucumber, three dipping sauces. Singapore's national dish in its purest, most satisfying form.
📍 Singapore, Singapore
- 49
Espresso-soaked savoiardi, mascarpone, egg yolk, and a blizzard of cocoa. Invented in the Veneto in the 1960s; debated, eaten, and loved ever since.
📍 Venice, Italy
- 50
A bubbling cauldron of numbing, fiery Szechuan broth — thinly sliced beef, tripe, lotus root, and tofu cooked at the table with friends.
📍 Chengdu, China
- 51
Creamy, thick chowder in a sourdough bread bowl at Fisherman's Wharf, with Pacific fog rolling in off the bay.
📍 San Francisco, United States
- 52
A Dutch Burgher heirloom — rice, curry, pickle, and frikkadel wrapped in banana leaf and baked. A colonial fusion that became entirely Sri Lankan.
📍 Colombo, Sri Lanka
- 53
Berlin's döner is its own thing — lamb or chicken shaved from a spit into flatbread with sauce and salad. The city's greatest immigrant contribution.
📍 Berlin, Germany
- 54
Grilled white corn cakes, split and filled with cheese, egg, or pulled beef. The Colombian staple eaten morning, noon, and night.
📍 Bogotá, Colombia
- 55
Sliced pork sausage drenched in curried ketchup, served with fries. Invented in post-war Berlin; a city's street food identity in one paper tray.
📍 Berlin, Germany
- 56
Duck legs slow-cooked in their own fat until the meat falls from the bone, the skin crisped in the pan. The Dordogne's eternal Sunday lunch.
📍 Périgueux, France
- 57
Shredded salt cod scrambled with straw-thin potatoes, egg, black olives, and parsley. One of 365 salt cod recipes — and one of the finest.
📍 Lisbon, Portugal
- 58
Dumplings filled with potato and cheese, sauerkraut and mushroom, or sweet cheese — boiled then pan-fried in butter with caramelised onion.
📍 Kraków, Poland
- 59
Tandoor-blistered bread torn and dipped into black lentils slow-cooked overnight with butter and cream. Roadside dhabas do this better than any restaurant.
📍 Amritsar, India
- 60
Rice noodles in a sour, spicy mackerel broth with pineapple, cucumber, and shrimp paste. Penang's asam laksa is sharper and more complex than any other.
📍 Penang, Malaysia
- 61
A thick entrecôte crusted in cracked black pepper, seared in butter, finished with cognac and cream. A Parisian brasserie at midnight.
📍 Paris, France
- 62
Steamed dumplings filled with spiced lamb and onion, draped in yogurt, tomato sauce, and a dust of dried mint. Central Asia's finest dumpling tradition.
📍 Kabul, Afghanistan
- 63
Rice cooked in tomato, onion, and scotch bonnet until it absorbs everything — smoky, orange-red, endlessly debated between Ghana and Nigeria.
📍 Accra, Ghana
- 64
A French baguette made Vietnamese — pâté, pickled daikon and carrot, jalapeño, coriander, and your choice of protein. The world's greatest sandwich.
📍 Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
- 65
A wok-tossed stir-fry of beef, tomato, and ají amarillo served over rice and fries. Chinese-Peruvian chifa cuisine at its most satisfying.
📍 Lima, Peru
- 66
Pearl sugar caramelises in a cast iron waffle iron and crackles when you bite. A Liège waffle from a street cart on a cold day is transcendent.
📍 Liège, Belgium
- 67
Ground lamb and beef mixed with onion, cumin, and parsley, grilled on a flat skewer over charcoal and wrapped in flatbread with sumac onions.
📍 Istanbul, Turkey
- 68
A crisp meringue shell with a marshmallow centre, heaped with whipped cream and kiwi fruit. A dessert war between New Zealand and Australia — both are right.
📍 Auckland, New Zealand
- 69
A deep-fried burrito, stuffed with spiced beef and cheese — invented in Arizona, perfected at a Sonoran border town lunch counter.
📍 Tucson, United States
- 70
Hamburg's version is grilled, not fried, and the sauce is sharper than Berlin's. A ferry worker's lunch, a Hamburg institution.
📍 Hamburg, Germany
- 71
Silken tofu and minced pork in a sauce of fermented black beans, chilli oil, and Sichuan pepper that numbs your lips and lights your mouth on fire.
📍 Chengdu, China
- 72
Flaky pastry shells filled with warm custard, dusted with cinnamon — made to the original recipe at Pastéis de Belém since 1837.
📍 Lisbon, Portugal
- 73
Hunter's stew — sauerkraut, fresh cabbage, wild mushrooms, kielbasa, and pork simmered for days. It tastes better reheated. Always order it reheated.
📍 Warsaw, Poland
- 74
Spaghetti, Pecorino Romano, Parmigiano, black pepper, pasta water. Only four ingredients and it takes a decade to master.
📍 Rome, Italy
- 75
Cold-smoked Atlantic salmon over rye crispbread, pickled cucumber, and crème fraîche. Norway does this better than anyone.
📍 Bergen, Norway
- 76
Wheat, barley, and lentils cooked with lamb until they dissolve into a rich porridge — finished with fried onion, ginger, and lime. Ramadan's midnight bowl.
📍 Karachi, Pakistan
- 77
A corn cob on a stick, slathered in mayo, rolled in cotija cheese, dusted with chilli powder, and finished with lime. The perfect street snack.
📍 Mexico City, Mexico
- 78
A salted pretzel the size of your head alongside a litre of Märzen lager at the Oktoberfest. The crowd, the noise, the atmosphere — the food is inseparable from it.
📍 Munich, Germany
- 79
Thick handmade corn tortillas filled with cheese and chicharrón, cooked on a griddle and served with fermented cabbage curtido.
📍 San Salvador, El Salvador
- 80
Slow-cooked fava beans with olive oil, cumin, lemon, and a soft-boiled egg. Cairo's breakfast for the last five thousand years.
📍 Cairo, Egypt
- 81
Canadian bacon, poached eggs, and Hollandaise on an English muffin. Invented in Manhattan in the 1890s — Sunday brunch in New York hasn't changed since.
📍 New York City, United States
- 82
Grated potato fried in butter until deeply golden and crispy, served as a meal with fried egg and bacon or as a side to almost everything.
📍 Zurich, Switzerland
- 83
Roasted guinea pig — an Andean delicacy for 5,000 years. Crispy skin, gamey meat. Challenging to the uninitiated, essential to understand the Andes.
📍 Cusco, Peru
- 84
Sheep offal, oatmeal, suet, and spices cooked in a stomach casing — the national dish of Scotland, best with neeps and tatties on Burns Night.
📍 Edinburgh, United Kingdom
- 85
Standing at a market stall on the Brittany coast, squeezing lemon over a cold briny oyster, looking at the bay they were pulled from an hour ago.
📍 Cancale, France
- 86
Georgian soup dumplings — twisted at the top, filled with spiced meat and broth. Hold by the knot, bite a hole, drink the broth first.
📍 Tbilisi, Georgia
- 87
Egg noodles in a rich coconut curry broth, topped with crispy noodles, pickled mustard greens, and shallots. Northern Thailand's greatest dish.
📍 Chiang Mai, Thailand
- 88
Oven-baked pastry pockets filled with pino — spiced ground beef, hard-boiled egg, olive, and raisin. Chile's 18 September independence dish.
📍 Santiago, Chile
- 89
A sizzling turmeric rice-flour crêpe filled with shrimp, pork, and bean sprouts — torn into pieces, wrapped in mustard leaf, and dipped in fish sauce.
📍 Hội An, Vietnam
- 90
Long-grained basmati rice layered with spiced slow-cooked meat and sealed with dough — the dum technique steams everything into a single perfect dish.
📍 Hyderabad, India
- 91
White beans slow-baked with duck confit, Toulouse sausage, and pork rind until a thick crust forms. A winter casserole from the Languedoc that demands a full afternoon.
📍 Carcassonne, France
- 92
Blood sausage cooked until the casing cracks, served as part of a full Irish breakfast. Don't ask what's in it. Just eat it.
📍 Dublin, Ireland
- 93
Flaky phyllo pastry layered with spinach, feta, egg, and dill — eaten warm from a bakery tray as breakfast or a mid-afternoon snack.
📍 Athens, Greece
- 94
Not one dish but many — hummus, baba ghanoush, kibbeh, fattoush, labneh, olives — a Lebanese table that keeps arriving and never quite empties.
📍 Beirut, Lebanon
- 95
Thick pork cutlet breaded in panko, deep-fried until mahogany brown, sliced and served with shredded cabbage and a sweet tonkatsu sauce.
📍 Tokyo, Japan
- 96
Carnaroli rice toasted in butter, saffron-gilded to a deep amber, finished with a wave of cold butter and aged Parmigiano. Simple technique, extraordinary result.
📍 Milan, Italy
- 97
Paper-thin flatbread twirled and flipped until layered and blistered, served with dal curry or a sweet condensed milk dipping sauce for breakfast.
📍 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
- 98
A split chorizo sausage grilled over charcoal, placed in crusty bread and slathered with chimichurri. Argentina's answer to the hot dog, and far superior.
📍 Buenos Aires, Argentina
- 99
Tiny Turkish dumplings — smaller than a thumbnail — filled with ground lamb, boiled and served with garlicky yogurt and chilli butter. Patience required.
📍 Ankara, Turkey
- 100
Vanilla custard beneath a caramelised sugar crust you crack with a spoon. The sound it makes is reason enough to order it.
📍 Paris, France
Discover More Trips
Download Guyde and create personalized travel guides