By Diana Hubbell
Associate Editor, Places

If you’re at all like me, food isn’t part of planning a trip—it’s the primary reason to do so. I’d argue you can learn almost as much about a country by visiting its grocery stores as its national monuments. And even in our increasingly globalized, homogenized world, if you want to try Sardinia’s “threads of God” or bite into Pennsylvania’s boova shenkel, you still have to go to the source.

With that in mind, Gastro Obscura created Feast, a series of guides to nine destinations where we think that the food is worth the journey. Feast isn’t about the hottest chef-driven restaurants, but rather places where the dining scene veers toward the ancient, the eccentric, and of course, the outrageously delicious.

Our writers and editors sought out Indigenous chefs reimagining centuries-old techniques and diaspora communities creating hybrid cuisines, not to mention fever-dream tiki bars and stews simmered in calderas.

Please dive in—we hope you enjoy it. And if there’s anywhere that you think we missed, write to us! We’re always looking for our next great meal.

Athens, Greece

If you go through a set of unmarked, graffiti-splattered doors by Varvakios Market in Athens, you’ll find two sets of stone steps leading down to a cool, subterranean chamber stacked with wine barrels.

Welcome to Diporto, a taverna that hasn’t changed much in the last 130 years. There’s no menu, but if you wait patiently, Mitsos, the elderly chef and proprietor, will start sending out plates ranging from fried sardines with lemon to slow-simmered chickpeas. 

I'm still dreaming about the lunch I had there months ago, along with the warm slab of tyropita (cheese pie) from Ariston, the platters of lamb chops at Mavros Gatos, and the tiny, potent, unfiltered coffees poured from briki (copper handled pots) at Kafeneio Oraia Ellas. 

I'm not the only one taken with the city’s dining scene. Travel journalists Austin Bush and Tony Perrottet also shared where to find freshly fried loukoumades (doughnuts) and raucous live music performances.

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Penang, Malaysia

When it comes to street food, this island in northwest Malaysia rules supreme. Stroll along the streets of George Town, keeping an eye out for hawkers selling yong tau foo, a stuffed tofu dish rooted in the local Hakka community, and other delicacies.

But there’s more to Penang than its hawker stalls. Samantha Chong, a Penang native and Atlas Obscura’s associate director of integrated media, takes you on a tour through some of the area’s best eats.

Pay a visit to Nyonya Palazzo, a restaurant in a heritage building that bears the hallmarks of Peranakan cuisine, where Chinese and Malay flavors mingle thanks to the marriage of industrious Chinese traders and local Malays.

Known locally as the Baba Nyonya, this community’s distinctive fusion cuisine and culture flourished in port towns including Penang, Malacca, and Singapore. For a day trip out of George Town, head to Penang Tropical Fruit Farm, where miracle berries, jaboticaba, and Indian gooseberries flourish. 

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Sydney, Australia

As journalist Lee Tran Lam writes of her current hometown, “At first glance, Sydney may seem like it’s powered by sunshine, flat whites, and avocado toast.” While it certainly has no shortage of any of the above, there’s much more than meets the eye to the cuisine here. 

For starters, Aboriginal Australian restaurants like Midden are highlighting Indigenous ingredients like wattleseed and Warrigal greens.

Waves of immigration from Asian countries also now mean that Sydney is home to terrific Malaysian restaurants and Japanese bakeries specializing in dishes that blend the local and the global (think: Vegemite-braised pork ribs and yuzu-meringue lamingtons).

Then there are the craft breweries, some of which are making beers infused with wattle blossoms and Mariposa plums.

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Las Vegas, Nevada

Sure, you could spend your entire time in Las Vegas gliding from one glitzy celebrity chef–branded restaurant to the next without ever leaving the polar-chilled cocoon of interconnected casinos. But to get to the real weird core of Sin City, you’ll have to veer off-Strip. 

Anne Ewbank, senior associate editor at Gastro Obscura, takes you on a whirlwind tour. Head to the sprawling Chinatown, where you’ll find a Korean craft coffee and Golden Tiki, a kitsch fantasia where you can order your Disneyland-style Dole Whip with rum. Or order your dangerously boozy Zombie at Frankie’s Tiki Room, a windowless, 24/7 cavern where time means nothing. 

There’s also homestyle Hawaiian food; one of the last bastions of a near-dead fast-food franchise; and of course, plenty of mafia history. Frank Sinatra once donated a Cadillac to the Italian American Club Restaurant, where the regulars still dress for dinner, the meatballs are homemade, and tunes are live.

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Lagos, Nigeria

Nigeria’s sprawling, coastal metropolis is awash in a wildly diverse array of cuisines. Not only will you find dishes from all over the country in Lagos, but also other West African specialties from Togo, Benin, Ghana, and more. In more recent years, immigrants from South Korea, Brazil, Lebanon, China, and other nations have added their own specialties to the mix. 

Nigerian culinary anthropologist and food historian Ozoz Sokoh takes you on a journey from humble bukas like Ghana High, where heaping plates of Nigerian jollof rice are served alongside ewa aganyin (a creamy bean dish with Togolese roots), to fine-dining spaces like Nok by Alara, where dishes like lamb with mafe (peanut stew) are served in stylish surroundings.

In Lagos, you can sample the full breadth of Nigerian regional cuisines without leaving the city limits, from the seafood-rich dishes of the Niger-Delta at Delta Pot to the yogurty drinks and chewy rice cakes of the north, where fresh dairy and grains are abundant, at Clay Food and Drinks Limited.

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Santiago, Chile

Chilean dishes are seldom spotted outside of their homeland, which is one reason Santiago-based journalist Mark Johanson urges gastronauts to seek them out at the source. After years of looking to Europe for inspiration, chefs are turning instead to their own ancestral foodways and endemic ingredients. 

At Willimapu Gastronomía Ancestral, guests dine on Mapuche dishes like pulmay, an adaptation of curanto, a shellfish, meat, and potato stew traditionally cooked with heated volcanic stones.

More dishes from Chile’s largest Indigenous group can be sampled at the ambitious AMAIA Restaurante, where ingredients like black quinoa and maqui berries are often on the menu—the latter in a particularly inventive and delicious take on the national drink, the pisco sour.

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Beijing, China

Journalist Xiaokun Song writes, “With a keen awareness of their cultural heritage, Beijingers have found innovative ways to revive and modernize age-old food practices.”

It’s hard not to feel the powerful weight of history here when sipping tea in the Forbidden City’s Kunning Palace, where even a cappuccino comes topped with a stenciled cocoa Chinese character 福, meaning fortune.

Traditional dining options abound, from the city’s crisp-skinned Peking duck to vegetarian dishes that would feel right at home in the city’s temples. For something decidedly more modern, pay a visit to Jing-A Brewing Co., one of the first of the city’s craft breweries. Order a Suan La Tang, a gose brewed with fresh ginger, chiles, and sea salt. 

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Houston, Texas

As Houston-born journalist Dan Q. Dao writes, his hometown is a “city of many superlatives.” Not only is it the largest city in the American South, but it’s also by some metrics the most ethnically diverse city in the nation.

That means that while you can still find outstanding Tex-Mex and barbecue here, there’s also exceptional Nigerian, Cantonese, and South Asian food.

At this point, many of Houston’s diaspora communities have lived here long enough for their cooking to evolve. Cajun Kitchen is just one of many restaurants specializing in Viet-Cajun cuisine, a hybrid created by Vietnamese refugees living along the Gulf Coast.

Then there are kolaches, sweet and savory pastries originally brought over by Czech immigrants that are now as quintessentially Texan as beef brisket.  

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São Miguel, Portugal

Follow senior editor Sam O’Brien to an enchanted island in the Azores, a Portuguese archipelago about 1,000 miles from Lisbon in the North Atlantic. São Miguel, the largest and most populous island, packs vast crater lakes, fields of wildflowers, and some of the world’s sweetest pineapples into just 300 square miles.

All that geothermal activity impacts the cuisine here, which includes caldera-cooked stews and a shocking violet tea made with volcanic hot springs water. If you’re hoping to sip something a bit stronger, check out a 19th-century mansion that houses more than 1,500 gins.

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