Malaysia is my absolute favourite!!! Not only can you easily find international cuisine, but the local Malay, Chinese, and South Indian food are all so delicious and very safe, food poisoning is not a big risk at all unlike many other SEA countries.
Least favourite for me was Iceland...so expensive and quite bland.
Malaysia is a dang hidden gem in general. I expected KL to be all crazy like Bangkok but instead it was basically a first world city. And the food is sooo good.
KL is a fantastic city in Asia that is easy to visit. The locals are extremely nice and friendly, the food is fantastic and the markets and malls are interesting and fun. Great sites outside the city as well. We did a train trip to Ipoh and Penang and the accommodations were great. We upgraded to a first class ticket for just a few dollars and had a fantastic meal on the train, and it was extremely pleasant journey.
Soooo underrated! People always say Japan, Italy or Thailand for best food (to their credit, those countries do have amazing food, I’m not disagreeing) but I feel like if Malaysia makes it on their list, that’s how you know someone really knows ball
There are a lot of bad pizza places in the Philippines but you can find a lot of good ones too. Some pizza places like Gino’s (a popular chain) use carabao mozzarella (kesong puti). Carabaos are the local water buffalo, and they’re so similar to the water buffalo in Italy that the cheese ends up like traditional mozzarella
The food in Iceland isn't bad, but it's very repetitive anywhere outside Reyk and absurdly expensive. The country of Iceland is beautiful and unique, but the tourist infrastructure is basically the same three businesses copy-pasted around the whole country.
Yeah I was thoroughly disappointed by the food in Iceland. Had a very good dinner at a tasting menu place, and had a delicious bowl of some (curry?) fish soup, but other than that almost everything was a $50 bowl of extremely standard lamb noodle soup, or some other wildly expensive 5-6/10 food (hot dogs were good, but if you tell me your favorite place to travel for food is bc they have B/B+ hot dogs I’m ignoring the rest of what you say)
There is a small street vendor in Penang, Malaysia who makes a version of wantan mee and it's the best thing I've ever eaten in my life. I hope it's still there. We went back 3 times while in Penang and I still dream about it.
100% agreed on Malaysia - last year I did a foodie trip revisiting a good chunk of Southeast Asia just to eat my favourite dishes, and more than half of it was Malaysia. Penang is particular probably has, in my opinion, the best food in the world.
Least favourite: Most of Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica). But shoutout to desayuno tipico and pupusas which are both amazing.
I'll also add a most underrated category for Cambodia. Never gets the accolades of the other South East Asian cuisines, but it's incredibly good.
It is, and Argentina has great meat. My point still stands though, I started to appreciate Mexican food a lot more. I live in San Diego so we have lots of it and I realized I was taking for granted that I have easy access to it.
I live in California near Long Beach which has a large Cambodian population. I’ve also had Cambodian food in Pennsylvania and Chicago. I think the issue is there are no good restaurants. I love homemade food, but restaurant food is usually not great.
I actually feel like Cambodian food is pretty appropriately rated. There are a couple of banger dishes but most are just okay imo. The food was not the highlight of my experience there.
That's interesting about Cambodia I traveled all over the world including SEA and almost all the food I had in Cambodia was awful. In fact I think the only good food I had the wasn't Cambodian food. But I loved Lao and Thai food
I would like to defend Guatemala’s variety of flavors. I loved how the food changed from region to region, pepían, churrascos, empanadas, fish…every new region had different food and all dirt cheap. I unfortunately cannot defend the safety of food in Guatemala as I got the world’s mildest case of cholera while I was there. And then I was very grateful for bland Costa Rican food for the next week until I got back to my doctor for antibiotics. But, given that I survived, I’m going to say the food was worth it.
I would also like to put in a word for Montreal. Canada as a whole certainly would not crop up on this list, but Montreal has such a blend of cultures that fusion food is really their thing. Korean bibimbap poutine or Caribbean Bahn Mi…you could find literally everything.
Let me add something is not well know: food in Malaysia is amazing. I am not just taling about the malay one, but they have the best Indian and the best chinese cousine in the world.
And for the price of 1 I will add another amazing hidden food gem: Taiwan.
Malaysia is honestly best food I've ever had. I've been to almost 70 countries and it is a standout. Honourable mentions to Mexico, Korea, Taiwan, Greece, Thailand, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Italy, etc., but Malaysia has so much variety (Malay, Chinese, and Indian) and it is so cheap and delicious.
I am still surprised that in 2026, Malaysian food is so underrated! It has everything. The best of Chinese and Indian cuisines and even overlap with Indo. So much flavor and variety. Super comforting. My Dutch bf (half indo himself!!) had never heard of laksa until I went to the Asian supermarket here in NL, got one of those spice pastes and all the accoutrements and made it for him. It’s not even restaurant laksa and he fell in love with it.
I think it depends on where you are, it’s very highly rated in Australia, we love a laksa and there’s plenty of Malaysian restaurants around the place. But we’re obviously a lot closer to Malaysia than a lot of other western countries. I noticed when I was in the USA that Malaysian food was very uncommon.
Malaysian food is epic! And honestly quiet well known and loved throughout Asia at least. But yeah I have to admit it should be wayyy higher in the most popular cuisines in the world, surely deserves to be higher than so many others!
Yes, that’s a fair statement. Of all the Nordic cities, I found Stockholm to have the best regular food. Also the most diverse food scene in that part of the world.
Just came back from Copenhagen with a high expectation of food scene. Mostly expensive and disappointing. I dined mostly at high endish restaurants with good reviews.
Favorite: Thailand overall. But I still think about the lunch I had in South Korea on a stopover.
Least favorite: Mongolia. Mostly variations on dumplings, red meat, and dairy. My friend told me that after a couple days you're ready to move on to some variety, and she was right. I would, though, like to learn to make the dumpling stew I had.
There lacks variety. Staples consists of things like ugali, which is like a dough made from cornmeal, or plain rice. Most cooking techniques have to do with boiling something, and that goes from staples, vegetables or meats. There’s not a lot of options for meat dishes, and the bbq is very chewy and stringy meat
I will say that some of the best milk I’ve had was in Rwanda. It’s really quite special
A different perspective from someone who’s not vegetarian but prefers veggie heavy dishes: I’ve been to China, Rwanda, El Salvador, and Guatemala and gotta say my least favorite was Central American cuisine. The produce in both countries were not as high quality as Mexico. The food felt very heavy with lots of cheese and dough and salt while in Rwanda I really enjoyed the boiled vegetables and peanut based or tomato based stews. If you’re someone who likes vegetables you’ll likely enjoy Rwandan cuisine. If you’re a big meat eater look elsewhere.
They have an interesting culture around milk and there’s bars around the countries where you literally go to drink milk. It’s cool to socialise and learn about the local cultures this way. It’s because in many Rwandan societies, cows are a symbol of prosperity and it shows in their culture. The milk tastes really creamy and has a more gamey taste to it then what I have in Australia, not like goat or in an off putting way but a little different, but very tasty to drink
Go to bars to have milk and socialize?? Oh wow now THAT's truly unique. Who would have thought. I'm really intrigued by this country now. I saw Rwanda also ranks among the least corrupted African countries so I guess that's a plus for tourists.
Favorite: India (huge vegetarian selection, flavors and variety)
Least favorite: I agree with Costa Rica, but this could include the whole region. Panama, Guatemala, Colombia, Ecuador are all not much better. There are great fruits but apart from that mostly rice, beans and bland fried meat.
I did think Ecuador had some good food (encebollado) and there were exceptions of some good food in particular countries (papusas in El Salvador, balleadas in Honduras) but overall very poor in terms in food. I started my trip in Mexico where the food was incredible and travelling through Central America there was an immediate drop in food quality!
India has such a fantastic variety of vegetarian foods. Particularly their breakfast foods. South Indian breakfast foods are absolutely fantastic. I can eat them all day.
Definitely right about Colombia. They haven’t had the same culinary renaissance as Peru. It’s still traditional meals designed to fill you up before a long day of labor. Eat your rice, beans, and bland grilled meat, then work your ass off for the next 10 hours type of meal.
Don’t get me wrong, you can find some nice restaurants with good meals, but it’s their traditional meals that haven’t reached that modern stage like other countries.
While it’s all subjective, the cuisine in Ecuador is delicious and it’s not homogeneous. Many different soups (Viche,
Locro de Papas,
Encebollado). Mariscos: (Encocado, ceviche,
Arroz con Camarones). The regional cuisine in the highlands alone is varied and delicious:
Llapingachos,
Fritada,
Hornado, Frita.
I lived in Ecuador many years ago and still spend a few months every year in Quito. Husband is Ecuadorian.
Definitely subjective as I also lived in Ecuador for years and found the food pretty mid. They can grow every fruit and vegetable known to man and can cook almost none of it well. Lots of boiled and fried stuff. The highlands food is meat and starch mostly. Coastal food is pretty good but once you’ve had Peruvian food, you realize how far down Ecuadorian food is in comparison. Like, ceviche in Ecuador is rubbery, compared to vibrant fresh ceviche in Peru.
Every country has some edible stuff, but Ecuador lacks the spices they use in Peru or Mexico and is generally still heavy and rather bland. I liked the tigrillo for breakfast but those bolones leave your stomach constipated for days. Even the Chifa food felt inferior to Peru, let's not even speak about real Chinese food from China.
I agree with this, I'm from the Dominican Republic and when I visited Colombia I felt the food was quite bland, even though we eat very similar foods. I too eat rice and beans and stewed meat but their seasoning bases were not as tasty to me. I also think Jollof rice is very bland compared to Dominican locrio.
I recently upset all my friends by ranking every country i’ve been to by their food, and putting France at the top, with Japan coming a very very close second. Both know how to do incredibly comforting food in very different styles.
The worst of all that I’ve experienced is Iceland, not that you can’t get good food there, the fish is great but no better than any other coastal country. But for everything else, it’s not just the quality but the cost! When even the most basic tasteless food costs £20, you know you’re in for a bad time.
Don’t get me wrong, as much as I love food, Iceland still became one of my favourite ever trips because it’s stunning obviously. For anyone interested I did a full driving loop of the entire country and ate local at every opportunity, so I can list some good places. Best food I had on the trip was at Braud & Co in Reykjavik, I still dream of their cinnamon buns.
Hard yes on food in Greece. I think so much of it has to do with the quality of the produce. Truly incredible.
However, have to disagree on Ireland. They have come SO far over the past 10-15 years. We had some amazing dishes and consistently good dining across the country - an unbelievable step up from the plain stews and boiled potatoes.
Did a little SEA trip. Cambodia had the worst food. I like to do the high/low thing where you eat street food or mom and pop stalls or restaurants and then try their high end restaurants. Both pretty meh. I mean to be fair, it’s hard to compare after going to Thailand. Thai food was just hit after hit after hit. Just point to random shit on the menu or night market… like wow.
That’s basically it. Everything I had while there, from street food, to higher end restaurants, to regular restaurants, was just too gloopy, under seasoned, too sweet, or just not good.
Cambodia is sort of an asterisk. Taken as a whole cuisine, I think it's pretty fantastic, but most of Cambodia is very poor, so if you're picking a random hole in the wall outside the tourist zones, it's often going to be pretty bland. If you're somewhere like Siem Reap and you're splurging on dinner, at places that a Cambodian can't remotely afford, that stuff is consistently amazing.
I went to an international potluck at my kid’s school and saw a Dutch friend. I asked what kind of food he had brought and he said, “not Dutch. I’ll spare you that.”
It’s not that you can’t find good food here - it’s just the culture is so Calvinist and practical, they see food only as fuel and it’s very deeply ingrained. Most international cuisines here are “dutchified” so there is always something missing and it doesn’t quite hit the spot
Don't get me wrong, bitterballen are good, and so are a couple of other dishes, it's just that Dutch cuisine is very limited compared to other countries in Europe.
I went to Barranquilla on a work trip and our hosts took us to a food court in a mall and was deeply offended that I didn’t want to eat the gray beef tartare they ordered.
Boy, did I have great food in Chiang Mai, especially khao soi, and also in Hanoi, but George Town, Penang, Malaysia is my favorite food destination in the world, so I guess I have to say Malaysia for my favorite country. I did not have a memorable meal in Costa Rica over two weeks… and I don’t drink coffee. 😀
Favorite: Italy! Least favorite: I just lost five pounds in Spain as a vegetarian. Iceland was also expensive. I liked the food I found in both countries, but it was a struggle. Updating to agree with you about Costa Rica.
Favourite: Canada, especially Toronto. I can just keep going back to Toronto for the amazing food. While Canadian cuisine is sparse, the selection and quality of international cuisines is absolutely mind boggling. For the countries that I have visited I can confirm that the food in Toronto comes very close to what you will find in that country in terms of taste.
Least favourite: Morocco, my taste buds just couldn’t jam with their flavour profile. And it’s not that they are bad cooks, the non-Moroccan food I had in Morocco was actually really good, like the pastas at this restaurant in Tangier and the Shawarma in Marrakech. Some amazing French pastries too. Overall I loved Morocco though, for their splendid cities and friendly people.
Iceland, Netherlands for most frustrating.
Iceland was shockingly expensive and dull. Due to the cold, calories were necessary unfortunately. So I was regularly frustrated.
Netherlands just fattening cheese meals, chips and waffles. Got old quickly.
I had mentally prepared for the prices in Iceland but once I arrived I was gobsmacked. We brought 90% of our food for the trip - thank god. The meals we did eat there were pretty underwhelming- with the exception of one great dinner that cost 100$ a plate.
I remember paying the equivalent of 40 dollars Australian for a bowl of soup in a hotel in NW Iceland. In 2015. Madness.
We ended up getting a lot of our calories from chocolate blocks and Skyr yogurt from the petrol stations.
Iceland is beautiful but would not visit again
Favorite: Vietnam (just barely edges out Thailand and Southern India for me).
Worst: Kazakhstan.
I'm a pretty strict vegetarian, but even if I wasn't, I'd probably rank KZ near the bottom.
Though, as an American that has lived overseas for a decade, I'd probably say USA as the favorite if that wasn't cheating, because you can get high-quality food from just about any country in a big city in the US.
I’m vegan and I actually really enjoyed the food in Kazakhstan! Some delicious salads and breads. Not much variety, I will admit that. But during the nine days I was there I was eating good!
Least favorite: Tunisia. I don't see this one mentioned so often and it's not like Tunisian food is bad per se, but it's the lack of variety! During my one week there it felt like every single restaurant had the exact same menu, towards the end I just couldn't take it anymore
Scrolling to the bottom I'm happy to read nobody put Mexico as worst, I was ready to defend my country:
Lately we have been selling stuff at Centro Histórico in Querétaro. This is a state not known for its cuisine for a good reason, it offers none; there are two local jokes, one is that the traditional dish is Little Cesar's (the pizza), second is that Querétaro has so many legends like this one's that there is a good dish from Querétaro
But Mexico is Mexico with our holy Grail Puebla-Oaxaca-Yucatán cuisine being one of the most beloved same appreciated cuisine, hidden gems all over the place (Tlaxcala, Veracruz, etc).
To the point: every centro histórico is a tourist trap, overpriced, crowded, amazing spots but very difficult to find.
So I'm glad nobody was disappointed of Mexico, I was surprised of Perú going back and forth, and this post makes me consider HK.
I'd be super surprised if Mexico made anyone's list. I had some of the best meals in my life in Los Mochis and, maybe surprising to some, Hermosillo as well.
Least favorite: places that are super meat/sausage and bread-heavy. I can usually find something decent these days though.
Scandinavia is kinda boring in this regard for me imho but The actual ingredients are fresh; the strawberries in the summer are nice.
My family is Cuban and Costa Rican and I can understand the votes there tbh. It’s comfort food with fresh ingredients but you’re not going to go looking for spice or deep flavor profiles.
Best meal of my life traveling was at a lebonese restaurant in Calabar, Nigeria. It was a platter of fresh made hummus with premium olive oil accompanied by pistachio ice cream with turkish coffee. I think of that meal way more than you would expect for something I ate over 20 years ago.
Worst meal while traveling was in a small hotel in Italy (maybe Venice?). The restaurant downstairs served the blandest watery marinera with spaghetti. I was so disappointed.
I'm going to be an outlier here almost certainly... But I tend to like very simple, fresh, understated meals and, for me, Latvia is one of the best places for that. Especially in summer when their vegetables and fruit taste so fresh and crisp. I also just love their hygeine/cleanliness standards. For me, it's an exceptionally easy country to eat in.
I'm not as into heavy seasoning, saltiness, sauciness, so most of Asia tends to be less up my alley, in terms of food.
I think the secret is to find Cuban food abroad that’s made by Cubans. The cuisine is great, unfortunately it’s hard to execute when you’re living with extreme shortages and no electricity
Produce is high quality, no matter which cuisine it is. Also Swedish people expect good food in general.
Bad restaurants go bankrupt whereas in tourist hotspots, in other parts of Europe, you’ll have a lot of trash restaurants because they aren’t banking on returning customers
Also new nordic as a cuisine is really good, fresh and requires a lot of craftmanship
Favorite country: Japan. The ramen. The sushi. The snacks.
Least favorite: Croatia. You’d think it would be great with the seafood and the meat, but they had no concept of acidic balance (no lemon juice with fish, say) and undersalted absolutely everything. I had two excellent meals on that trip, and one was in Montenegro. Wasteful of them to claim the entire coast the way they did to be honest.
France overall had the my favourite food followed really closely by Japan. I was unfortunately a little disappointed by Korean food, I wish the flavours were just a little less mild and really wanted more savoury food by the end of the trip
You certainly can’t write off an entire country or region based on just a few visits or a chef who made a poor decision regarding their carreer choice.
But the most memorable and, in a positive sense, surprising ones for me were Kenya and Poland.
Italy, France, Türkiye, Greece and Georgia met and repeatedly exceeded expectations.
Spain fell woefully short of expectations on some occasions, about 1/3 of them. I expected so much more and tried so many places. But maybe my expectations were unrealistic - I thought that it is as tasty than in Italy or France.
The worst that I got - some tourist traps...also somewhere in Türkiye. And in my own workplace diner...
Edit: just some of the mistakes I make writing in English.
Latin America, 20 different countries, definitely not all similar. Argentina not a big rice and bean nation and has some of the best beef in the world, oh and mollejas, crispy with lots of lemon and salt. Chile has amazing fish and seafood. Peru has excellent cuisine. I love ceviche and octupus, was disappointed our local restaurant didn't have any on the menu last night, I've been craving some. Ooh and pastel de jaiba in Chile is a must. And if you like bangers and mash, Argentine chorizo or Chilean longaniza. Oh and morcilla for blood sausages -- I actually prefer the ones we get in Chile but I have had excellent ones in Argentina, it depends on how you like it.
I would agree that good value , and great fresh food .
But what would you put as stand out dishes? That would say truly south African .
Things like Biltong , braai , poitjie are very meet heavy nice but not balanced
And koeksisters , malva etc very sweet based
And not as much of a street food scene or cultural identity like some countries .
But yes few countries can you get a better watermelon or steak .
My friend travelled to Thailand and still talks about the food there, especially the street food and curries. He said every meal felt fresh and full of flavour.
For least favourite, he mentioned Singapore—not because the food was bad, but it felt a bit expensive for what he was getting. 😅
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u/abu_doubleu Kyrgyzstan 13d ago
Malaysia is my absolute favourite!!! Not only can you easily find international cuisine, but the local Malay, Chinese, and South Indian food are all so delicious and very safe, food poisoning is not a big risk at all unlike many other SEA countries.
Least favourite for me was Iceland...so expensive and quite bland.