how to find the best food when travelling

Food is an essential part of any trip or journey.

Regardless of your travels’ purpose or budget, finding good food in foreign countries can sometimes be challenging.  See our tips for how to find the best food when travelling.

7 Tips: How to Find the Best Food when Travelling

1)  Do your research before you go

Our eating habits and types of food we enjoy are common practices to us, however, they can be very different from other countries. Before you go, make sure to read about the food and cultures in the country you’re visiting.

You might find that the type of dishes served in the country and when and where to eat might not be what you are used to at home.

For example in Australia, lunch is often eaten in a café and many cafes close at 4 pm, so it’s often hard to find the kitchen still serving food or coffee after 4 pm.

In Spain, you won’t eat dinner before 8 pm as most places don’t open until late. When dining in the USA, remember that a 15-25% tip is expected on top of the total bill.

In Thailand, the whole country eats on its streets because it’s very affordable and the food is fantastic. For this reason, cooking in the home in this country is uncommon.

Don’t miss our other 26 handy tips for travel in Thailand.

RELATED POST- Top 5 Best Street Foods in Asia

It’s worth noting that if visiting the Middle East during Ramadan, be aware that most food places will be closed during daylight hours.

how to find the best food when travelling
Thai street food – Cost $1.20, tastes amazing!

2)  Ask a local for a recommendation

One of the best ways to find great local food in any destination is to ask someone who lives there. Simply ask a taxi driver or your receptionist for a recommendation.

If you’re after a local flavour, ask them to suggest where they would eat as sometimes a receptionist might point you to a fancy restaurant instead of the simple canteen where they get their lunch.

how to find the best food when travelling
Eating some affordable, amazing pizza (Joe’s Pizza place in Greenwich Village, NYC). How to find the best food when travelling? Join a food tour!

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3)  Don’t be afraid of the menu in a different language

Don’t speak the language? No problem. Many restaurants might have an English menu or the wait staff can translate for you. If this isn’t the case, Google Translate can help. Download the App to your phone at home and then choose the language pack of the country you are going to visit (ie. Italian) and download it for offline use.

When in a restaurant you can simply type a sentence to translate: “ Can I please order the most popular dish?” or “What would you recommend?”

You can also hover over the menu with the camera feature and it will translate the menu on your screen, it’s amazing.

Now you’re multilingual! If you don’t have a smartphone, simply point at another diner’s dish to order the same.

Some of the best dishes I’ve eaten in Vietnam and China (but I couldn’t stomach many that are on my 10 most bizarre foods in China post) were ordered this way.

RELATED POST – The Best Travel Websites to Save Money

4)  Go to the local market

You will find fresh produce and usually find cheap and tasty meals nearby.

There is nothing quite like going to the local market. Not only is it a great way to interact with locals, but you will get to see the fresh seasonal produce that you should be eating.

Fresh tomatoes and porcini mushrooms in Italy, tropical fruits in Thailand, the best tuna in the world in Japan or fresh fish in Greece, among other amazing Greek foods.

You can usually find some local food vendors near markets… hello, deep-fried langos in Hungary or chicken kebab in Turkey.

Some of the 8 foods worth travelling to Europe for are street food classics!

how to find the best food when travelling
Food at the markets – Uzbekistan

5)  If there is a queue for food – join it!

If you see locals lining up for food somewhere – join them, it’s always good.

Food places that are always busy are for a reason. So if it’s popular with locals, it will be good.

RELATED POST – The Ultimate Food Map of Asia

6)  Research food bloggers online to see their recommendations.

Turn to the experts when learning how to find the best food when travelling. Bloggers and foodie influencers write about where to find the best coffee, sandwich or cocktails in many destinations. It’s a good source of information.

In the new area of the Internet, getting some hot tips online is a great strategy.

You will find websites dedicated to food everywhere. Every destination will have some food bloggers whose passion is eating and sharing their experiences.

To find them, search for something similar to ‘best places to eat in Athens‘ or ‘best cheap eats in Cairns‘. We use searches like’ best food in New York City‘ or ‘ where is the best coffee in Stockholm?

Most blogs are written in English, but if you are not fluent, simply translate them with google translate and note down the name and addresses.

We always use this trick when researching how to find the best food when travelling. More often than not, it always works really well.

7)  Use Google Maps to mark food places to avoid tourist traps

I like to use my google maps for orientation when in a foreign city. You can also save places on your map (you need to have a Gmail account to log in) which is very helpful.

Let’s say you are visiting Bratislava for the first time, I’d research the places and dishes online as mentioned above and then search for them on my google maps.

You can then click on the name of the bistro or restaurant and hit the save button – you can add it to your favourites or places you go.

By the way, we found the best restaurants in Bratislava, and here they are.

I usually add some places for lunch, dnner or coffee and might even look for a supermarket. This means that if I then visit the old town I won’t just walk into the first restaurant on the main square to have an overpriced, average meal.

If you see a restaurant with signs or menus with the words ‘traditional’ or ‘original’ cuisine, then my advice is to skip it.

The meal will likely be average and you’ll be paying tourist prices of up to four times the price. Many restaurants that do this are only catering to hordes of tourists who they can bet will never be visiting again. Not worth it at all.

I’ll follow directions to the place I’ve already saved on my map to find great food in a local place that is likely to be full of locals eating great food. Win!

Google maps is an amazing tool for showing you how to find the best food when travelling the world.

how to find the best food when travelling
If you’ve done a little research and you’re prepared, you can always eat great food at low costs

Bonus Tip

Try new flavours and combinations! They might sound strange but they usually work. As eating rice, chicken and cherry compote might sound strange to someone who is not from Slovakia, some dishes you come across might not sound appealing to you either.

Our bonus tip for how to find the best food when travelling is to consider joining a food tour in great foodie cities. We do this all the time and it’s awesome!

We like to search on Get Your Guide or Viator for the best range of food tours.

Either way, I recommend that you try them and you may be pleasantly surprised. Here are some strange combos from around the world that seem to work:

Have you tried any of the above food combos? What are your best tips for how to find the best food when travelling?  Please share them with us below.

Travel Tips

You may be interested to read our 15 best travel tips from visiting every country in the world. We’re all about sharing our advice on how to save money to travel and our list of 20 Jobs that PAY YOU to travel the world. And yes, we’ve done many of them just to keep living the travel lifestyle.

Making the decision to become International Housesitters gave us the opportunity for lots of FREE accommodation around the world (which continues to save us so much money).

It’s such a clever idea and just perfect for travellers to travel longer. If you’d like to try it, you can join Trusted Housesitters with our personal invitation and receive a massive 25% off your membership!

Many people combine housesitting with Teaching English Overseas, it’s the best job to earn money to travel.

For our advice on the best travel websites, gear and products we love to use on the road, check out our Travel Resources Page.

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