Best food tours around the world

by voyazor
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Feast your eyes on these foodie walking tours, which reveal the flavours – and culture – of cities from Lisbon to Lima, Havana to Hanoi

Lisbon

Lisbon Penalva Da Graca

A single espresso first thing on an empty stomach is the secret to a long and healthy life. So says 93-year-old Carlos Pina, whose father founded coffee roastery Negrita in 1924 and who still works there. One of only two roasteries left in Lisbon, Negrita is in a former stables in the Graça neighbourhood and has survived because the family own the building: elsewhere across the city rising rents are forcing decades-old businesses to close.

Graça and neighbouring Mouraria are still home to families who shop in local stores, making the two neighbourhoods ideal for Culinary Backstreets: its food tours aim to give visitors an insight into the city’s history and culture. After breathing in the scent of coffee and roasted spices at Negrita, the tour takes in a traditional cerveceria for plates of clams, velvet crab and prego (steak sandwich). Then there’s a shot of cherry liqueur at a local corner store and a takeaway grilled chicken eaten in the no-nonsense bar of a neighbourhood association – another fast-disappearing feature of old Lisbon.

A contrast to these insights into old Lisbon is tiny A Taberna do Mar, which opened in 2018 opposite the church and convent of Graça. Here chef-owner Filipe Rodrigues combines his love of Japanese techniques, Portuguese produce and a passion for sustainability to create inventive dishes. Try samples of horse mackerel bone broth and smoked sashimi of yellow fin tuna. Even the pudding, based on traditional egg custard, has a hint of sardine. At €25 the 10-course tasting menu is a bargain and worth booking if you have another night in the city.

Naples

Naples, Italy.

Despite its history and culinary traditions, an outdated reputation keeps Naples off some travellers’ Italian itineraries. Yet, Culinary Backstreets’ tour – one of the newest among the company’s global offerings – illustrates just how much there is to discover in this hypnotic city. The tour begins outside the old city walls in Porta Capuana with a mid-morning espresso, rum baba and sweet, ricotta-filled sfogliatelle. Next up is a third-generation baccaleria for samples of salt cod, a “healing” glass of sulphuric water from Vesuvius, and a bruschetta-like snack in the city’s last traditional friselle bakery. The 10 stops on the five-hour tour offer much more than quick bites and photo-ops. The guides have fostered relationships with the bakers, vendors, and cooks who make this food scene unique, and this allows rare peeks into bakers’ ovens and chats with artisans. A stroll among the buzzing stalls of a local market highlights a slice of Naples in an area many visitors are unlikely to see. The tour also hits the “must-sees” – perfect for those on a tight schedule who don’t want to miss tasting a Sorbillo pizza or a shot of limoncello.

Shanghai

Morning star … first stop on Untour’s breakfast tour.
 Morning star … first stop on Untour’s breakfast tour.

Untour’s street eats breakfast tour starts with a tasting of three of Shanghai’s four most popular breakfast foods, collectively known as the “four heavenly kings”. There are crispy, oily, fried youtiao doughnuts, which are dipped into a freshly made sweetened soy milk that also helps wash down a dense cifantuan rice ball. This stodgy-and-satisfying Shanghainese dish combines white and red sticky rice, stuffed with salted duck egg and tart mustard pickles. These are enjoyed at Xiangcai Renjia, a Hunan-style restaurant that, in the morning, doubles as a breakfast joint, making use of the free seating to serve food made by the owners of the food stall next door.

Next, the tour moves to the Xiangyang Road area of the Former French Concession, where visitors can sample pancakes, steamed buns and dumplings, all served from tiny holes in the wall. The classic jianbing, or Chinese crepe, is a fitting substitute for the sesame pancake that is traditionally the fourth “heavenly” breakfast item. Jianbing, which is best enjoyed straight off the griddle folded around egg, fried wonton skin, pickles and spicy sauce, can be traced back 2,000 years to north-east China but is now popular across the country as an on-the-go breakfast.

Elsewhere, in a tiny sit-down place next door to the jianbing stall, there are rich and flavoursome pork-filled soup dumplings, served in a traditional bamboo steamer. Of course, breakfast in a city as cosmopolitan as Shanghai isn’t all about tradition: trendy coffee shops also serve western-style choices with Chinese characteristics. At Egg, a cafe on nearby Xiangyang North Road, taste the brownie topped with peanut and numbing Sichuan peppercorns for a tingly, sweet contrast to the morning’s savoury carb feast.

Bangkok

Bangkok Chili Paste Tour

Skip the gloopy stir-fried noodles on the tourist-trap of Khao San Road and explore the intricacies of Thai cuisine with Chili Paste Tour’s Chin Chongtong, a charismatic guide who has called Bangkok home for more than 15 years. Her Chili Paste day tours through Banglamphu, an especially atmospheric neighbourhood in Bangkok, include a street-food breakfast in an alleyway lined with historic shophouses, a stop for young coconut ice-cream from a vendor that has been making it for more than seven decades, lunch with a chef who pounds all of her curry pastes by hand, and a foray into Pak Khlong Talad, Bangkok’s flower market. Meanwhile, the Thonburi Food & Art Walk ventures further off the beaten track to the side of the Chao Phraya River where few travellers go. Sample traditional Thai sweets at a shop that has been making them for 80 years and delicacies such as fried snakehead fish at Wang Lang Market.

 

Mumbai

Mumbai No Footprints tour.
 Ice-cream stall, Mumbai

No Footprints Mumbai’s Khau Gully (street food walk) offers a condensed taste of the city’s street food, starting with the ubiquitous vada pao at the Aram vada pao stall at the grand CST railway station – serving spiced, mashed potato fritter, deep-fried, then pressed into pao (white bread) painted with chutney. A short saunter across is Mumbai’s oldest surviving eatery, Pancham Puriwala, a magnet for migrant labourers drawn to its fluffy puris and gravied potatoes.

In cacophonous Crawford Market, a five-minute walk away, is Badshah, serving its falooda (a colourful jumble of ice-cream, vermicelli noodles, jelly, rose syrup, nuts and basil seeds), the perfect cold drink for sun-charred Mumbai. Nearby is Kyani &Co, Mumbai’s oldest Irani cafe, specialising in all manner of meaty Parsi comestibles from masala-flecked mince to chicken patties to mutton cheese omelettes. Then onwards to Parsi Dairy Farm on Princess Street, purveyors of creamy kulfi (a sort of ice-cream made by simmering creamy milk for hours) and ghee-drenched sweetmeats.

On Chowpatty beach, honeycombed with food shacks, taste pao bhaji: mashed vegetables in a bath of butter, and bhel (potatoes, onions, puri, puffed rice, with a wash of sweet-sour and spicy chutneys), and a dusting of sev (hair-thin strands of fried chickpea flour) on top. Those more stern of stomach can visit the nearby restaurant Soam for the same dishes in more salubrious, air-conditioned environs. Then to the Babulnath dosa vendor for cheese-slicked dosa and spring “Chinese” dosa, the latter stuffed with capsicum, carrots, and skewered with soy and spicy schezwan sauce. The tour ends across the road at Dave Farsan Mart, home to superb vegetarian Gujarati snacks.

Tokyo

Sangenjaya, Tokyo

Sangenjaya – known locally as Sancha – developed three centuries ago in Japan’s Edo period, and is named after the three teahouses that provided refreshment to pilgrims heading to the Grand Shrines of Ise. Today, little of that history remains but it has become known for its maze of narrow alleys, home to squat postwar buildings and the tiny restaurants, bars and cafes they contain.

The night-time tour by Tokyo Memories through the neighbourhood is led by Simon Berry, an Englishman who’s lived in Sangenjaya for the last decade. Berry guide guests through a couple of favourites: Takomasu, a street-side takoyaki (fried octopus ball) stall that sells takoyaki “sandwiches”; Ogata, where guests make monjayaki, a cabbage-filled pancake.

Then it’s into the alleys, to Omasu, a kushikatsu restaurant owned by baseball fanatic Yoshi-san (kushikatsu is deep fried skewers of meat and vegetables). It’s easy to get lost in these alleys but Berry navigates them confidently to Kiura, a sake bar behind a sliding door disguised as a shop’s back wall. After the oil-heavy kushikatsu, it’s a welcome change and a strong finish to the tour. The sake is refreshingly light and the food menu stretches from sashimi to a plate of lightly boiled, garlic-covered edamame.

 

Hanoi

Hanoi Street Food Tours

Once you love Vietnam, you’ll love its food forever, too. Aussie expat Mark Lowerson has loved it for 17 years and, along with partner Vang Cong Tu, navigates plastic-stool eating around town as Hanoi Street Food Tours. Mark explains colour and texture in Vietnamese food, talks of Chinese, French, and American influence on the country’s cuisine, and walks foodies through a wet market glistening with fish, and decodes the food offerings at temples while ambling through holy grounds. After bánh đa cá (soup made with tea-coloured noodles from Haiphong), and bánh cuốn (minced pork and wood-ear mushrooms in rice crepes, sprinkled with fried shallots) dipped in a sauce that balances salt, sweet, spice and sour flavours using ingredients such as chilli and kalamansi, the balance tips towards sweet. Take coffee in a tiny cafe where the floor is littered with pumpkin seed shells, and tuck into heavenly soft and chewy black fermented sticky rice with frozen yoghurt

 

Mexico City

Mexico City El Taco Club

This city of eternal spring almost never sees a day without sun, so what better way to take a taco tour than by bicycle. El Taco Club leads small groups (up to 10) through the parks, art-deco buildings and colourful markets of the city’s chic Roma, Condesa and Polanco neighbourhoods to find delicious tacos at hole-in- the-wall taquerias and street stands.

The tour, which varies according to season and day of the week, might include a restaurant where patrons are serenaded by strolling musicians, offering a speciality of central Mexico, barbacoa, which is tender mutton wrapped in agave leaves and roasted in its own juices in an outdoor pit. Or a market stall serving cochinita pibil: slow-cooked suckling pig from the Yucatan marinated in a crimson chilli and achiote paste. A small street stand prepares brisket, tender enough to make any grandmother proud. And simple tacos done with tortillas made of fast disappearing heirloom varieties of corn and organic, locally grown avocados can be sampled at star chef Enrique Olvera’s Molino el Pujol. A visit to a traditional cantina is included to top the journey with a beer or mezcal.

 

Havana

Havana, Cuba.

Taste for sugar in Cuba – a nation once rich from selling the sweet stuff – is embedded in the locals’ DNA. From ice-cream to milkshakes, churros and coconut delicacies to coffee sunk with teaspoons of crystals, and cakes fashioned in neon meringue, embrace the island’s candy choices. Irish-born Cubaphile Tanja Buwalda moved to Havana 10 years ago after running a restaurant in Cork. Starting a food blog to recount her travels and Cuban food experiences, she now runs food tours explaining how and where food comes from in Cuba, dual-currency hacks, how private front-room restaurants (paladares) source ingredients, and Cuba’s organic food revolution.

With Tanja, you’ll learn as much about Cuba’s contemporary food issues as you will about what the locals snack on. Try coffee from Habaneros’ windows – an espresso will cost 3p and will probably be dredged in sugar for Cuban tastes – slurp intense guarapo (sugarcane juice), and hunt for the best cookies, and creamy mamey milkshakes, across the city. While cruising around, admire the wedding-cake architecture built during the 20th-century sugar boom and sate savoury cravings as Tanja introduces you to her favourite hamburger joint.

Lima

Freddy Alarcón offering a few tips on how to make a great ceviche at the back of his food truck La Combi Roja in Callao, Peru.
 Freddy Alarcón offering a few tips on how to make a great ceviche at the back of his food truck La Combi Roja in Callao, Peru. Photograph: Paola Ugaz

If you are looking for a way to make an already exciting food scene even more edgy try the Ruta del Callao gastro tour. Callao is Lima’s port, and has its own flavour (musically it prefers salsa to cumbía) and though it has some of the city’s most crime-ridden neighbourhoods – it also has some of its most lip-smacking seafood. Callao is one of the best spots on Peru’s 2,414km coastline to eat ceviche, and Freddy Alarcón’s Combi Roja (red van) is one of the places to try Peru’s flagship dish. Freddy has been cooking on wheels for more than 30 years. With ready smile he can prepare a hake ceviche at lightning speed and diners can sit and eat in the specially adapted van on fake leather seats.

Next stop is El Colorao de Chucuito, run by Andrés Angeles, a former merchant marine who has created 20 of his own dishes. His specialities are muchame de atún, layers of dried tuna fish served with avocado and olive oil, and swordfish in sea snail sauce. In Callao all roads lead to La Punta, a peninsula that juts out into the Pacific, lined with pastel-hued art-deco homes. At its end is Don Giuseppe’s eponymous eatery, owned by an older Genoa-born seaman who met his love on the Peruvian coast and decided to stay. His restaurant is famous for its pan con pejerrey, a crispy fried fish sandwich. Returning from the furthest point of the tour stop off at Kala Tanta, a bakery run by social entrepreneurs Andrés Ugaz and Gaby Wuest who created the tour. Learn to make bread and see how promoting Callao’s gastronomy is tackling crime and youth unemployment.

 

Bogotá

Bogota

“This is where Bogotá’s top chefs come shopping,” says Foodies Colombia guide and chef Juliana Salazar, browsing Paloquemao market’s stalls for fruity tropical bounties such as guanábana (soursop), feijoa, pitahaya (dragonfruit) and lulo piled up in perfect pyramids. Colombians have started appreciating the natural bounty of the world’s second-most biodiverse country and flock to the city’s best-stocked mercado.

Street-food kiosks serving local dishes have also grown in popularity and, besides trying a rainbow assortment of sweet natural treats at the Fruti Fruti stand, Juliana gives the lowdown on dishes made by Paloquemao’s finest purveyors. Doña Aurora’s chicken and “meat” tamal tolimense (from Tolima) is described as great hangover fodder, while warm cheesy pandebono rolls and avena (a chilled oatmeal and vanilla drink) are breakfast staples at Pandebonitos de la virgen. Paloquemao’s street-food queen, however, is Doña Rosalba; on Sundays, she sells 2,000 portions of lechona, slow-cooked pork with dried peas and rice that are mixed back into the hog and served with crackling and a white corn arepa. Leave room to sample one last dish – traditional chicken and three-potato Colombian soup ajiaco – finishing the four-hour eating tour totally sated.

 

Buenos Aires

Parrilla food tour, Buenos Aires

“Asado means uniting: I’d never eat barbecue on my own because it celebrates family and friends,” says Parrilla Tour guide Antonella Saragó at the first of four restaurant stops. Besides pushing waistline boundaries with abundant servings of meat, this three-hour walking tour also opens the doors to unexpected Buenos Aires corners, revealing low-profile but authentic bodegones (taverns) and steakhouses in Palermo and San Telmo.

The first mouthful is legendary Argentine hot sausage sandwich choripán, taken at 120-year-old La Cañita, a former store dating back to when sugar cane grew in this neighbourhood. Unusually, La Cañita’s chori is made from beef rather than pork and homemade chimichurri sauce is the standard topping. Next is pizzeria La Guitarrita (though it also serves empanadas). Here, hand-cut whole-knuckle beef pasties win out over pies, paired with fragrant Torrontés white wine.

The real parrilla deal is revealed at stop three. The sign on this secret spot’s door says “cerrado” (closed) but Antonella knows better. Here, asador Albertito Odetti tends to slabs of Argentina’s prized beef, grill hood decorated with swirly fileteado letters. It’s a legit hole in the wall, with star dishes scrawled on A4 and stuck to windows; there’s puffy provoleta (cheese), hand-cut chips, malbec and a token salad, which are worthy companions to 800g of medium-rare bife de chorizo and entraña (to share). It all concludes with dulce de leche ice-cream at Persicco.

What do you think? Which city is missing?

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