25 Things to Eat Before You Die: the Ultimate Foodie Bucket List
- Megan Gerrard
- Jan 24, 2017
- 6 min read
When travelling, you experience and taste foods that are both traditional and exciting to the taste buds, so if you devour as many memorable dishes on your travels as possible, then this flavoursome bucket list should give you food for thought.
1. Fresh Coconuts, St Lucia
Coconuts' nutrient-rich water is best straight from the fruit itself. On a St Lucia beach (any will do), a few coins will buy you a green-golden orb, freshly cut from a leggy palm. With its top but hacked off, you can pop in a plastic straw and guzzle up the refreshing elixir. Next, use your fingers to scoop out the sweet, gelatinous flesh: a messy yet very satisfying task.
2. Bagels, New York City
There is no bagel like a New York bagel. Though hotly disputed, a New York Expert reckons H&H and Zabars both have good options - best served with vegetable cream cheese.
3. Al Khalas dates, Oman
Dates aren't just a snack in the Middle East: they're fuel. The sweet, juicy dried fruits have sustained local people for centuries, in a land where only the hardiest plants thrive. They're no longer essential for survival today, but they're still one of the cornerstones of Omani culture.
In most homes and hotels you'll be welcomed with tiny cups of bitter coffee and a platter of plump dates - the traditional Omani greeting.
4. Pastel de natas, Portugal
Nowhere does custard tarts (or pastel de natas, as they're called here) quite like Portugal. And perhaps nowhere in Portugal does them as well as Pasteis de Belem in Lisbon, which is why queues for the sweet, rich and perfectly crisp tarts often stretch along the pavement.
5. Aperitivo in Milan, Italy
The Italian city is perhaps the best place to experience aperitivo - the ritual of early evening cocktails furnished with seemingly endless plates of free food. The Bulgari hotel's offering is among the finest. Nuts and olives are the least of it. Go for creamy risottos, mouthwatering burrata and succulent strips of salami washed down with a gin cocktail served in a glass the size of your head.
6. Clam Cakes, US
You haven't lived until you've tried clam cakes (that's chopped clams in a cornmeal-based dough, deep-fried til golden) in Rhode Island - often served with clam chowder on the side. Confusingly, the best version of the latter is the New England style one (with a milky broth), not the Rhode Island style (which has clear broth).
7. Lingonberry juice, Sweden
When you sleep on ice in the Icehotel you're awoken in the morning by a person in a ghostbusters-style uniform ho dispenses a cup of sweet, steaming lingonberry juice from a vat carried on their back. The only way to wake up in the Arctic Circle.
8. Beijing dumplings, China
Dumplings in Beijing come in a vast array of flavours - lamb with carrot, pork and cabbage, or pork with garlic shoots. On every table you'll find a range of condiments to eat them with - vinegar, soy sauce, chilli oil, and raw garlic cloves. These you nibble on while you're waiting, presumably to ensure good health, but effectively to ward off any possible romantic gestures for weeks afterwards.
9. Viennese Sachertorte, Austria
For pudding, you must have a Sachertorte. Freshly made in Vienna, they're wonderfully dense and rich.
10. Sushi and sashimi, Japan
You could nip into one of the many affordable sushi restaurants that envelop Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market, or for a fine-dining take on the experience Sushi Sora in the Mandarin Oriental Tokyo is incredible. The staff here speak English - not something you can take for granted in Tokyo - and are able to provide unusually informative details on the cuts, chef's techniques, etiquette, and so on.
11. Grasshoppers, Mexico
You'll find chapulines - grasshoppers - of all shapes and sizes piled up in the markets of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. They have a satisfying crunch, and are often flavoured with salt, lime or chilli - to boost their rather disappointing lack of flavour.
As the benefits of eating insects is being explored by nutritionists and economists alike, the people of Mexico have been ahead of the curve for centuries. Some say that grasshoppers are the cleanliness of insects, because they never touch the ground - only grasses. Snack on them like crisps in downtown Oaxaca, or wrap 'em up in a taco with cheese, ham and salsa.
12. Ripe figs, Spain
Sweet, sensuous figs are best enjoyed when freshly plucked from the tree, still warm from the afternoon sun. You'll find the finest in southern Spain, or the fig groves of Greece.
13. Full Scottish breakfast, Scotland
In addition to all the best-busting trapping of traditional British fry-up, the scots like to start the day with tatties (potato scones) and a slice of black pudding too. On a particularly dreich morning in the Highlands, a Scottish breakfast is just the trick.
14. Gaufres, France
If you're ever wandering the cobbled streets of Lille's old town, make a beeline for Meert - the oldest patisserie in France, dating back to 1761. Whether you're queuing at the counter or sitting down in its decedent salon, be sure to try the signature gaufres. These 'waffles' bear a resemblance to the Dutch stroopwafles, but filled with creamy Madagascan vanilla. Charles de Gaulle was a fan, so you'll be in good company.
15. Laal maas, India
Laal maas, a fiery Rajasthani goat curry, calls for 45 chillies to a kilo of goat - with a few cloves of garlic, onion and yogurt. The curry is extremely hot but you don't eat it on its own; it's eaten with plain rice or flat breads, yogurt-like raita, chutney and poppadoms.
16. Ceviche, Peru
This medley of raw fish, chilli, raw onion and coriander is tossed with a lime juice spritz. Try it in the street food stalls of surf-lashed Lima, where chef's make delicious work of the South Pacific's seafood bounty.
17. Sichuan hot pot, China.
Chengdu is the heart of Sichuan's fiery cuisine, with dishes swimming in Sichuan peppercorns, the tongue-tingling and fragrant spice that numbs the mouth to set the stage for the region's plentiful chilli peppers. The bubbling hot pot is unmissable - paper-thin slices of lamb or beef and myriad vegetables are thrown into a cauldron of broth simmering in the middle of your table. Recover from the spices in a local teahouse.
18. Tom Yum soup, Thailand
Some of Thailand's spiciest, tangiest tom yum soups can be eaten from roadside stalls. The hot and sour dish can be whipped up in a second by street vendors using fresh lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves and galangal. Other street food treats to try include rice with spicy stir-fried crabmeat and fresh yellow chillies.
19. Alba white truffles, Italy
The best way to sample the world's finest truffles? Freshly grated onto a plate of scrambled eggs, apparently - the perfect foil for the nutty, earthy flavours that truffles are prized for. The rare white Alba truffle is snuffed out by dogs (no pigs here), in the oak and beech forests of the Arno Valley. They sell, for roughly £5 per gram, in Alba's Saturday and Sunday markets throughout October and on the first weekend of November.
20. Pizza in Napoli, Italy
In this city of superlative grub, L'Antica Pizzeria - which serves only tomato sauce or tomato sauce with mozzarella is the best. It puts all imitators to shame.
21. Thuringian sausages, Germany
The sausages of Weimar are no ordinary bangers. Their closely-guarded recipe is hundreds of years old, featuring finely minced meat (pork, beef or veal) with manjoram and garlic. These Thuringian sausages are charred on a bacon-rubbed grill, then stuffed into rolls, doused with mustard, and sold on the streets of Weimar.
22. Empanadas, Argentina
Humble empanadas are a street food favourite throughout South America - a throwback to the 16th-century Spanish conquistadors. These dinky pasties are stuffed with meat, vegetables and cheese, and baked or fried until crispy and golden.
After the lacklustre affairs you'll find across the Andes, Argentina's empanadas are light and tasty - ad their fillings are more adventurous Sweet dessert versions and spicy 'Arabian' styles are particularly tasty - and during Lent, fish versions are popular too.
23. Bunny Chow, South Africa
When Indian immigrants arrived in South Africa in the 1800s, they brought their culinary heritage with them too - which lives on in some of the country's spiciest dishes. No visit to Durban is complete without devouring 'bunny chow' - a simple meat or vegetable curry served up in a hallowed-out loaf of bread. Eaten as street food rather than restaurant fare, it's cheap, simple, and just as messy as you'd imagine.
24. Cawl, Wales
With a recipe that's remained unchanged for centuries, cawl - a brothy stew - is just the kind of restorative fare you need after a day in the Brecons. Lamb (Welsh, of course), potatoes, onions and carrots form the hearty base of this dish - with the sweetness of swede, and an earthy kick from rosemary and thyme.
25. Gelato, Italy
Top-notch ice cream is one of my favourite things about Italy, but where to venture for the best? Our Italy expert recommends Gelato Fantasia in Rome: "There are eight different chocolate flavours alone, plus savoury forays like Gorgonzola. Bur for me nothing beats the salted peanut flavour". But really, you'll be hard-pressed to find bad gelato anywhere in the country - so go forth and find your own superlative scoops.
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