The Best Guides for Foodie Travelers

Learn Culture Through Cuisine

By Kathy Widing

Eating is about immersing yourself in the local culture. Eating involves participating in a local ritual, sometimes a sacred event but most often a necessary human need. And for the traveler looking to taste culture through cuisine, print guidebooks, or eBooks listing restaurants and descriptions of places, are often not everything in this age of the app, reviews, and social media, but they are still a great places to start.

Culture and Cuisine

To be quite honest, some of the best places to get information about local food are either published by country, available online, or shared in online communities. As such, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of fine culinary guidebooks and information published in print, eBooks, and available as apps, via social media communities, or other formats. Many of these books, apps, and communities are either created or curated by locals or by expats who have lived long enough in the host country to have a strong appreciation for the local cuisine. Likewise, articles and photo essays on local foods worldwide on the web provide extensive information about local foods and rituals. We even have a rapidly growing collection of our own articles in our Culinary Travel section.

We are assuming here you are not already abroad, in which case, eating where the locals eat, or following your nose, is usually the wisest option.

Print Guides

The Guide Michelin, updated yearly, has expanded its coverage beyond its core expertise in France, including Paris, Main Cities of Europe, Italy, Spain and Portugal, London, Switzerland and many more. The method of sending anonymous, very experienced tasters has scarcely ever gone wrong for us over the many years of travel. Note that some of the books have only an English introduction to describes the symbols used to describe the quality of the food. You will have to know the language to read the precise descriptions. But the key is always the indication of quality, and no guidebook does it better than them in my experience, which is one reason so many chefs seek the coveted and not easily acquired stars. A legitimate criticism is that it does not cover food worldwide, has a Euro-centric view, and many of the restaurants are not for those on a tight budget.

Joan Peterson has written or published guidebooks and eBooks for the cuisines of Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Morocco, Norway, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Sicily, and Turkey. Her company leads culinary tours to India, Indonesia, Jordan, Morocco, Portugal, Sicily, and Turkey. Visit Eat Smart Guides to order her books and for more information.

Travelers' Tales by Foodies

The late Chef Anthony Bourdain was a veteran of over 30+ years in professional kitchens. He is also a traveler. In A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines, Bourdain weaves his way around the world sampling local delicacies in Japan, Vietnam, Portugal, Russia, Mexico, among many other locations. He recognized the importance food has on drawing people together into communities and preaches immersion travel and respect for local cultures in his own unique style.

Several authors offer wonderful narratives about food and place in the vein of M.F.K. Fisher, one of the first food and travel writers (see especially Long Ago in France: The Years in Dijon). Peter Mayle, Frances Mayes, and Susan Hermann Loomis, to name a few, delightfully recount their transition to a new location in the context of food.

See Mayle's well-known A Year in Provence, an introduction to French country life and wonderful meals and food forages. His book, French Lessons, is subtitled Adventures with Knife, Fork and Corkscrew.

Susan Hermann Loomis charms the reader with her love of France and French cuisine and her eventual move to Normandy, where she renovates a house in a small town. She makes readers feel they are sharing meals with her, more so because she provides such mouth-watering recipes, in her book On Rue Tatin: Living and Cooking in a French Town .

Cooking Schools

Serious chefs, looking for more than a cooking vacation, should consult CulinarySchools.org.

Mastering the Menu

There are many published menu phrase books remaining in print or via eBook which tend to be more country-specific. You can find them online through simple searches of Amazon or the like or by visiting your local bookstore. Print phrase books are a great way to prepare for a culinary tour. But online phrase books and apps are probably the way to go these days for quickest access in the translation of your menu items abroad, absent total fluency. Of course, once abroad you can always ask the restaurant host to explain a dish to you, sometimes resulting in some variations on charades which may prove amusing to all parties concerned! I recall a waiter who hopped like a rabbit when we could not make out a local traditional reference to a dish (yes, I did feel sorry for the rabbit, but "When in Rome"). We shared a good laugh at the lack of communication. In another instance, a dignified Italian waiter at 2-star Michelin restaurant in Bologna mimicked how a particular pasta was made when we said we were not familiar with one of the thousands of variations in a land where everyone has their own unique form, salivating noticeably even as he gestured with his hands in a circular motion.

No matter which approach you choose, preparing for your culinary travels abroad through some research into print publications, or even web searches, is a great way to discover more about the cuisine of a country or region, while recognizing the tight interconnection between food and culture. The research is also part of the necessary preparation to speak enough of the local language to get to know your hosts at eating establishments where the menus are not translated into English — as that is a bad sign when it comes to the quality of the food!

Bon appétit et bon voyage!

KATHY WIDING is author of Cycling in the Netherlands, Belgium & Luxembourg. Her book, Cycling in France, is published by Lonely Planet.