The Top Food Cities For Your Next Vacation

For many people, bookmarking restaurants and bars is a beloved part of trip planning. And if you’re someone who considers dining and drinking an experience more than a necessity, then you may want to plan your entire vacation around destinations with unbelievable fare.

But while viral TikTok videos and skewed restaurant reviews can sometimes lead you astray, there’s one group of people who certainly know where to go: chefs. These experts aren’t just pros at their craft, but they know their way around a menu, whether it’s a fine dining meal, huge food market or a street food cart.

We asked chefs from across the country for their favorite places to travel to for good food (aside from the town where their restaurants are located) that they feel are attainable and affordable. Here’s what they said:

Amanda Shulman, the chef and owner of Philadelphia’s Her Place Supper Club and co-owner of Philadelphia’s My Loup, recently returned from her honeymoon in Thailand where she said the food was incredible.

She recommended “any single street food cart that serves plump Thai pork sausages stuffed with vermicelli noodles — a sour fermented pork sausage, grilled over charcoal until it is swollen and glistening, nearly popping out of its casing.”

“Fatty and tangy and incredible, I grabbed them whenever I could,” Shulman said.

“In Chiang Mai, there’s a roadside restaurant called Neng’s Earthen Jar Roast Pork filled with clay barrels rendering fat pork bellies until the skins are shatteringly crisp,” Shulman continued.

In Northern Thailand, laarb, which is “finely minced pork dressed in fish sauce, chilis, herbs and rice powder,” and khao soi, a rich curry noodle soup, are mainstays on many menus. Shulman recommended Aroon Rai, a small restaurant in Chiang Mai for these items.

In Bangkok, Shulman said “Sorn was one of the best fine dining experiences I’ve ever had. Every bite was unabashedly delicious, the technique was evident and tight, and I’ll be dreaming of swiping warm roti into beef curry maybe forever.”

“The modern London dining scene is, I think, the most exciting dining scene anywhere in the world,” said Ed Szymanski, the chef and owner of Dame and Lord’s in New York City.

London has restaurants that feature high-quality produce coming from France, Spain and Italy, as well as seafood from the northern parts of the U.K. “All of these things come together to create this very diverse dining…