Ever wonder which country has the best cuisine in the world? If the popular travel and food website TasteAtlas is to be believed, it's definitely not the United States. The site recently released its 2024/2025 "TasteAtlas Awards," which determines several "100 Best" lists, based on food-related data in its database. This year, the site said it used "477,287 valid ratings for 15,478 foods."
So who got the top spot? That would be Greece. Among the site's top Greek foods, you'll find a variety of pastries, pork dishes, and cheeses. Not surprisingly, Italy came in at the number two spot, followed by Mexico, Spain, and Portugal. Turkey, Indonesia, France, Japan, and China rounded out the top ten. As for the countries with the worst cuisine, you have Albania, Bolivia, Nigeria, Laos, and Nicaragua, or, at least, they took the bottom five spots of the top 100.
If you're wondering if the United States made the list, it did, but it came in at number 13. Among the site's top dishes for American cuisine are South Texas-style barbecue, rib-eye steaks, brisket, frozen custard, filet mignon, jibarito, poke, etouffee, and boiled Maine lobster.
As for the cities with the best food, Italy has six of the top ten spots. Naples, Milan, Bologna, and Florence make up the top four, while Rome comes in at number six and Turin comes in at number nine. Mumbai is number five, Paris is number seven, Vienna is number eight, and Osaka, Japan takes the tenth spot.
New York City came in at number twelve, making it the top American city. New Orleans (20), San Francisco (26), Chicago (29), Philadelphia (30), Los Angeles (39), Boston (48), St. Louis (61) Washington, DC (64), San Antonio (70), Buffalo (76), Austin (81), Houston (85), Honolulu (94), and Charleston (98) were the other American cities on the list. (As a Georgia native and resident, I have to question why more Southern cities aren't on the list. Have they had our food?)
The cities were chosen from a list of 17,073. According to TasteAtlas, "these 100 cities stand out with the highest average ratings for the regional and national dishes most commonly served there."
TasteAtlas also has awards for the "100 Best Food Regions." Again, Italy takes up much of the top 10 with Campania in the top spot. Several states and New England (70) made the list, including New York (49), Texas (57), California (62), Louisiana (69), Hawaii (84), and Florida (95).
The site's awards had several other categories. The three best dishes in the world are Lechona, a Colombian pork dish; Pizza Napoletana from Italy; and Picanha, a cut of beef from Brazil. Central Texas-style barbecue (42), boiled Maine lobster (69), etouffee (79), and Kansas City-style barbecue (98) are some of the American dishes that made the list.
As for the most legendary restaurants, New York's famous Katz's Delicatessen made the top ten, coming in at number eight. Hyman's Seafood in Charleston, S.C. came in at number twelve, and Peter Luger Steak House in Brooklyn came in at number fifteen.
So what do you think? Did TasteAtlas get it right? If not, where in the world is your favorite food? Let us know in the comments.
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