For the meals lover, a go to to any metropolis is an invite to eat—and eat, and eat. What makes cities such unbelievable eating locations is that they’re, by nature, dense: with individuals, with tradition, with historical past, and with meals.

Metropolis life is commonly disconnected from agriculture, which could counsel worse meals, however in actuality, it typically means higher. City dwellers want fast lunches, comforting dinners, and the whole lot in between. The demand feeds an trade of eating places, market stalls, bakeries, and road carts that thrive on quantity, competitors, and creativity.

Cities are additionally crossroads. They rise on ports, alongside rivers, rail strains, and commerce routes. Their meals are among the many most rapid and scrumptious gateways to understanding their histories and the various completely different individuals who have handed by means of or settled down in them. Because of this, every metropolis has its personal distinct gastronomic fingerprint—encoded into its distinctive sample are the influences of rulers and the wealthy, of staff and the poor, of diasporic communities and non secular teams.

All of this makes cities among the most fun—and overwhelming—locations to eat. Lots of cities have so many locations to eat that you may dedicate a lifetime to making an attempt a brand new one each single day and nonetheless not go to all of them earlier than you die. So once you’re going for only a week, the place do you begin?

That is the place we are available in.

At Critical Eats, we’ve lengthy labored with a world community of culinary specialists—writers, cooks, and researchers who reside and breathe the meals of their house cities. They’re those we e-mail earlier than we journey. They know the place to go, what to eat, and why it issues.

In our International Eats collection, we’re sharing that insider data with you, together with recipes you’ll be able to prepare dinner earlier than you go, whilst you’re there (if you happen to’ve obtained a kitchen), and after you come back house. Whether or not you’re prepping for a visit or simply hungry for inspiration, this collection is designed to get you nearer to the cities you’re enthusiastic about, one plate at a time.

That is the second installment of International Eats. In our first, we lined London, Paris, Cairo, Bangkok, Taipei, Buenos Aires, and Mumbai. This time, we’re taking you to seven extra cities with distinct culinary identities: Kingston, Rome, Marrakesh, Kuala Lumpur, Santiago, San Juan, and Hong Kong. Consider it as your final dining-out hook-up—a traveler’s crib sheet from the individuals who know these meals scenes finest.

Hong Kong is a shimmering metropolis also known as “Asia’s World Metropolis” and the “Gateway to China.” It is the place East meets West, and each twist and switch presents a possibility for meals. The town is full of cha chaan tengs (Hong Kong–type cafés), dai pai dongs (outside hawker stalls), road carts, and eateries dispensing native specialties, resembling congee and clay-pot rice.

Your information to Hong Kong is Critical Eats senior editor Genevieve Yam, who grew up within the metropolis in the course of the Nineties, when it was quickly altering. Now primarily based within the U.S., Genevieve regularly travels to Hong Kong to go to household and eat, eat, eat. Sizzling off of her most up-to-date journey to town, she’s sharing a few of her favourite eateries for brothy noodles, dumplings, French toast, pork chop sandwiches, seafood, and a lot extra. Contained in the information, you will additionally discover Critical Eats recipes for a lot of of Hong Kong’s most iconic dishes, so you’ll be able to maintain consuming like a Hong Kong native once you return house.

Far too many People who go to Jamaica stray no additional than the buffets and lodge eating places they frequent between sunbathing periods at their gated, all-inclusive resorts. However for any meals lover, that is an enormous mistake. Step away from the resorts, and you will find a vibrant, ever-evolving meals tradition that’s a mélange of the island’s African, British, Spanish, and Taino cultures, spiced up with contributions from Portuguese Jews, French Huguenots, Syrians, Lebanese, Germans, Scots, and Irish immigrants—all constructed upon Jamaica’s agricultural bounty and entry to each reef- and deep-sea fishing. 

Guests from the U.S.—the place eating out is the norm—are sometimes shocked by how few sit-down eating places exist exterior Jamaica’s resorts. However unbelievable meals is all over the place, if you understand the place to look. That’s the place our guides are available in: sisters Michelle and Suzanne Rousseau, acclaimed Jamaican cookbook authors, caterers, and meals TV personalities. They’re sharing their favourite spots for jerk pork (sure, it’s extra widespread than rooster), pan rooster, beef patties sizzling from the oven, cornmeal porridge, ackee, and extra native specialties. Contained in the information, you’ll additionally discover recipes for iconic Jamaican dishes you can also make at house—those beneath are only a style. Oh, and if you happen to don’t already know what it means to lime, you’ll quickly.

Critical Eats contributor Alia Ali compares Malaysia’s capital metropolis of Kuala Lumpur to a center youngster: “There’s one thing form of like desirous to show herself, however she additionally does not understand she’s already cool,” she says. “We’re surrounded by locations which can be extra widespread and touristy, like Thailand and Singapore, Indonesia and Vietnam. Individuals are like, ‘The place is Malaysia?’”

However Kuala Lumpur has a lot to supply meals lovers, particularly a culinary scene that displays town’s variety, and isn’t a lot a melting pot as it’s an all-you-can-eat buffet, with mouth-puckering fish soups, aromatic rice dishes, wealthy curries, and an abundance of the sweet-and-savory finger snacks often known as kuih. Ali is a local Malaysian and chef who’s contributed greater than a dozen recipes to Critical Eats, and she or he is aware of Kuala Lumpur inside and outside. She is our information to the “Muddy Confluence” (town identify’s literal which means in Malay) and along with her picks for the place to eat in KL, you will discover her recipes for making lots of Malaysia’s most scrumptious dishes at house contained in the information.

Ringed by pinkish, millennium-old partitions that give it its nickname, “the Crimson Metropolis,” Marrakesh is a metropolis that is “deeply rooted in Berber historical past with Arab and Andalusian influences, a mix of the Atlantic coast, the Mediterranean, the desert, and the Atlas mountains,” says chef, cookbook writer, Critical Eats contributor, and your information to Marrakesh, Nargisse Benkabbou. “Nevertheless it’s additionally a metropolis that’s at all times trying ahead—an overload of colours and sounds and smells the place historic historical past coexists with fashionable life, like with the traditional souks which have been widened to accommodate larger crowds.”

The town’s meals displays this coexistence of historic historical past and fashionable life, and you will find completely different eating places serving conventional takes and up to date spins on tagines, harira soups wealthy with the aromas of stewing tomatoes, turmeric, and cinnamon, and glistening lamb kefta. A local Moroccan and restaurant proprietor, Benkabbou really is aware of the meals scene of Marrakesh. She’s additionally the writer of an internationally acclaimed cookbook on Moroccan delicacies, and inside this information you will discover lots of her recipes for bringing a style of Marrakesh house.

Rome is among the few cities on the earth which have a definite delicacies that stands by itself. “What number of cities might assist dozens of cookbooks devoted to their native dishes alone? Rome is one in every of them,” says Critical Eats editorial director Daniel Gritzer. Suffice it to say, the variety of great issues to eat in Rome is nearly limitless—classics resembling Roman-style artichokes, pasta alla gricia, amatriciana, carbonara, pizza al taglio, and gelati, for starters. However whereas many in Rome are staunch delicacies traditionalists, there are additionally modern cooks, turning out spins on classics and including complete new meals to the canon. 

That will help you ever-so-slightly slender down the listing of must-eat meals at must-go spots in Rome, we tapped specialists Peter Barrett, the writer of the Issues on Bread Substack and a Roman resident for 2 years, and Sara Levi, a local Roman and chef on the Rome Sustainable Meals Challenge on the American Academy at Rome, to share their perception into what—and the place—to eat within the Capital of the World. Our information additionally contains recipes for these aforementioned classics, and plenty of extra Roman dishes, so you are able to do as a Roman does even once you’re not in Rome.

San Juan has lengthy served because the capital of Puerto Rico, not solely in political phrases but additionally because the island’s culinary and cultural coronary heart. Its meals displays a mix of Taino, Spanish Criollo, and African traditions. Virtually any Puerto Rican will inform you {that a} journey to San Juan would not be full with out mofongo—tender plantains, crunchy pork cracklings, punchy garlic, and a savory broth, all mashed collectively to make this beloved Puerto Rican dish—however there are many different can’t-miss dishes, together with lechon, pernil, a wealth of seafood, and crispy twice-fried tostones.

Your guides to eating in San Juan are Critical Eats contributor and cookbook writer Reina Gascón-López and chef and meals entrepreneur Manolo López, who was born and raised in Puerto Rico and now lives in New York Metropolis. On this information, they discuss what makes Puerto Rican meals so particular, what to eat if you happen to’re not already accustomed to the delicacies, and the place to get the very best representations of these dishes in and close to San Juan. The information additionally contains recipes from Gascón-López to make a number of Puerto Rican classics so you’ll be able to higher perceive how the flavour is constructed from the bottom up (trace: the sofrito is vital).

Apologies to Critical Eats’ home-base of New York Metropolis, however if you wish to eat the very best sizzling canine of your life, you want to fly to Santiago and get your arms on completos—oversize sizzling canine generously heaped with sauerkraut, diced tomatoes, mashed avocado, mayonnaise, and extra. In fact there’s way more to eat in Chile’s capital metropolis than loaded franks, together with hearty charquicán, empanadas, and platters overflowing with sufficient briny oysters to make your eyes come out of your head.

Santiago, which sits halfway from north to south, is the place the whole lot within the nation flows to, a minimum of food-wise, making for a “very wealthy and really vibrant meals tradition,” within the phrases of Isidora Díaz. Díaz is a Critical Eats contributor and recipe developer, cookbook writer, the director of the Chilean meals and wine journal Revista Fondo, and your information to the best way to eat like an area in Santiago. Our information additionally contains recipes for among the iconic dishes you will discover in Santiago, together with—sure—Díaz’s recipe for making completos at house, full with the sog-resistant do-it-yourself buns you will must include a complete avocado and all these different toppings.