Always Hungry? Our Must Eat Foods From Our Trip Around the World

When we travel, food is a major part of why we visit each and every country or city. During our five month trip all over the world, this theme could not have been more true. The food travel could not have been a bigger part of our trip, it was our trip! We certainly had our ups and downs when it came to food in each country, but check out our list of the best and worst thing we ate in each country we visited!

Want to know exactly what we packed for 5 months abroad in 3 different climates? See our complete packing list here.

Indonesia

Best: Pineapple: Pineapples are sold by peddlers on each and every beach and/or touristy stops, just make sure to barter a bit!

These were sold on nearly every beach we visited and were all so flavorful and delicious. Typically, they were cut up so you could hold it by hand like a lollipop. Due to their incredible popularity and general great taste, the pineapple was often featured in juice form and even in pancakes in most places we stayed for breakfast. What a treat!

Honorable Mention: Fresh Coconuts: Fresh Coconuts are sold by peddlers on each and every beach and/or touristy stops, just make sure to barter a bit!

Exactly what you need on a hot beach or after a volcano trek, refreshing and delicious. Get a straw and a spoon for when you’re done. It is such a cheap and great treat.

Worst:  To be honest, we really did not like the food in Indonesia too much. Maybe we weren’t trying the right things, or maybe we just had bad luck, but we found the food to lack flavor overall. Nothing else really did it for us.

New Zealand

Best: Fleurs Place: 169 Haven St, Moeraki 9482, New Zealand

All of the fresh and local seafood you could imagine. We had five types of fish–blue cod, elephant fish, gurner, monkfish, and orange roughy and every one was delicious. In addition, we had an incredible seafood pot as an appetizer. This gave us everything we wanted from New Zealand food. It was fresh, local, and just downright delicious. There was not a single piece of fish we could declare our favorite because each and every one of them was just as delicious as the last. Just fantastic.

Honorable Mention: Blue Cheese from Whitestone Cheese: 3 Torridge St, Oamaru 9400, New Zealand

Cheese? Really? Yes, really. We happened upon this cheese shop while driving the South Island and it came when we needed a break. We walked in and were just taken completely off-guard. So much delicious cheese in this store. We honestly wanted to get everything but that would have cost more than we could have imagined. We followed the monger—gets me every time—recommendations and had their blue cheese which won the award for BEST CHEESE IN THE WORLD in 2016. Holy hell. This cheese was so smooth, flavorful, and perfect in each and every way.

Worst: Garlic Knots from Sal’s Pizza in Christchurch. After finishing a two-week campervan journey, we were getting pizza and were oh so excited to get garlic knots when we saw that they had them on the menu, then that first bite and just nothingness. Major disappointment for us NYC locals.

Fiji

Best: Farmhouse Cake from Navini Island Resort

Honestly, this may not even be the right name, but this cake, let me tell you about this cake. Homemade by the cook, this cake was a mix of carrot cake and rum cake put together. It was so incredibly soft and delicate yet it had so much flavor at the same time. Cannot go wrong with a homemade dessert but this actually took the cake.

Honorable Mention: Spring rolls from our resort in Navini. These really hit the spot when we needed them! Super crisp and came with a great spicy dipping sauce.

Worst: Fish in Nadi at Traveller’s Beach Resort

You know when sometimes you eat fish and it just does not have flavor? That’s what this was like, so boring and dull. Especially disappointing when you consider there was fresh fish everywhere on this island nation.

Australia

Best: The Tiger pie from Harry’s Cafe in Sydney: Multiple Locations.

This was one of those places we kept walking by and telling ourselves, “I wonder if that is any good”. Being us, we obviously had to go try it. It was a meat pie topped with mushy peas, mashed potatoes, and gravy. A stick to your bones delight and something we would seek out if we go to Sydney again.

Honorable Mention: Gnocchi from 10WILLIAMST: 10 William St, Paddington NSW 2021, Australia

We were craving real Italian food very badly at this point. We’d been in Indonesia and New Zealand and hadn’t had anything passing for Grandma’s red sauce in almost two months. After doing some research, we found an authentic Italian restaurant within walking distance of our hotel. These fluffy little pillows filled our cravings just perfectly.

Worst: We were only passing through for about 36 hours and we were fortunate enough to have no bad experiences food wise here.

Cambodia

Best: Kep Pepper Crab: Kep Fish Market

As Alicia so eloquently wrote in a previous post, this was one of our favorite things we had ever eaten. So much flavor, so much pepper, so much garlic, and so much crab. We will never forget this one.

Honorable Mention: Chive cakes: Found all throughout the country at little food carts.

These were found in little food carts all throughout the country. They are little pieces of dough filled with chives and LOTS of garlic,  then topped with a spicy vinegar that made them taste even better. Street food heaven right here.

Worst: Pizza in Kampot–we had multiple places and both were equally awful.

Ok, we know, we should not have done it to ourselves. But as mentioned before, cravings happen. This was a piece of cardboard with cheese.

Vietnam

Best: Bahn Xiao: Found everywhere in Saigon.

We saw these and thought they were omelets being made in the street. Kind of weird but they smelled good so we thought we’d give it a shot. Turns out, NO eggs in this one! It’s rice flour and turmeric that is made into a crepe like sheet and then filled with shrimp, mung beans, and their sprouts. You then wrap your crepe in lettuce wraps and go for it. So much flavor in every bite, the highlight of our street eats in Vietnam without a doubt.

Honorable Mention: Chocolate Crossaints at JW Marriott Phu Quoc

Staying in a nice resort, the food is usually not the greatest. As I mentioned in our post on our experience on the island, the breakfast was a different animal. That was epitomized by the chocolate croissants. Incredibly fluffy, buttery, and chocolatey, these were absolute heaven. We got one—at least one we are all friends here—every day.

Worst: This wasn’t the worst thing we ate, but the Bahn Mi was so disappointing. I was expecting to eat these every single day, but most of the time, they were just so meh. To be honest, I had better ones on the Upper West Side of NYC than in Saigon.

Thailand

Best: Custard Bun at Hua Seng Hong on Yaowarat Road in Chinatown.

Biting into this thing was absolute heaven on earth. A vanilla and sweet bite that blended so incredibly well with the bun. Besides the pepper crap, this may have been our favorite thing we ate on our entire trip. And we mentioned in our street food tour post, this city had an endless amount of good food, so this is a serious compliment.

Honorable Mention: Khao Soi Noodles in Chiang Mai, Can be found at the Chang Phuak Gate Night Market

Egg noodles combined with chicken, raw onion, and a blend of curry in the broth. So much flavor and then the added crunch of the deep fried noodles as well. A dish unique to Chiang Mai that was absolutely one of our favorites.

Worst: Papaya Salad. Maybe we just don’t get it, but this has always left us wanting for more. The sweet and spicy combo felt neither sweet nor spicy for us.

Germany

Best: All of the traditional German meats and dishes at Augustiner Braustuben: Landsberger Str. 19, 80339 München, Germany

The sausage, meatloaf, spaetzle, and sauerkraut were all so traditional and delicious here. This beer garden is filled with locals and has an unbelievably comfortable atmosphere. If you want a taste of tradition in Munich, this is the beer garden to visit, and the beer is great too!

Honorable Mention: Kebabs at Mustafa’s Gemuse Kebab. Karlspl. 21-24, 80335 München, Germany

You’re expecting another sausage or pretzel here, right? Upset alert! We walked by Mustafa’s twice at two completely different times and saw long lines each time so we were intrigued. We ended up coming in for lunch and were absolutely blown away. Great sauces and fresh ingredients, we loved these.

Worst: Hofbrauhaus

I went to this place in college and thought it was the coolest restaurant I have ever seen. This time around? I could not have been more wrong. Tourist trap, expensive, and the food is just not very good. Avoid, there are so many other great beer gardens in Munich!

Italy

Best Pizza: Pizzeria Di Matteo: Via dei Tribunali, 94, 80138 Napoli NA, Italy

On a street filled with an endless amount of traditional Neapolitan pizza, Di Matteo was our favorite. Served in the traditional folded take away setting–think of the pizza being folded up like a crepe–this pizza was light on cheese but the dough and sauce were absolutely incredible. You think being in Naples the pizza will disappoint, but not here. This was our favorite pizza we have ever eaten.

Best Pasta: Pesto at Sa’ Pesta: Via dei Giustiniani, 16/R, 16123 Genova GE, Italy

This was a dish that was so good, we ordered a second dish after finishing the first one. And to be honest, we were not even a little bit ashamed of it. Genoa is famous for their pesto and this version was by far our favorite. The pesto was so vibrant and green, it stuck to the handmade pasta perfectly. An incredible dish that we still dream about.

Honorable Mention: Cured Meats and fresh cold cuts: EVERYWHERE

This is an obvious one, of course, the Genoa salami, prosciutto di Parma, and mortadella were better in Italy. But I cannot emphasize enough how much better they were. The mortadella sandwich at Tamburini in Bologna was simply mortadella and bread. It may have been one of my favorite sandwiches I have ever had, it was that good! Besides that, we were constantly getting delicious Italian meats in markets and throughout the country, it was absolutely not overstated, these meats were better than you can ever imagine.

Worst: Food in Florence.

Florence is a beautiful city, one of the prettiest in Italy, but this city is completely overrun with tourists. There are an endless amount of study abroad students, and the restaurants know this, so the restaurants are all set up with tourist tasting menus. This results in pasta with no flavor, crummy pizza, and Americanized Italian food. We honestly did not have one dinner worth remembering here.

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