Food Travel: Ten Cities, and the Rule That Makes Them All Survivable
A food trip goes wrong in two ways: by stacking great restaurants until nobody can eat any more, or by missing everything that is eaten standing up. One daily pattern solves both.
Morning, the market. Midday, one real sit-down meal. Afternoon, a tasting: cheese, wine, coffee or mezcal, depending on the city. Evening, the street. One fine-dining meal a day at most, and never two days in a row.
The ten cities, and what sets each apart
| City | What you eat there that exists nowhere else | From Montreal |
|---|---|---|
| San Sebastián | The pintxos circuit, bar to bar, where you serve yourself | Connection via Madrid or Bilbao |
| Tokyo | The eight-seat counter, and the food halls beneath the department stores | Nonstop |
| Lyon | The bouchon, and the legacy of the Mères lyonnaises | Connection via Paris |
| Lima | Market ceviche, and high-altitude cuisine as a tasting menu | Connection. No nonstop service |
| Istanbul | The kahvaltı, a breakfast of fifteen to twenty small bowls lasting two hours | Nonstop |
| Hanoi | The plastic stool at 5 a.m., on the street that serves one dish only | Two connections |
| Mexico City | Mole, and the markets selling edible insects | Nonstop |
| Porto | Francesinha, bacalhau, and port cellars within walking distance of the centre | Nonstop |
| Marrakech | The square that becomes a restaurant at nightfall | Nonstop to Casablanca, then three hours by train |
| Bologna | The sfoglinas rolling pasta by hand behind a shop window | Connection via Rome or Milan |
San Sebastián: the pintxos circuit
Donostia in Basque, one hundred and eighty-six thousand inhabitants, and one of the highest densities of Michelin stars in the world. But that is not the first reason to go.
Pintxos culture works nothing like a meal. From 7 p.m., in the Parte Vieja, you walk into a bar, take a plate, serve yourself from the counter, declare what you took, pay, and move to the next bar. A good circuit covers six to eight bars, fifteen to twenty-five pintxos and three or four glasses of txakoli, the sharp white wine poured from thirty centimetres up to aerate it.
Two addresses worth the detour in the Parte Vieja: A Fuego Negro on calle 31 de Agosto, and Borda Berri on calle Fermin Calbeton, for the veal cheeks and the cod. La Bretxa market in the morning completes the picture, with Idiazabal and Roncal cheeses and Espelette peppers.
Lyon: the bouchons, and the Bocuse record
The Lyon bouchon descends directly from the Mères lyonnaises, the nineteenth-century cooks who fed the silk merchants. You eat pike quenelle in Nantua sauce, tablier de sapeur, salade lyonnaise and pink praline tart.
Daniel et Denise, in the Saint-Jean quarter, is run by Joseph Viola, a Meilleur Ouvrier de France. Café Comptoir Abel on rue Guynemer is among the oldest in the city. Les Halles Paul Bocuse gathers the producers under one roof, and Saturday morning there is a show in itself.
One clarification about L’Auberge du Pont de Collonges, Paul Bocuse’s house: it held three stars for fifty-five years, from 1965 to 2020, which remains the longest run in the guide’s history. It has held two since 2020. The record is real, it is in the past, and articles still writing “three stars since 1965” are six years behind.
Lima: the world capital, literally, in November 2026
Two facts, in order. The current World’s 50 Best Restaurants ranking places Maido, of Mitsuharu Tsumura, first in the world, crowned in 2025. Central, of Virgilio Martínez, held that place in 2023.
And the 2026 ceremony is being held in Lima itself, in November, the first South American edition. A city hosting the world ranking is a city where tables book months ahead.
That said, what makes Lima singular is not eaten in a restaurant. Market ceviche, at Surquillo, is made in three minutes: raw fish, lime juice, red onion, ají amarillo, and the leche de tigre served separately, in a glass, as a hangover cure. Add the four thousand potato varieties and the dozens of corn varieties on the stalls, and you understand where everything else comes from.
One logistical point: there is no nonstop flight between Montreal and Lima. Bogotá, by contrast, is served nonstop and can act as a South American gateway.
Tokyo: the counter, not the guide
Tokyo’s density of starred restaurants has no equal anywhere, but the experience to remember fits around an eight-seat counter, where the chef grills skewers over binchotan charcoal in front of you, without a menu, until you say stop.
Three other experiences justify the trip. Morning sushi at the Tsukiji outer market from 7:30: the wholesale market moved to Toyosu in 2018, but the outer market, the one with the stalls and counters, stayed. The depachika, those department store food basements at Isetan in Shinjuku or Mitsukoshi in Ginza, which are the finest grocery halls on earth. And the neighbourhood izakaya in the evening, where you eat for almost nothing.
One correction about a famous address: Sukiyabashi Jiro was removed from the Michelin Guide in November 2019, not downgraded but excluded, because it no longer accepts reservations from the general public. It is a cultural landmark, not a table anyone will book for you.
Istanbul, Hanoi and Mexico City: the street, seriously
In Istanbul, start with kahvaltı, the Turkish breakfast: fifteen to twenty small bowls, cheeses, olives, jams, menemen, and an hour and a half to two hours to get through it. Then balık ekmek, the grilled fish sandwich sold from boats moored under the Galata bridge. The seventeenth-century Spice Bazaar, for Gaziantep pistachio baklava. And Çiya Sofrası in Kadıköy on the Asian shore, where Musa Dağdeviren serves the cooking of Anatolian regions nobody cooks any more.
In Hanoi, the Old Quarter of thirty-six streets is organized by specialty: the phở street, the bún chả street, the bánh cuốn street. You eat on a plastic stool at five in the morning, and that is when it is best. Phở Gia Truyền on Bát Đàn street serves a broth simmered twenty-four hours and the queue starts at 6. Chả Cá Lã Vọng has served the same single dish since 1871, turmeric fish grilled on a brazier at the table. Egg coffee was invented at Café Giang in 1946, and you still drink it there.
In Mexico City, mole can run to thirty-six ingredients, and the country grows more than two hundred varieties of chilli. The Mercado de San Juan sells chapulines and escamoles to anyone willing to try. Pujol, of Enrique Olvera, serves a mole madre aged in a continuously replenished pot since 2013. And for mezcal, the bars of Coyoacán and Roma Norte work directly with Oaxaca producers.
Porto, Bologna, Marrakech
In Porto, the francesinha is a deliberate provocation, bacalhau is prepared three hundred and sixty-five ways according to the Portuguese, and the Mercado do Bolhão reopened in 2022 after restoration. The port cellars of Vila Nova de Gaia, Taylor’s, Graham’s, Sandeman, are reached on foot from the Dom Luís bridge. Our Portugal guide from Montreal covers the city.
Bologna is called la Grassa, the fat one, and it owns it. Sfoglinas roll pasta by hand behind shop windows, at Sfoglia Rina since 1960. Tamburini, via Caprarie, has traded since 1932. The Mercato delle Erbe brings out white truffles in October and November. And the city’s forty kilometres of porticoes have been UNESCO listed since 2021. Parma and Modena, for ham, parmesan and traditional balsamic vinegar, are less than an hour away.
In Marrakech, Jemaa el-Fna becomes a restaurant from 6 p.m. The rule is simple and infallible: choose the stall where the most Moroccans are eating. At the Rahba Kedima spice souk they will give you the saffron test, Iranian against Moroccan, and sell you a ras el-hanout that sometimes contains twenty-seven spices.
From Montreal
Nonstop: Tokyo, Istanbul, Porto, Lisbon, Casablanca, Rome, Milan, Madrid, Barcelona, Paris and Bogotá. With a connection: San Sebastián, Lyon, Lima, Hanoi, Bologna and Marrakech.
Two natural pairings for a two-week trip: San Sebastián with Bordeaux or Bilbao, and Bologna with Parma and Modena, both doable by train in a day.
To go further: the wine routes from Quebec cover the other half of the subject, and Japan off the beaten path goes beyond Tokyo.
Talk to an advisor
The tables that matter book one to six months ahead, and some do not book at all. Our advisors know which, and through what channel. Call 1-866-628-6241 or write to us.
