The Best Travel Destinations for Food Lovers (2026)

Kanazawa sits on Japan's Sea of Japan coast, roughly four hours from Tokyo by shinkansen — close enough to be practical, far enough to feel entirely its own. The city is sometimes called "little Kyoto" for its preserved samurai districts and geisha quarters, but its food identity is shaped by the sea, not the temple district.

Omicho Market has operated for roughly 300 years and is still a functional daily market, not a tourist attraction dressed as one. The stalls sell snow crab (zuwaigani) in season, fat yellowtail (buri) that arrives each winter from deeper cold-water currents, and sweet shrimp (amaebi) that Kanazawa locals eat raw, the day they are caught. The market runs early — by mid-morning, the best counters have sold through much of their stock.

Unlike Tokyo, where omakase sushi at a serious counter can require months of advance booking and substantial expense, Kanazawa has sushi culture that is deeply local and more accessible. Counters near Omicho frequently use fish landed that same morning. The question to ask, in any language, is simply: what came in today?

Kanazawa also has a kaiseki tradition — multi-course seasonal tasting meals — rooted in the aesthetics of the Kenroku-en garden city. Autumn and winter are the highest seasons for food, when crab and yellowtail are both at their peak. Spring brings bamboo shoots and mountain vegetables. Summer is quieter, but the seafood market never entirely sleeps.

The Amalfi Coast is one of Italy's most visually arresting stretches — vertiginous cliffs, pastel-coloured villages, the sea below. It is also genuinely its own food region, with an ingredient larder that sets it apart from both Naples to the north and Calabria to the south.

The sfusato amalfitano lemon is the defining ingredient. It grows on terraced hillside groves above the coast road, is larger and less acidic than commercial lemons, and appears in everything: the local limoncello (made by many families from their own trees), a simple dressing for grilled fish, and a remarkable dish of raw anchovies cured briefly in lemon juice. The peel is thick enough to eat — candied, it appears on pastry counters across the region.

From the fishing village of Cetara, colatura di alici — a fermented anchovy sauce with roots in ancient Roman garum — is produced in small batches and used like an umami finishing liquid on pasta, salads, and vegetables. You can buy it directly from producers in Cetara in very small bottles. A few drops over spaghetti with garlic and parsley is a local staple that costs almost nothing to make and tastes like the sea concentrated.

The coast is crowded in summer and the crowds bring tourist pricing. If you want honest, affordable eating, visit in May, early June, or September. Look for restaurants where the menu is handwritten and the waitstaff speak mostly Italian to each other.

Marrakech's food identity is built on patience and layering. A classic lamb tagine with preserved lemon and olives cooks slowly over charcoal — the collagen in the meat breaking down over hours until the sauce is glossy and deeply savoury. The preserved lemon adds a sharp, fermented bitterness that cuts through the fat. It is the kind of dish that tastes like something took time, because it did.

Djemaa el-Fna, the central square, transforms each evening into an open-air dining event: dozens of stalls set up grills and steaming pots, selling harira soup, merguez sausages, whole roasted lamb's head, fried fish, and grilled offal. It is performative and sometimes pressured — touts will wave menus in your face — but the food itself can be good. Walk the whole square once before sitting down anywhere.

The more interesting eating, however, is inside the medina's residential neighbourhoods. Small restaurants with no signage serve a daily menu — often a shared spread of salads, bread, tagine, and mint tea — to local workers at lunch. These are the places where Moroccan home cooking is most faithfully reproduced. Finding them is harder without a local guide or a recommendation from someone who has actually been there.

Marrakech's spice souks are worth visiting as an education in ingredient culture even if you are not cooking. Ras el hanout — a blend that can contain anywhere from a dozen to over thirty spices — is assembled differently by each vendor, and tasting the differences between them is a lesson in how a single dish concept can vary enormously across families and regions.