The 30 Best Cuisines in the World, Ranked
Ranking the world’s cuisines is a game nobody wins. This is our attempt, drawn from a collection of more than 20,000 authentic recipes from 194 countries. Every cuisine links to the country’s full collection and its best-known dish, so you can disagree with the order the proper way, by cooking.
-
Italian Cuisine
ItalyRegional to the bone. A Roman carbonara and a Sicilian pasta share a country and not much else.
Pizza Margherita has three toppings and each is specified: San Marzano tomatoes, mozzarella di bufala, fresh basil. The Neapolitan association that governs it also specifies the flour, the hydration, the proving time and the oven …
-
Japanese Cuisine
JapanBuilt on seasonality and dashi. UNESCO listed washoku in 2013 as a cultural practice.
Sushi is the rice. That is the part people outside Japan consistently miss. Su-meshi is short-grain rice seasoned with vinegar, sugar and salt, cooled to body temperature and fanned as it is mixed. The fish on top is important; …
-
Mexican Cuisine
MexicoMaize, chilli and beans, worked for three thousand years. Also UNESCO-listed.
Say hello to Tacos al Pastor, one of Mexico's most iconic street foods and a true feast for the senses. Thin slices of marinated pork meet sweet, charred pineapple, all wrapped in a warm tortilla and finished with onion, coriander …
-
Thai Cuisine
ThailandSour, sweet, salty and hot balanced in every dish, adjusted at the table.
Pad Thai is a government project. In the late 1930s Thailand's prime minister promoted it as part of a nationalist campaign to build a Thai identity and reduce rice consumption, and recipes were distributed by the state. It …
-
Indian Cuisine
IndiaNot one cuisine. Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati and Tamil cooking barely overlap.
Discover Biryani, one of India's most celebrated dishes and a favourite enjoyed the world over. This hearty rice dish layers fragrant basmati rice with a fragrant blend of spices, herbs and tender aromatics. Warm with the scent of …
-
French Cuisine
FranceGave the world its kitchen vocabulary and the brigade system that runs restaurants everywhere.
Pot-au-Feu is boiled beef, and calling it France's national dish annoys people who would prefer something more obviously refined. It is nonetheless what the country has eaten for centuries, and it produces two courses: the broth …
-
Chinese Cuisine
ChinaEight major regional traditions. Sichuan and Cantonese cooking have almost nothing in common.
Peking Duck is about skin, not meat. The bird is inflated to separate skin from flesh, scalded, coated in maltose and hung to dry for a day, then roasted until the skin shatters. Restaurants carve it at the table into 108 pieces, …
-
Spanish Cuisine
SpainRice, olive oil and cured pork, plus the habit of eating late and in company.
Paella is Valencian, and Valencians are firm about what belongs in it: rabbit, chicken, green beans, garrofó beans, tomato, saffron. Not chorizo. The mixed seafood-and-meat version most of the world eats is paella mixta, which …
-
Greek Cuisine
GreeceOlive oil, lemon, oregano and a lot of vegetables. The Orthodox fasting calendar shaped the menu.
Moussaka has three layers and a béchamel on top, and the béchamel is what makes it moussaka rather than a baked mince and aubergine. It should set firm enough to cut into squares that hold their shape.
-
Turkish Cuisine
TurkeyOttoman palace cooking on one side, Anatolian village food on the other. Both are still here.
Fire up the grill and discover Şiş Kebab, the smoky, succulent skewers that crown the Turkish table. Tender cubes of meat are bathed in a fragrant marinade of paprika, cumin and tangy yoghurt, then charred over high heat until …
-
Vietnamese Cuisine
VietnamFresh herbs by the plateful, fish sauce, and French bread and coffee grafted on.
Pho is broth. Everything else in the bowl is assembly. A good pho broth takes six hours and a bad one takes twenty minutes, and you can taste the difference immediately, which is why the dish is hard to fake.
-
Lebanese Cuisine
LebanonMezze as a structure: twenty small plates instead of one big one.
Kibbeh at its most refined is raw: lamb pounded with bulgur to a paste and eaten with olive oil and mint, which is kibbeh nayyeh. The fried version below is the everyday one, and the baked tray version is what most households …
-
Peruvian Cuisine
PeruAndean crops meet Japanese and Chinese immigrant cooking. Lima has the potatoes to prove it.
Ceviche in Peru is served within minutes of being made. The fish is cut, tossed with lime, salt, chilli and onion, and eaten almost immediately, so the outside is opaque and the centre is still translucent. Thirty-minute marinades …
-
Korean Cuisine
South KoreaFermentation as a national skill. Gochujang, doenjang and kimchi underpin the whole thing.
Say hello to Bibimbap, one of South Korea's most iconic dishes and a true feast for both the eyes and the palate. This bright rice bowl brings together a colourful array of fresh vegetables, marinated beef and a perfectly fried …
-
Moroccan Cuisine
MoroccoBerber, Arab and Andalusian layers, with preserved lemon and long, slow cooking.
Couscous in Morocco is Friday food, served after prayers, in a wide shallow dish with the vegetables piled in a cone and the broth poured separately. The grain is steamed three times over the stew, which is the part shortcuts …
-
Indonesian Cuisine
Indonesia17,000 islands and a spice trade that shaped world history. Rendang came from Sumatra.
Discover Beef Rendang, one of Indonesia's most celebrated dishes. Tender chunks of beef are coaxed into rich, fragrant tenderness in a deeply spiced coconut sauce, brightened with ginger, lemongrass and chilli. This is a …
-
Georgian Cuisine
GeorgiaWalnuts, herbs and the world's oldest winemaking, at 8,000 years and counting.
Khachapuri is bread and cheese, and the Adjarian version is a boat with an egg yolk in the middle that you stir into the molten cheese at the table. It arrives too hot to eat and nobody waits.
-
American Cuisine
USAAn immigrant assembly, plus barbecue, which is genuinely its own invention.
Hamburger is the least American thing about American food, in origin. It comes from Hamburg, arrived with German migrants in the nineteenth century, and became the national dish anyway. Several US towns still claim to have …
-
Ethiopian Cuisine
EthiopiaInjera as the plate, berbere as the spine, and a fasting calendar that made vegan food ordinary.
Doro Wat is the dish Ethiopians cook when it matters, and the work is in the onions. Six or more, chopped fine, cooked dry and then in niter kibbeh for the better part of an hour before the chicken appears. Rushing that step …
-
Brazilian Cuisine
BrazilPortuguese, African and indigenous cooking in one pot. Feijoada is the clearest example.
Feijoada is black beans cooked with several kinds of pork, and the traditional cuts are the ones nobody else wanted: ear, tail, trotter, snout. It is served on Saturdays, it takes most of a day, and nobody makes it for two people.
-
Portuguese Cuisine
PortugalSalt cod said to have 365 preparations, plus custard tarts and a lot of coriander.
Meet Bacalhau à Brás, one of Portugal's most beloved comfort dishes. This homely classic brings together salt cod, golden potatoes and softly scrambled eggs, all bound with sweet onions and good olive oil. It is the kind of …
-
Malaysian Cuisine
MalaysiaMalay, Chinese and Indian cooking side by side, and Nyonya cooking where they merged.
Nasi Lemak is rice steamed in coconut milk with a knotted pandan leaf, and everything else on the plate is an accompaniment: sambal, fried anchovies, peanuts, cucumber, boiled egg. Malaysians eat it for breakfast, wrapped in …
-
Filipino Cuisine
PhilippinesVinegar and soy, Spanish names, Chinese noodles. Sour is the dominant note.
Adobo is meat cooked in vinegar and soy sauce with garlic, bay and pepper, and it is less a recipe than a preservation method. Vinegar keeps meat in a tropical climate, and the Spanish name was applied to a technique that predated …
-
German Cuisine
GermanyBread, pork and preservation. Around 3,000 registered bread varieties.
Sauerbraten is beef marinated in vinegar for days before it ever sees heat. Three days is the minimum, five is better, and the Rhineland version thickens the gravy with crushed gingerbread, which sounds odd and is the best part.
-
Argentine Cuisine
ArgentinaBeef over wood, plus Italian migration that left pasta and pizza everywhere.
Asado is not a recipe so much as an afternoon. Beef goes on a grill over wood coals, cooks slowly for well over an hour, and comes off in stages while everyone stands around the fire. The seasoning is coarse salt. That is the …
-
Egyptian Cuisine
EgyptBroad beans, lentils and bread, some of it documented on tomb walls.
Koshari is rice, lentils and pasta in one bowl, layered rather than mixed, under tomato sauce, crisp fried onions and a garlic-vinegar sauce that most recipes leave out and should not. It costs almost nothing and it is the best …
-
Persian Cuisine
IranRice, herbs and dried fruit. Sour and sweet in the same dish, deliberately.
Meet Kebab Koobideh, the smoky, deeply savoury heart of the Persian grill. Made from well-seasoned minced meat pressed onto flat skewers and cooked over glowing coals, it delivers tender, juicy mouthfuls scented with turmeric and …
-
Polish Cuisine
PolandSoured rye, cabbage, dill and mushrooms gathered in the forest.
Bigos is sauerkraut, fresh cabbage and several kinds of meat cooked down over days. It is reheated repeatedly, and each reheating is held to improve it. Polish households make it in enormous pots at Christmas and eat it into …
-
Jamaican Cuisine
JamaicaJerk, ackee and one-pot cooking. African technique with Spanish and Indian additions.
Ackee and Saltfish looks like scrambled egg and is not. Ackee is a fruit that, when ripe, has a soft yellow flesh with the texture of curd. Unripe, it contains hypoglycin and is genuinely poisonous, which is why tinned ackee is …
-
Nigerian Cuisine
NigeriaPounded starches with soups built on palm oil, egusi and pepper. The jollof debate is genuine.
Jollof Rice is the subject of an argument that has run for decades and shows no sign of ending. Ghana claims it, Nigeria claims it, Senegal invented the ancestor. The Nigerian version is redder, smokier and generally hotter, and …
Disagree with our order? The only valid rebuttal is cooking — start with another ranking or browse all 194 countries.