Turkish foods: 23 delicious dishes

Good news, kids! Your parents were wrong: You can have chocolate for dinner. Well, so long as you’re flying British Airways.

Before I moved to the US from England earlier this year, I paid my local UK Costco a visit for the very first time. I'd heard plenty about the warehouse's bulk offerings and large quantities of products but I was most curious to see what the food court had to offer.

America’s breadbasket, ripe with green fields and grazing dairy cows, is known for its simple but hearty dishes. But if you think the Midwest’s menu boils down to the traditional staples of cheese curds and bratwurst, then think again.

It’s about to be easier for Midwest-based travelers to reach the famous covered bazaars, mosques, palaces, and churches of Istanbul. Turkish Airlines recently announced plans for a new route between Detroit and Istanbul.

A bed of hot, fluffy white rice. A colourful array of vegetables. Seasoned meat or fish. A dollop of gochujang (chilli paste), dwenjang (fermented soybean paste) or ganjang (soy sauce). Possibly an egg on top. Bibimbap is a quintessential Korean dish, but the options for what makes its way into the bowl are seemingly limitless — and its history and origin are equally contested.

Osaka sits by the Pacific Ocean on a large, fertile plain. Its strong fishing and farming heritage, and a cuisine supported by its many wealthy merchants, has seen it named the “Kitchen of Japan”– just one of the reasons we've named it as one of our destinations to visit in 2019. When sniffing out the best of Osaka food, these are ten local dishes you must try.

When it comes to eating in Kuala Lumpur, you could have a different dish every day of your life —street food here is not a trend, but a way of life. In KL, locals are known to eat up to six meals a day and street food stands are hotbeds of innovation.

Thanks to China’s sheer enormity, travelling through the country is as much a tastebud odyssey as it is a history lesson. And eating your way around the street food markets allows you to get a true taste of the diverse culinary scene here.

The tear-shaped Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka is a true culinary treat. Through years of colonisation and trade, many cultures have influenced its cuisine. Sir Lankan food has influences from Dutch, Portuguese, English, Malay, Indian and indigenous flavours to tantalise the taste buds. Here is our list of the best Sri Lankan foods you need to try on your trip to this beguiling isle.

Farm-to-table cuisine comes with Japanese influences in the Estonian capital, where local staples like kohuke (a curd-cheese and chocolate dessert) are reanimated with novel flavours like sea buckthorn, green plum and spruce shoots. Fermented and preserved local vegetables take pride of place on the menus of cool, contemporary restaurants, while hearty meat pies, colourful dumplings and Nordic cream buns are venerable favourites.

What makes a food strange? After all, plenty of people shudder at the thought of Scottish favourite haggis, while others wouldn’t touch escargots or frogs’ legs (all of them delicious, by the way).