Top Ten Global Cities for Foodies

Barcelona
Centered on a Mediterranean diet of olive oil and fresh seafood, the distinctive traditional Catalan cuisine is what truly sets this Spanish city apart, with hearty dishes showcasing an interesting mélange of locally produced, seasonal ingredients. There are two ways to eat in Barcelona: you can go to a restaurant
( restaurante in Castilian) or cafetería and have a full meal, or you can have a succession of tapas (small snacks; sometimes tapes in Catalan) or raciones (larger ones; racions in Catalan) at one or more bars. This last option can be a lot more interesting, allowing you to do the rounds and sample local specialities.

Brussels
Thanks to its excellent food and diversity of cuisine, Brussels has moved into the European culinary limelight. While not the cheapest of cities to eat out in, its thousands of restaurants offer consistently high quality fare and spectacular value for money. Apart from the excellence of the native Belgian fare, the city is among Europe's best for sampling a wide range of different cuisines - from the ubiquitous Italian places, through to Spanish, Vietnamese, Japanese and Russian restaurants.
Restaurants aside, it's worth remembering many bars and cafés serve food. Though this is often limited to pastas, soups and croques monsieurs , many have wider-ranging menus usually consisting of traditional Brussels fare. There are also plenty of frites stands and pitta places around the Grand-Place, notably on rue du Marché aux Fromages, known locally as "Greek Street", and on rue des Bouchers.

Hanoi
For sheer value for money and atmosphere it's hard to beat the rock-bottom, stove-and-stools food stalls or the slightly more upmarket street kitchens; try streets such as Ma Hac De, Hang Dieu and Duong Thanh. At conventional restaurants you'll need to get there early : local places stop serving around 8pm, while Western-style restaurants and top hotels tend to allow an extra hour or two. We've given phone numbers for places where it's advisable to make reservations. Look out for two Hanoi specialities : the ubiquitous pho noodle soup and bun cha, small barbecued pork burgers served with a bowl of rice noodles.

Las Vegas
C asinos compete to attract culinary superstars from all over the country to open Vegas outlets. The first such venture was Wolfgang Puck's Spago in Caesars Palace , back in 1992; these days, as each new casino opens, it's taken for granted that it will have as many as ten world-class restaurants. Asked what had persuaded him to relocate to Las Vegas, one leading chef replied "three million dollars." Many tourists now visit the city specifically to eat at several of the best restaurants in the United States, without having to reserve a table months in advance or pay sky-high prices. Which is not to say that fine dining comes cheap in Las Vegas, just that most of the big-name restaurants are less expensive, and less snooty, than they are in their home cities

Lyon
You'll find restaurants offering dishes from every region of France and overseas in Lyon. Vieux-Lyon is the area with the greatest concentration of eateries, though you'll find cheaper and less busy ones between place des Jacobins and place Sathonay at the top of the Presqu'île. The possibilities are endless, but on weekends booking ahead is always a good idea. The most affordable type of Lyonnais eating establishment, the bouchon (cork), derived its name from the vast quantities of Lyonnais wine consumed there. Tradition has it that wine bottles were lined up as the evening progressed, and at the end of the night the bill was determined by measuring from the first cork to the last. There are several bouchons located in the streets between Cordeliers and Terreaux, particularly in rue Mercière.

New York
New York is a rich port city that can get the best foodstuffs from anywhere in the world, and, as a major immigration gateway, it attracts chefs who know how to cook the world's cuisines properly, even exceptionally. As you stroll through the streets of New York, heavenly odors seem to emanate from every corner; it's not hard to work up an appetite.Outside of American and continental cuisines (more or less including New American, be prepared to confront a startling variety of ethnic food . In New York, none has had so dominant an effect as Jewish food , to the extent that many Jewish specialties - bagels, pastrami, lox and cream cheese - are now considered archetypal New York. Others retain more specific identities. Chinese food includes the familiar Cantonese, as well as spicier Szechuan and Hunan dishes - most restaurants specialize in one or the other. Japanese food is widely available and very good; other Asian cuisines include Indian and a broad sprinkling of Thai, Korean, Vietnamese and Indonesian restaurants.

San Francisco
With well over three thousand restaurants crammed onto the small peninsula, and scores of bars and cafés open all day, eating in San Francisco is never difficult. Eating is the culture in this town, with excellent food often at modest prices. Be warned, though - San Francisco closes early, and you'll be struggling to get served much after 10pm. Mexican food is big in the Mission, Italian places abound in North Beach, and, of course, Chinatown naturally has plenty of Chinese , while Japan Center - the heart of Japantown, located at Post between Geary, Laguna and Fillmore, a mile west of Union Square - boasts a few fine Japanese places. In health-conscious San Francisco you'll find vegetarian entrees on every menu and quite a few entirely vegetarian restaurants. With the vineyards of Napa and Sonoma Valley on the city's doorstep, quality wines have a high profile in most San Francisco restaurants.

Rome
Romans, as a group, are still very much in touch with the land - many even have small farms of their own in the countryside nearby, or they return to their home villages regularly. So the city's denizens know a good deal about freshness and authenticity, and can be very demanding when it comes to the quality of the dishes they are served. Consequently, eating out is a major, often hours-long, activity in Rome, and the meals you'll enjoy generally range from good to truly remarkable. You'll find that most city-centre restaurants offer standard Italian dishes, although a few more adventurous restaurants have been popping up of late. At the geographical centre of the country, Italy's capital city also has numerous establishments dedicated to a variety of regional cuisines , and a reasonable number of excellent ethnic restaurants , though many of these are in outlying areas. Rome is also blessed with an abundance of good, honest pizzerias , churning out thin, crispy-baked pizza from wood-fired ovens.

Tokyo
Deciding what to eat in Tokyo can be a bewildering experience, and not just because you might be at a loss working out what's on the menu, or even on your plate. The problem is that, with at least 80,000 restaurants in central Tokyo (compared to New York's 15,000 and London's mere 6000), you're swamped with choice. Food crazes come and go with astonishing rapidity. For the moment Chinese and Korean cuisines are in and there are cafés dishing out bagels all over the place. Ever reliable are the noodle bars, shokudo and chain restaurants , where the Japanese go when they need to fill up without fear of the cost. Tokyo has a plethora of such places, with many clustering around and inside the train stations. Bento shops , serving set boxes of food, are also good and plentiful, especially at lunchtime in shopping areas.

Vancouver
Vancouver's restaurants are some of Canada's finest, and span the price spectrum from budget to blowout. If you want to eat well, you'll be spoilt for choice - and you won't have to spend a fortune to do so. As you'd expect, the city also offers a wide range of ethnic cuisines. Chinese and Japanese cuisines have the highest profile (though the latter tend to be expensive), followed by Italian, Greek and other European imports. Vietnamese, Cambodian, Thai and Korean are more recent arrivals and can often provide the best starting points - cafés and the ubiquitous fast-food chains aside - if you're on a tight budget. Specialist seafood restaurants are surprisingly thin on the ground, but those that exist are of high quality and often remarkably cheap. In any case, seafood does crop up on most menus and salmon is heavily featured. Vegetarians are well served by a number of specialist places.