The Best Food in Europe (and Where to Actually Find It)
Europe is the continent where you can eat yourself into a coma for under a tenner. It's also the continent where you can spend £300 on a tasting menu and leave wondering if you actually ate anything. The range is absurd, and that's what makes eating your way across it so good.
This isn't a ranked list of countries. It's a practical guide to where and what to eat across Europe, based on the places that consistently deliver the best meals for the least amount of effort.
Italy
The thing about Italian food that no other country quite manages to replicate is the obsession with simplicity. A plate of cacio e pepe in Rome uses three ingredients. Pecorino, black pepper, pasta. That's it. And when it's done right, at a place like Felice a Testaccio or Roscioli, it's one of the best things you'll ever eat.
Naples is the pizza capital of the world. L'Antica Pizzeria da Michele has been open since 1870 and serves two types of pizza: margherita and marinara. No menu, no starters, no dessert. The queue starts forming before they open, and the pizza is gone by early afternoon. If you don't fancy the wait, Gino Sorbillo down the road is nearly as good and slightly less chaotic.
Bologna is where you go if you want to understand what a bolognese ragu actually tastes like. The stuff you've been making at home with a jar of Dolmio and some dried spaghetti bears almost no resemblance to what you'll eat in Bologna. Here, it's tagliatelle al ragu, never spaghetti, and the sauce is slow-cooked with a mix of pork and beef, a little tomato, and a splash of milk. Tortellini in brodo (small pasta parcels in a clear broth) is the other thing you have to try.
Sicily is Italy's street food capital. In Palermo, you can eat arancini (fried rice balls stuffed with ragu and mozzarella) from carts for a couple of euros. The markets there, particularly Mercato di Ballaro, are chaotic and loud and sell everything from fresh swordfish to cannoli filled to order.
Spain
Spain is the country where you'll eat your best meal standing up at a bar at 11pm, surrounded by people who seem in no particular rush to go anywhere. Lunch is the main event, dinner is late, and tapas exist because eating small plates of different things while drinking wine is objectively the best way to spend an evening.
San Sebastian, in the Basque Country, has more Michelin stars per square metre than almost anywhere on earth. But you don't need a booking or a budget to eat well there. The pintxos bars along the old town streets serve small bites on cocktail sticks, and you pay by counting the sticks on your plate at the end. Bar Nestor does a tortilla that people queue around the block for. They make two a day.
Barcelona is excellent for seafood. La Boqueria market on Las Ramblas gets a lot of tourist traffic, but the stalls further from the entrance are still worth visiting. Carrer Blai in Poble Sec is a better bet for pintxos without the crowd. In Madrid, the Mercado de San Miguel is pretty but overpriced. You're better off finding a no-frills bar in La Latina and ordering patatas bravas and a glass of Rioja.
Seville does some of the best fried fish in Europe. Thin slices of aubergine drizzled with honey (berenjenas con miel) is the kind of dish that sounds strange and turns out to be one of the best things on the table.
France
France invented the concept of restaurants as we know them, and it still takes the whole thing more seriously than anywhere else. The good news is that eating well in France doesn't require a reservation at a three-star place in Paris. Some of the best meals you'll have will be at small roadside auberges in the countryside where the menu changes daily and the wine list is whatever the owner's mate makes down the road.
In Paris, skip the tourist traps around the Champs-Elysees and eat in the smaller arrondissements. A good croque monsieur from a cafe in the 11th is better than most things you'll eat at a restaurant trying too hard near the Louvre. Rue des Martyrs in the 9th is brilliant for bakeries, cheese shops, and places selling rotisserie chicken that you can smell from three streets away.
Lyon has a genuine claim to being the food capital of France. The bouchons, small traditional restaurants that serve Lyonnaise classics like quenelles (fish dumplings in a creamy sauce) and andouillette (tripe sausage, which is not for everyone), are the reason to visit. They're cheap, unpretentious, and the portions are enormous.
Provence and the south are where you go for simpler cooking. Ratatouille, bouillabaisse in Marseille, socca (chickpea flatbread) in Nice. The Cours Saleya market in Nice is one of the best in Europe, all olives and dried herbs and tapenade samples.
Portugal
Portugal has been quietly doing incredible food for centuries while everyone was looking at Spain and Italy. It's also significantly cheaper than both.
Lisbon has more restaurants per capita than almost any city in Europe. The pasteis de nata (custard tarts) from Pasteis de Belem are famous for a reason, but the ones from Manteigaria in Chiado are just as good and the queue is a fraction of the length.
Portuguese food revolves around three things: grilled fish, pork, and bacalhau (salt cod). The Portuguese apparently have over 300 recipes for bacalhau, and while that sounds like an exaggeration, you'll find it prepared differently in every restaurant you walk into. Bacalhau a bras, shredded cod cooked with potatoes, onions, and scrambled egg, is the one to start with.
Porto is worth a visit for the francesinha alone. Layers of cured meat, steak, and sausage, covered in melted cheese and drenched in a tomato and beer sauce, served with chips on the side. It is excessive and brilliant.
The Algarve coast does grilled sardines better than anywhere. Eaten outside, at a plastic table, with a cold beer, they're hard to beat.
Greece
Greek food doesn't try to be clever. It tries to be good. And when you're eating a Greek salad on a taverna terrace with tomatoes that actually taste of something and feta that crumbles properly, you realise how much of what passes for a Greek salad in the UK is a pale imitation.
Athens has a food scene that's been underrated for years. Psyrri and Monastiraki are full of small restaurants doing excellent souvlaki, grilled octopus, and moussaka. Tavernas in the Plaka area are mostly tourist traps, so avoid those and walk ten minutes further to where the locals eat.
The islands are where Greek food gets really good. Crete has its own distinct cuisine, heavier on herbs, wild greens, and olive oil than the mainland. Dakos, a barley rusk topped with crushed tomatoes and crumbly mizithra cheese, is the kind of thing you eat once and then crave for months.
Street food in Greece is underrated. Gyros in a pitta, loaded with tzatziki and chips, costs about three euros and constitutes a full meal. The souvlaki shops in Thessaloniki are particularly good.
England
English food gets a bad reputation, and most of it is undeserved. England does comfort food better than almost anywhere in Europe, and a lot of the best stuff costs next to nothing.
Start with the full English breakfast. Bacon, sausages, eggs, beans, toast, mushrooms, tomatoes, black pudding, and a mug of builder's tea. The best versions aren't in hotels or brunch bars. They're in greasy spoon cafes with Formica tables and no interest in presentation. The Regency Cafe in Pimlico has been doing this since 1946, and the breakfast costs less than a tenner. E. Pellicci in Bethnal Green has been open since 1900, still run by the same family. But the full English isn't a London thing. Every town in the country has a cafe that does a solid fry-up, and the ones you'll remember most will probably be in some seaside town or market square where nobody's trying to put it on Instagram.
The Sunday roast is England's other great meal. Slices of beef or lamb, roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, seasonal vegetables, and gravy. Yorkshire is where Yorkshire puddings come from, and the pubs across the Dales and the Moors still do some of the best roasts in the country. The Devonshire Arms in Grassington does a proper toad in the hole alongside its roasts. In the Cotswolds, village pubs do three-course Sunday lunches with local beef for under twenty quid. The Lake District is the same. Country pubs in England are underrated by tourists who never leave the cities, and they're often where the best food is.
Fish and chips is best on the coast. The Magpie Cafe in Whitby has had people queuing down the street since 1937. They fry everything in beef dripping, which gives the batter a crispier coating and steams the fish inside so it comes out tender and flaky. Rick Stein called it the best in the country, and the sticky toffee pudding has been on their menu for over thirty years. Whitby isn't the only option. Scarborough, Robin Hood's Bay, the Lancashire coast around Morecambe, and pretty much anywhere in Cornwall with a working harbour will have a chippy doing fresh fish that was on a boat that morning. Eaten on a bench by the sea with salt and vinegar is the correct method.
Pie and mash is a London tradition, and the old East End shops are worth visiting for the history alone. M. Manze on Tower Bridge Road has been serving since 1902 in a shop with original Edwardian green tiles. F. Cooke on Hoxton Street still uses their nineteenth-century recipe. Most are cash only and meals start at around five quid. But pies in general are an English thing, not just a London one. A steak and kidney pie from a pub in the Peak District, a pork pie from Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire where they were invented, a Cornish pasty from a pasty shop in Padstow or St Ives. These are regional foods that people travel for.
A lot of English food is named after the place it comes from, and eating it there genuinely makes a difference. Cumberland sausage from the Lake District, sold in a coil rather than links. Black pudding from Bury in Lancashire, considered the best in the country. Bakewell tart from Bakewell in Derbyshire. Eccles cakes from Eccles. Whitby crab. Cromer crab. Stilton from the East Midlands. Cheddar from, well, Cheddar.
And then there are pub desserts. Sticky toffee pudding with custard. Treacle sponge. Apple crumble. Bread and butter pudding. These are not delicate desserts. They are heavy, warm, and exist to make you feel completely content afterwards.
The Ones People Don't Talk About Enough
Belgium doesn't get the credit it deserves. The frites are better than anything you'll find in France, the waffles are nothing like the sweet, cream-covered things you see at Christmas markets, and the beer culture means you can pair every meal with something interesting from a list of hundreds. Moules-frites in Brussels or Bruges is one of Europe's great simple meals.
Hungary is worth visiting purely for the food if you're on a budget. A bowl of goulash in Budapest, proper goulash with paprika and chunks of beef cooked until they fall apart, costs almost nothing and fills you up for the rest of the day. Langos, deep-fried dough topped with sour cream and cheese, is sold from market stalls for under two pounds.
Poland is another one. Pierogi, filled dumplings that come boiled or fried with every filling you can think of, are comfort food at its best. Krakow's Plac Nowy market has a ring of tiny windows selling zapiekanki, a toasted baguette with mushrooms and cheese that is essentially Polish street pizza.
Turkey (if you count Istanbul as Europe, which geographically it partly is) has one of the best food cultures on the continent. Breakfast alone, a spread of cheeses, olives, tomatoes, cucumber, honey, clotted cream, eggs, and endless bread, could keep you going until dinner.
Some General Advice
Eat where the locals eat. If the menu is in four languages and there's a photo of every dish, keep walking. If the menu is handwritten, or there isn't one at all, sit down.
Markets are almost always a better lunch than restaurants. Nearly every European city has a central market, and the ones in Barcelona, Bologna, Lisbon, Budapest, and Athens are particularly good. You'll eat better, spend less, and get a much better feel for what local food actually looks like.
Lunch is often better value than dinner, especially in Spain, France, and Italy. The menu del dia in Spain, the prix fixe in France, and the pranzo in Italy all offer two or three courses with wine for a price that would barely cover a main course in the evening.
Don't over-plan. Some of the best meals you'll have in Europe will be the ones you stumble into. A random trattoria on a back street in Rome, a tapas bar a local pointed you towards in Seville, a bakery in Lyon you walked past and couldn't resist. European food is best when you stop trying to find the "best" restaurant and just start eating.