Porto is a city that wears its heart on its sleeve, and nowhere is this more evident than the best of its restaurant food. From the ever-popular Ribeira district to the tiled streets of Miragaia, francesinhas, bifanas, and tripe stews beckon – but not all are created equal. For every perfectly balanced francesinha, there’s a soggy, sauce-drowned imposter. And while Porto’s charm lies in its unpretentiousness, it’s easy to fall into tourist traps masquerading as authentic experiences. The Tripeiros (tripe-eaters, or people from Porto), however, know best. There are still many spots with longstanding local clientele, favorite spots guarded like family secrets or francesinha sauce recipes, passed down through generations. In this guide to the best restaurants in Porto, we cover what that really means: places where the food is not just sustenance but a reflection of the city’s energy – hearty, uncomplicated, and deeply satisfying.

Since 2010, Paula has led the Culinary Backstreets Barcelona team as a writer and photographer, experience designer, and culinary walk leader. Born in Vigo, Spain, she left the world of advertising to become a writer, focusing on gastronomy and culture. Her work has been featured in USA Today and other major publications, as well as National Geographic’s show Top Tables, Top Cities. Paula is our go-to for all things Spain and helped us design our newest culinary walk in Bilbao, a city close to her heart. Born and raised in Getxo (Bizkaia), a coastal town near Bilbao, Gonzalo moved to San Sebastian in 2020 to get his master’s degree in gastronomic tourism at the Basque Culinary Center. As a tour guide focusing on food and wine in San Sebastian and Bilbao, he loves to help his guests come to love the Basque country and its gastronomy. As a self-described “craft beer geek and wine lover,” he also loves to show visitors the unique way Bilbao relates to its culinary culture and the city’s historical richness.

Around here, we all have a recipe for carne en su jugo and think our grandma’s is the best. A very local and traditional dish, it consists of beef cooked in its own juices – as its name in Spanish suggests – along with bacon and beans, and served with different toppings, such as diced onion and cilantro. To prepare this very flavorful and aromatic stew, the beef is cut into thin strips and simmered in a broth made from tomatillo sauce and chile verde – a recipe supposedly invented by a family in Los Altos de Jalisco (the highlands just outside the city) and passed down through generations, becoming a Guadalajara staple. Locals who want to enjoy this meal outside the home usually head to Santa Tere (also known as Santa Teresita), a bustling and historic barrio located northwest of Guadalajara's city center, home to a concentration of classic Mexican spots that specialize in carne en su jugo. Of course, they all claim to be the original creators. It’s a mystery that has never been solved, but we have bravely endured the uncertainty over the years, tasting the dish whenever we get the chance.

In Oaxaca, when friends come together to eat after a long night out, sitting down for brunch becomes a challenge – everyone has different cravings and dietary needs. In the heart of the city center, there is a place with something for everyone: Tendajón Agavería The all-day eatery is a true standout among the numerous restaurants that serve classic Oaxacan food, offering a variety of dishes that oscillate between traditional and innovative flavors. From the Croque Madame with smoked quesillo to a fresh poleo mint couscous with shrimp cooked in chintextle (chili paste), the menu has a strong Oaxacan overtone interpreted in very unexpected ways.

The story goes that in the early 19th century, an Italian immigrant, António Marrare, arrived in Lisbon and opened four eateries, essentially introducing the concept of the contemporary restaurant to the city. These venues – all of which bore his name – would have an impact on Lisbon’s culinary scene that exists until today, as would the steak dish he invented, which was also – perhaps unsurprisingly – named after himself. Marrare’s last restaurant closed in 1866, but a century later Lisbon restaurateurs, nostalgic for that era of dining, opened restaurants that paid homage to Marrare. Those that exist today include Snob Bar, opened in 1964, Café de São Bento, in 1982, and Café do Paço, in 2009.

Editor’s Note: To properly introduce Guadalajara, CB’s newest location, we turned to Eliza Osher, the local guide who helped design our culinary walk there. Born and raised in Los Angeles, where she studied pastry and breadmaking at Le Cordon Bleu, Eliza first came to Mexico to work at a boutique hotel on the Pacific coast of Jalisco state in 2005 and has been living in the country since. She moved to Guadalajara in 2006 after meeting her husband, an artist who grew up in the city. Deeply involved in the city’s arts scene, Eliza works as a language coach and also runs a lending library that she opened in 2015.

In recent years, the city of Guadalajara has grown so much that it’s starting to merge with the little pueblitos surrounding it. That’s the case with San Isidro, which is now a highly urbanized area but where you can also find some places that still feel like the old days. One of them is Fonda Doña Mica, a must-visit breakfast spot that was a well-kept secret until it went viral a year ago, famous for its traditional cooking and handmade wood-fired tortillas. Driving 40 minutes from the city center just to eat here may sound crazy, but hundreds of people do it daily – that’s how good it is.

New Orleans’s king cake is a culinary symbol of Mardi Gras and the festive, months-long lead-up known as Carnival season. Beginning on January 6 and continuing until the season’s culmination on Fat Tuesday – this year taking place on March 4 – revelers across the region enjoy slice after slice of this traditional, cinnamon-flavored cake. Whoever finds the small, plastic baby figurine hidden inside is said to receive good luck, but must also purchase the next king cake.

Our friends who visit often ask, “What’s the spot in Tokyo for X,Y, or Z?” We explain that this is not how the city works. There are numerous microcities that make up this megacity, and it’s more of a question of: “What’s the best __ in this area?” There is one exception when it comes to the best yakitori (grilled chicken) restaurant in Tokyo: the answer is, without a doubt, Shimonya in the southwest neighborhood of Shimokitazawa. Shimonya has been around since 1998, when they opened their first yakitori store in Araiyakushimae Station in Tokyo. Since then, it has grown into a vast empire of 65 eateries spanning nearly every corner of Tokyo. Most of them specialize in chicken, with a handful branching out into beef and seafood as well.

Warm phở broth is comforting on rainy days, fresh pickled veggies in a bánh mì are refreshing during hot summers, and fried pork rolls are a popular snack to pair with at any time of the year. But the lesser-known Vietnamese dish called bánh khọt gives us yet another reason to fall in love with Vietnamese food. This bite-sized dish is a crunchy one-inch, cup-shaped crepe, made from rice flour and coconut milk batter, topped with shrimp and ground pork and served with pickles and fresh lettuce for a hands-on, do-it-yourself wrap. One local place to try the dish is Bánh Khọt Lady, a restaurant in the Little Saigon neighborhood of Orange County, an area that is often overshadowed by its neighbor to the north, Los Angeles. Although LA County has the highest population in the country, the “OC” is not far behind, ranking as the sixth-largest county in the nation. Both counties share a deep, diverse history and culture, dating back to the Native American Tongva people who lived in the area before waves of settlers and immigrants called it home.

Images of neon-lit bar streets, serene temples, and clouds of cherry blossoms have long enticed travelers to Japan. But the last couple of years have seen the country’s popularity rise to unseen heights, with a record 37 million foreign tourists visiting in 2024. While last month we launched in Osaka (a culinary powerhouse in its own right) and have published dispatches from Kyoto, we’ve been writing about the food scene in Tokyo for a decade, watching the city evolve with each passing year. We know that, for all its allure, Tokyo can feel overwhelming to navigate, especially when it comes to food. Countless izakayas, sushi bars, noodle joints, and cafes are tucked into every corner – where do you even begin?

Let me first say that Japan hit me very hard when I first arrived because I did not speak the language. I was not a pork eater at the time (I grew up on a farm and pigs were my pets, not dinner) but after my first two weeks in Japan all I was eating was basically breaded pork chops, because that's the only thing I knew how to order in Japanese. You eat or you starve. And when it gets to that point, it's just being able to order that’s the first barrier.

At Gulgune, a barbecue restaurant in Itaewon, the meat arrives on double-prong skewers, par-cooked over charcoal until just done. A server deftly slides each long strip of samgyeopsal – pork belly – onto a tilted grill pan set over a gas burner, the drippings falling into a vessel below. As the meat browns to golden, a trio of accompaniments sizzles at the pan's bottom: blanched bean sprouts, chopped ripe kimchi, and curls of green onions tossed in a sweet, spicy, and vinegary dressing. Cooked in the rendered fat, they cut perfectly through the meat's richness. For Koreans, samgyeopsal isn’t just a meal – it’s the heart of countless gatherings. The question “고기 먹을까?” (“Shall we go for some barbecue?”) almost always means pork belly is on the menu.

The history of Oaxacan food is deeply linked to the concept of adaptation. Our culinary identity has many chapters: the Mesoamerican native period, the colonial reign of Nueva España and the Mexico of the 20th century, which received another wave of immigrants who brought their gastronomic traditions and let them combine with the native and more tropical ingredients of these altitudes. That is the story of the salchicha ejuteca, a European style beef sausage that unexpectedly became one of the most desired foods on the Oaxacan snack table. While traditional corn-based products are a signature of Oaxacan cuisine, the salchicha ejuteca is an underestimated traditional element in the state’s food landscape. “Nobody knows for sure where the salchicha comes from.

Nevizade Street is one of the most buzzing parts of the Beyoğlu district, the heart of nightlife and cultural activity in Istanbul, but it has weathered its fair share of ups and downs in recent years. For a variety of economic and political reasons, Nevizade's vitality has suffered, and we’ve had to witness the closure of some of the area’s most emblematic spots. But just last year, a fantastic new restaurant here brought together an unlikely pair who have quickly formed what is without a doubt the area's most dynamic duo: Ibrahim Usta and Mehmet Akkök. With his beaming smile, white hair, and bushy eyebrows, Ibrahim Usta (usta being “master,” as of a craft) became famous for the delicious hummus that he whipped up in Antakya for nearly four decades. When the February 6, 2023 earthquakes struck, his home was destroyed, leaving no choice but to pack up and move to Istanbul to live with his son.