Contents of Post
As someone who loves food (clearly!) and travels a lot, I put significant importance on finding the best cheap and delicious food wherever I go. Especially when I travel with my wife. I swear, she just travels for the food. Therefore, finding the right food is an absolute essential.
Here are the methods I use to find cheap and delicious food while I am travelling.
Recommendations From Bloggers Are A Good First Stop
Bloggers such as Marek from Indie Traveller and Matt from Nomadic Matt have been travelling for years. They also have tried food from all over the world and put recommendations on their sites.
When it comes to finding delicious food, I start with recommendations from other bloggers when looking in a place I’ve never been. I’ll usually do this before I even go as they have a tendency to recommend places that sources like Yelp and TripAdvisor don’t or can’t. For good reason too.
Does The Place Have An Online Presence?
The ones that do and have the best food are the ones that end up on the sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor.
However, a lot of the time the best of the best won’t have any online footprint. Hell, those places that serve food in little towns in the middle of nowhere might not even have a computer.
This is part of the reason I start with bloggers. When it comes to finding cheap and delicious food, places with little to no online presence tend to rank higher.
Why? Because the ones that have a huge online footprint and 101 recommendations from everything and everyone usually charge a lot more. They’ve gotten recognition so they can and why shouldn’t they?
When their customer base has either always been tourists or has switched from locals to tourists, they have every right to charge more, especially in those places where a local might pay the equivalent of cents for a meal.
Tourist tax is a real thing and I believe it should be.
Asking A Local Is The Best Method
When it comes to finding the best cheap and delicious food asking someone who is from the area is your best bet.
Think of what you would say if a tourist or traveller asked you. I know that I would have a list of places, but I would probably only recommend the best two or three. They’d probably also be the places I go to most.
I’m willing to bet that’s what you would do as well. Therefore, it’s fairly likely that a local would do something similar.
Although Elders Are Hard To Communicate With, They Are The Best Source
When it comes to asking a local, who do you ask? In all honesty, asking anyone over the age of 15 could yield you a relatively good result.
Yet if you’re trying to find the best cheap and delicious food while travelling, you have to ask the elders. They may seem unapproachable and are very unlikely to be English speakers, but they hold the key.
The local elders are the most likely people to have lived there their entire lives and have seen how things have changed. They have their haunts and watering holes down to a science. Whenever I ask local elderly folks I always find an amazingly cheap and delicious meal.
Don’t Scoff At The Little Hole In The Walls
What do I mean by a “Hole in the wall” when it comes to food? Well, that’s a bit complicated.
They aren’t usually literally holes in the wall, although I have had some absolutely incredible meals in literal holes in the wall. Your typical hole in the wall is a restaurant, bar, or fast food joint that is either smaller, doesn’t look the best, is out of the way, or some combination of these.
A lot of the places that I have been that have the best food for the cheapest prices have been these small little places that were hidden down a side street. Places that most people would go as far as to call, “dingy”.
Yet, these are the places that locals will usually go to and for very good reason. They have the absolute best cheap and delicious food! I have yet to get food poisoning from one of these places. I’m sure it’s bound to happen eventually, but honestly, I’ve gotten food poisoning more than a couple of times from places that were highly rated or could be considered “tourist traps”.
So yeah, don’t underestimate those little hole in the walls. They are bound to surprise you.
Side Note: Food Carts, Stalls, and Other Street Food
Street food is one of my favourite things when travelling. There are so many amazing options and they are almost always dirt cheap.
However, you need to keep in mind that whenever you eat street food, you are taking a huge risk. Food and health standards in most places around the world aren’t as high as they are in the U.S., Canada, or most of Europe. Due to this, you are at a higher risk for things such as food poisoning or dysentery.
So, although they might be fantastic, eat from these places at your own risk.
Are There More Locals Or Tourists?
There are many places around the world that are packed full of tourists and still delicious. After all, restaurants with incredible food tend to get good recommendations and attract a lot of people.
That being said, we have still noticed a trend when it comes to the places that serve the most delicious food. There always seems to be significantly more locals than tourists; If there are even any tourists at all.
Maybe this is because most people don’t want to share their secrets; their favourite places. I’m honestly not sure.
Though if I were to take a guess based on my experience, I would say that it’s most likely due to the fact that these places tend to be your hole in the walls. They don’t look very appealing or classy, and sometimes they are in some sketchier areas. Their aesthetic tends to drive away tourists and travellers, as opposed to intriguing or even welcoming them.
Yet, who knows how these things truly work?
Is It Busy?
The busier it is the better. This one is kind of tricky though since busy can be at abnormal times or mean something different.
For example, there was a small little hole in the wall in Mexico City that made the best Tacos around. There were locals coming from the other side of the city to eat these tacos. Yet, most of the day it was pretty quiet. Maybe one or two people and a small dinner and lunch rush.
Then 1 am hit, and this place was packed to the brim. No more seating space and people were standing outside eating. It was crazy!
Being busy with locals is almost always a good sign when you’re trying to find cheap and delicious food while travelling.
Dig In!
So there you go. These are all the methods I used to consistently find the best cheap and delicious food no matter where I go. I hope these methods will help you find the food that’ll haunt your dreams.
Until next time, stay authentic, stay Nomadic, and let the world inscribe itself upon you more than you inscribe yourself upon it.
