There is a particular kind of food memory that never fades. The one where you're sitting somewhere simple, somewhere you nearly didn't find, eating something that costs almost nothing, and you think: this is it. This is the reason people travel. I have had that moment in a plastic chair on a Greek island, in a standing-room-only bar in Seville, in a Sicilian pastry shop so small you had to turn sideways to get to the counter.
These three countries have given me more of those moments than anywhere else on earth, and after two decades of going back, I still find new ones.
Greece
The obvious starting point is the food you already know about, and in Greece, the obvious is obvious for good reason. A Greek salad, made properly, meaning with tomatoes that have actually seen sunlight, cucumber that snaps when you cut it, and feta that came from somewhere nearby rather than a factory, is one of the finest things you can eat in summer. Order it everywhere.
But the places I keep returning to in Greece are the less Instagrammable islands, and the food there operates on a different logic. On islands like Corfu or Tilos, you eat what arrived on the boat that morning or what someone's grandmother made before noon. Freshly caught calamari fried in oil so clean it barely tastes like frying. Saganaki made with local cheese rather than the imported blocks that end up in tourist traps.
Seek out spanakopita from a bakery rather than a restaurant. The difference is significant. And if you find yourself in the Peloponnese or on Crete, eat as much dakos as you can, the barley rusk softened with tomato and olive oil and topped with mizithra cheese. It is humble food and it is extraordinary.
Italy
I have eaten pizza in Naples more times than is probably reasonable, and I will never stop. The specific experience of a margherita at a no-frills pizzeria in the Quartieri Spagnoli, eaten folded in half because the table is too small and the pizza too large, remains one of the benchmarks against which I measure all other food experiences. Go to Naples. Eat the pizza. There is nothing to add.
But Sicily is where Italian food genuinely stopped me in my tracks, and it did so repeatedly across years of visits. The pistachio ends up in everything: gelato, granita, pasta sauces, and cannoli filled with pistachio cream instead of the standard ricotta. That cannolo, eaten fresh from a pastry shop in Palermo or Catania, where they fill it in front of you only when you order it, is a different thing entirely from anything you've had before. Do not leave without having one.
Pasta alla norma, aubergine and tomato, and ricotta, is Sicilian through and through and far better there than anywhere else. And if you see pasta with pistachio pesto on a menu in the east of the island, order it without hesitation.
Further north, in cities like Bologna and Modena, eat the fresh pasta. The tortellini in broth at a traditional osteria, and the tagliatelle al ragù, which has nothing to do with what the rest of the world calls bolognese.
Spain
Spain is the country that has surprised me the most consistently over the past 20 years, partly because it is so large and varied that each region operates almost as its own food culture. The north and the south eat like different countries entirely, and both are worth your full attention.
In San Sebastián (home of the famous Basque burnt cheesecake) and the wider Basque Country, the pintxos bars of the old town represent one of the great eating experiences in Europe. You move from bar to bar, point at things on the counter, eat standing up with a glass of txakoli, and repeat. The anchovy on toast. The bacalao. The thing with the egg and the pepper that you can't quite identify but eat three of. Go hungry and stay for hours.
Andalucía operates on a different register entirely. In Seville and Cádiz, eat pescaíto frito, the mixed fried fish that arrives in a paper cone and disappears in minutes. In Granada, where tapas still come free with drinks in many bars, let the kitchen decide what you're eating. In Málaga, eat the espetos, sardines skewered and grilled over open coals on the beach, because there is no more honest or delicious expression of summer food anywhere I have been.
These three countries have fed me well for two decades. They will do the same for you.
Leave a Reply