The Top-10 Cities for Foodies

How do you decide where to travel?

There are many reasons to choose to visit one destination over another: weather, history, language, affordability, visual appeal, culture, and so on. For a growing number of travelers, food is among the top motivators. For them, it’s “Go where the eating’s good.”

So where is the eating good? Caterwings, self-described as an “online marketplace connecting customers and caterers,” has just released its 2017 Best Food Destinations Index, which attempts to answer just that question. To compile its list of the top 100 foodie cities, the company applied four criteria: the opinions of critics, accessibility and variety of food, the quality of the food, and the affordability of restaurant dining.

Here are the top 10:

  1. San Sebastian, Spain
  2. Tokyo, Japan
  3. New York City, U.S.
  4. Barcelona, Spain
  5. Singapore, Singapore
  6. Paris, France
  7. Madrid, Spain
  8. Lima, Peru
  9. London, U.K.
  10. Munich, Germany

If you’re planning a food-oriented trip, there’s a clear conclusion to be drawn from the above results: Book a flight to Spain. Of the top-10 cities, fully three are in Spain, including the highest-rated city overall, San Sebastian.

If you’re more focused on domestic destinations, New York is the obvious choice, at number three overall. Other U.S. cities on the full list include Las Vegas (number 11), Los Angeles (12), San Francisco (15), Chicago (32), Austin (36), New Orleans (50), Honolulu (53), and Houston (59).

Where to go? Now you know.

After 20 years working in the travel industry, and almost that long writing about it, Tim Winship knows a thing or two about travel. Follow him on Twitter @twinship.

This article first appeared on SmarterTravel.com, where Tim is Editor-at-Large.