I love the food in Florence (smoked salmonnnnnnnnn) and Osaka. (The rivalry between Osaka and Tokyo over okonomiyaki — a sort of Japanese pizzaish bread-based thing — is fun.) The quality of the food in Jerusalem is outstanding. I felt healthy.

I’m quite comfortable with the food in New York (and London for that matter), though.

I ate like a fiend when I went to Italy. I miss it.

Barcelona is great, as a city and for food, we had all sorts from tapas and local sea food dishes, to fantastic mexican, pizza (nicest I’ve had ever, in a really cool neighbourhood restaurant with v stern head waitress), and excellent modern european (also with cute, friendly but confused young waiting staff).

I was also amazed at the food in Flanders/East Belgium – we visited Ghent, Bruges and Antwerp, and everything we had was lush, however simple or straightforward it looked on the menu. Antwerp is the only one I would want to live in, as the other two are v small. but Ghent is very nice too. Everyone go to Ghent!

hope you had nice food in London, there’s lots to be had – as a yokel I could have given you some recs if only I’d checked your blog earlier…

My favourite food places, are places where they aren’t necessarily restaraunts, but stalls. Like Thailand. they make the world’s best noodles, and chicken and stuff there… this isn’t helping my hunger problem either. only ten more minutes until dinner.

And I need to go to Rome. It sounds amazingly awesome.

It was possible to find bad food in Bologna; for example, at the youth hostel. But much easier to find very good food.

New York has great eating too, and I’d probably rate it equal to LA if I’d spent more time there and had more opportunities to ferret out the best restaurants.

In Japan you can even get good food at convenience stores. I miss the packaged egg salad sandwiches from Japanese 7-11s right now. Generally, excellent food seems very easy to find all over Japan.

I didn’t have great luck with restaurants in Italy but the gelato and mozzarella were fantastic everywhere I went.

justine, you once mentioned in passing that all this traveling you’ve done has taught you how to find the good food in any city.

I said that? What hubris. What I prolly meant is that I’ve gotten good at doing research on it. I know who of my widely travelled friends I can trust for food recs and which guide books. Time Out’s suprisingly good. Zagat’s hit and miss. Etc. Etc. And beyond that it’s really obvious stuff like avoiding restaurants in the super touristy areas, or that are full of tourists and not locals, so places that are full to bursting with locals are often worth a shot (if you can get in). When I get chatting with locals I suss out how they talk about food and if we seem to be on the same wavelength. I also keep an eye on the annual top one hundred restaurants list and stuff like that. Cause, you know, if you don’t eat you die.

Dave H: Sorry to hear about your nonna. I don’t think any restaurant—no matter how good—can ever come close to a home cooked meal eaten with the people you love. I’d often rather cook for family and friends or have them cook for me than go to even the best restaurant in the world.

My grandmother died two years ago – during ConFusion, actually – but the Alzheimer’s had taken her away years before. It’s been at least 10 years since she was able to cook her family’s traditional Italian food. Her mother was Neapolitan and her dad was Piedmontese, so the recipes were a mixture of northern and southern Italian.

I miss that. I’ve never been able to find an Italian restaurant to match it.

justine, you once mentioned in passing that all this traveling you’ve done has taught you how to find the good food in any city. perhaps you could (in a distant future, when you’re between books, and bored) tell us of your food-hunting skillz so we learn from you? i’d love to know any tricks you have!