City Taste Test Guides

What the city taste test guides contain

The city taste test guides all follow one shape, so two cities can be compared directly. A taste profile on six axes shows how rich, spicy, sweet, sour, fresh and adventurous that city's food runs.

A city that scores 9 on sweet and 3 on heat is a bakery-and-fruit day; one that scores 9 on heat and sour is a grill-and-citrus day.

Then come six dishes in the order to eat them, each with what to judge and the kind of place that serves it. Nothing names a business, and there are no addresses, opening hours, exact prices or ratings of places, because all of those go stale while a dish does not. Every city page links on to the other 19 guides and to the planner, so the same list can be scored on the scorecard tool or rebuilt as a custom route around a dietary restriction.

1. Read the taste profile first to see which way the city leans.
2. Work through the six dishes in the listed order.
3. Score each dish on the four criteria as you go.
4. Compare the profile of the next city before you commit a day to it.

• A taste profile on the same 6 axes the quiz uses.
• 6 signature dishes in the order to eat them.
• What to judge in each dish, in the words you would use while eating.
• The kind of place that serves it, never a business name.
• A budget range for the day and the best window for each stop.
• An ordering note, so the first try is the right one.

Six dishes, in the order to eat them

Six dishes is not an arbitrary number. Every list covers something fried, something cooked slowly in a pot, something from a grill, something fresh or cold, something sweet, and one dish a visitor would not order without being told to.

The order runs light to heavy, and it does real work: a rich braise first flattens everything after it, and a cold dish eaten after three fried ones disappears without registering.

What to judge, and which kind of place to look for

Each dish comes with three or four things to look at rather than a paragraph: how the seasoning sits, whether the texture holds, how it behaves as it cools, what the second bite is like.

The kind of place matters as much as the dish. The guides point at trades rather than names: a stall built into a wall, a market counter, a shop with two tables, a bakery that bakes one thing. Knowing the trade is what lets you find the dish in the neighborhood you happen to wake up in.

Budgets and the best time of day

Budgets are ranges for one person eating small portions. Drinks and transport add more to a day than the food does, so leave room for both.

Timing is easy to get wrong. Most kitchens are at their best before the rush, some dishes are only worth eating in the morning, and anything fried is at its worst in the last hour of the day.

A group, two cities, or a camera

For a group, keep the walking short, drop to four or five stops once the group passes six people, and make one stop a sit-down meal so the day has somewhere to rest. Everybody scores everything, because the disagreement over the last two points is the entertainment.

Two guides read side by side are more useful than one read alone, since every city uses the same six axes. Running them on the same trip works best when their profiles point in different directions, so the second day does not taste like the first.

A guide also works as a video structure. The dish list is a shot order, the judging notes are the lines to say with the food in front of you, and the taste profile at the top is the hook.