EYW Blog

Black sheng jian bao, a modern twist on a Shanghai classic

Shanghai is the biggest, and some would say most incredible, city in China. It’s such a vibrant and fast-paced place, it’s no wonder Shanghai cuisine emphasizes snack foods and street eats: Here, you can grab a bite at almost any time of the day. To celebrate that, here are 10 of our favorite street eats and snacks in Shanghai.

All photos by Eating Adventures.

Xiao Long Bao (Soup Dumplings)

Xiao long bao was first made in a dim sum shop in Shanghai in 1871. It is one of the few Shanghainese specialties that have become well known around the world (particularly in New York City, where locals have adopted the dish as...

These egg waffles are one of Hong Kong's iconic street foods.

It’s no secret that Hong Kong is a foodie’s mecca. Local Hong Kongers take their food so seriously that people greet each other with the phrase nei sek faan meia: “Have you eaten yet?”

With one of the highest densities of restaurants in the world, visitors are spoiled for choice. Which creates a problem we’d all like to have: Where to start? Here are our tips for 10 must-try foods in Hong Kong:


All photos by Eating Adventures except where indicated.

Roast Goose

Once you’ve had great roast goose there is no turning back—you’ll forever be haunted by the search for more. Goose has succulent red meat, and when...

Photo: Pavel L Photo and Video/Shutterstock

When you first travel to a new place, the sights, smells, and sounds are often so new that there’s no question you are somewhere you’ve never been before. Traffic and language sound different. The lights, colors, architecture, cars, and clothing are all worthy of increased attention. The smell of the air itself can even indicate that you’ve arrived somewhere foreign and different.

While these senses all combine to highlight the new wonders that await you, it’s often, of course, when you sit down to a meal in a brand-new place that you truly discover the un-nameable heart and soul of wherever you are. Nowhere is this truer than in...

Our destination spotlight on Charleston features some of our favorite Lowcountry dishes, but that’s not all: Stay tuned this week for a slew of fun Charlestonian giveaways across all our social media channels—follow #EYWCharleston to find them! Our first one is here: Leave a comment to enter to win a package of benne wafers, Charleston’s signature sesame-seed cookie, courtesy of Southern Sisters Bakery.  [Contest is now closed; see comments for winner!]

Charleston is a real pleasure to eat in. It’s a pleasure for the other senses, too—the gorgeous 200-year-old homes; the long, flat, ideal-for-strolling coastlines; the salty, swampy breezes—but food is a definite draw down here, and...

Just in time for the FIFA World Cup opener on June 12, our paulista writer dishes on what to eat and where in São Paulo, Brazil.

São Paulo skyline. Photo: Filipe Frazao/Shutterstock.com

Anthony Bourdain is not a big fan of São Paulo: According to him, the biggest city in Brazil “feels like Los Angeles threw up on New York.” It’s true that to fall in love with this place, you have to look past the jammed traffic and the concrete jungle. But once you do, you’ll discover a city that never sleeps, with many museums, theaters, lively nightlife, and terrific food, the complexity of flavors tucked into nooks and crannies, contributed by the Portuguese, the Italian, and a host of other...

This destination spotlight crosses the globe to Cebu, in the central Philippines, an appealing destination for business travelers, beachgoers—and people who like to eat. Our writer, a Cebu resident, demonstrates why in our 20-dish-strong Cebu guide. Here’s a taste.

Camotes Islands, Cebu, two hours by boat off the mainland. Photos by Mona Polo

Located in the center of the 7,107 islands that make up the Philippines, Cebu (“se-boo”) is a tropical playground disguised as a business hub…or is it the other way around? Cebu the island—the province and cosmopolitan capital city share the same name as well—is 156 miles and just 28.8 miles at its widest, so travelers for pleasure or...

Banana vendor in Kampong Chhnang province, Cambodia. Photos by Glynn Pogue

As I slurped up the last bit of spicy broth from my lunch of ramen noodle and bok choy, I felt full and satisfied. That is, until I took a final look at my bowl: Hiding at the bottom, alongside a few stray bean sprouts, was an indiscernible hunk of fatty flesh on bone. Chicken? Beef? Pork? My contentment quickly dissipated. What on Earth did I just eat?

I've been a vegetarian for 13 years, a pretty significant part of my life. I'm now in Cambodia in the Peace Corps, and when I first applied, I was warned that one of the unwavering rules is to be open to whatever challenges and new experiences come your...

Piment, in Réunion. Photo by Jessie Beck

Mention Réunion to most Anglophone travelers, and they’ll shake their heads: “Where?” Do the same at a dinner table full of travel-savvy French and you’re more likely to evoke a chorus of oohs before the conversation turns to tropical weather, volcanoes, and—most important—la cuisine creole.

Île de la Réunion, a little island outpost of France, sits in a lonely spot in the Indian Ocean, far from any mainland but comfortably nestled between Madagascar and Mauritius. Though technically considered an African island, visitors would be hard-pressed to identify the island’s personality, culture, and cuisine as purely African. Instead, its unique...

Inside the now-defunct Billy's Cafe, Fall River. Photos by Scott Rosen.

Fall River, Massachusetts, is the kind of town most people drive through to get someplace else. Once a center of textile manufacturing, it’s long since fallen on rough economic times, and is now rather gray and desolate in stretches, even despite the picturesque Braga Bridge and “Gates of the City,” the latter a gift from its sister city in the Azores. For us, it’s usually a pit stop en route to Cape Cod. Fortunately, there’s always been something in Fall River that makes pulling off the highway worth our while: killer Portuguese food.

Pastéis de nata from a Fall River bakery

Fall River, along with other...

Nem, a spring roll-like street food in Madagascar.

Near the daily market of Antsirabe, the pleasant hillside town of Madagascar’s highlands (and third-largest city in the country), women with enormous bowls of batter sit next to sizzling pots of oil over low charcoal stoves. While crouching or sitting on wooden stools, they fan their flames and plop their freshly fried goods into mountainous piles of steaming fresh snacks. Also lining the streets are small display boxes filled with bowls of breads, noodles, salads, even spaghetti. Other vendors mingle with the crowd, hawking their wares to shoppers while balancing plastic containers atop their heads. While the Malagasy staple...

In teeny Rhode Island, our usual city spotlight becomes a state spotlight—and what a state for local food it is. Hot wiener with coffee milk, anyone?  

Local seafood in Providence

We’d heard of the hot dog with the funny name—the New York system—likely from a TV show over the years. But that was pretty much the extent of our knowledge, pre-research, of typical Rhode Island eats. Then we heard from Dayna, a family friend and Cranston local whom we’d emailed for initial ideas. She replied with a laundry list of “oddies,” as she called them, and nearly introduced us to a whole new vocabulary in the process: gaggahs with the works, awful awful, doughboys, stuffies. Is Rhode Island...

Montserrat in Catalonia, Spain (photo: Laura Siciliano-Rosen).

It’s no secret that Spain is home to a rich culinary landscape. From sprawling vineyards to thriving fisheries and lush mountains teeming with life, the diversity of natural resources here is staggering. Perhaps nowhere is the richness of Spanish gastronomy better exemplified than in Catalonia, in northeast Spain. This region’s unique fusion of flavors takes full advantage of the local mar i muntanya (sea and mountain) while also incorporating culinary influences from nearby France, Italy, Greece, Portugal, and Africa. And although tomato, olives, aubergine, and bolets (mushrooms) may be the first foods to come to mind...

Traditional dishes from Zirita, a culinary workshop, in Morelia.

Morelia, capital of the state of Michoacán, Mexico, is quietly beautiful, the kind of pretty where the dowdy female lead takes off her glasses, shakes out her ponytail, and wows the guy at the end of a rom-com. The food, though, is exactly the opposite: It’s the mean girl with the tiny waist who knows how to wield a fierce high heel—or, in Morelia’s case, a fierce tamale. A recent eating whirlwind through the historic center, a UNESCO World Heritage site sprinkled with pale pink stones, revealed a ferocious food culture: hot with chile negro, strong with the bold flavors of local fruits and vegetables, and woven...

The French Riviera is known for its beaches, yachts, and famous film festival, but its largest town, Nice, is also a dream destination for foodies. An abundance of produce thrives in the mild Mediterranean climate; picturesque farmers markets and reputed local restaurants offer a feast for the eyes as well as the taste buds. While the salade Niçoise is Nice’s most-traveled dish, the jewel in the Côte d’Azur’s glittering crown has an abundance of lesser-known local specialties just waiting to be discovered by hungry visitors.

La Socca
The definitive Niçois snack, la socca is best served as an aperitif with a chilled glass of Côtes de Provence rosé. No knife and fork required,...

View of Avignon's famous broken bridge and Villeneuve-lès-Avignon beyond.
All photos by Naomi Bishop

Avignon is the sweetheart town of the Provence region of France, its historic buildings and papal mansions held fast within the 14th-century ramparts. Local cuisine is, like elsewhere in France, a product of the terroir: Beyond the old city walls, the region’s Mediterranean climate lends warmth, sunshine, and just a little rain—idyllic conditions for vegetable growing—while the proximity of the Med to the south offers dream-worthy seafood spreads. Cultural influences from Spain to the west and the rest of France to the north mean that the superior ingredients are put to creative...

The perfect hotel view, in Sinop

Jutting out into the Black Sea on Turkey’s north coast, pretty Sinop is a water-lover’s retreat with its expansive sea views and picturesque harbor, bobbing with boats. It’s a gem along this stretch of coast, its idyllic setting boasting a small-town yet cosmopolitan atmosphere and, beyond that, a whole lot of living history: Walk the crumbling city walls, dating to around 72 BC, for some of the best views in town; poke around the active harbor for a taste of what the city’s trading-port past might’ve been like, millennia ago. But there’s another reason to make the trip up here: the food. Fishmongers abound, and their freshly caught wares spill out...

The spread at Seng Cheong [All photos by Juliana Loh].

In this guest post, Juliana Loh relays her itinerary for taking “heavyweight food friends from Hong Kong” out to eat in Macau for exactly 12 hours. Because it was during the Chinese New Year holidays, some of her favorite spots were closed, but she came up with great alternatives as needed—all listed here, should you ever have a 12-hour layover in Macau.

Pork chop buns at Tai Lei Loi Kei (called “Da Li Lai” in Mandarin)
In Taipa—the smaller of Macau’s two islands—this place is an institution. It used to have an outdoor eating area where people sit to eat pork chop buns, slurp noodles, and nibble on their curry fishball...

A city spotlight on Dakar, Senegal’s sultry capital city, where French, Wolof, and North African influence meets local ingredients in the kitchen—and on the street.

Hand-carved pirogues on the beach in Ngor, in Dakar

Perched on the edge of West Africa, Senegal has long gone quietly about its business while its neighbors get into all sorts of trouble. Quietly, of course, is a misleading word in the context of Dakar, the sultry capital city and dust-ridden domain of all-night music clubs, infamous traffic, relentless hustlers, and nonstop construction, where the dead silence of night is regularly punctured by soaring muezzin calls to mosque.

And then there’s the food. Among other...

Our immediate impressions of Tiwai Island, a wildlife sanctuary/research facility and community-led conservation initiative in Sierra Leone’s southeast, weren’t the best: Here we found ourselves on a hot, buggy tropical island in the isolated Moa River, with two very quiet nights ahead. The common area for guests, a large domed, open-sided solar-powered hut in the middle of a forest clearing, offered little distraction other than an information board and a few wooden tables. Same for the simple wood-roofed platforms, each holding one or two tents, dotting the clearing’s perimeter. Scott and I had been relatively unplugged since arriving in Sierra Leone a week and a half earlier, but...

Our latest city spotlight turns north to Montréal, where French-Québécois comfort food meets cosmopolitan nose-to-tail dining, innovative microbreweries, and old-school Jewish classics.

The flower market outside Marché Atwater

Montréal, just 330 miles north of New York City, is an increasingly exciting place to be, whether it’s live music, cultural festivals, contemporary art, boutique shopping, or food and drink you’re after. We are predisposed to favor the latter, naturally, and Canada’s second-largest city, with its ethnic diversity and rich (if tumultuous) Franco- and Anglophone history, does not disappoint. Start by exploring the most regional of Québécois foods—the meat...

In a new series of city spotlights, we’ll sum up in quick bloggy format the essential dishes of destinations we cover in full elsewhere. Think of them as teasers, or perhaps appetizers for more! First up is one of our more recently covered cities, New Haven, Connecticut, an iconic pizza town with some hidden gems to boot.

The New Haven Green

New Haven has an affinity for the old. This is, after all, a nearly 375-year-old New England city, with all the usual hallmarks: an Ivy League university (Yale); ­a spacious Puritan-constructed downtown “green,” or grassy town square; graceful if peeling Victorian architecture; even a nickname after trees (Elm City). Fortunately, that respect...

In New Zealand, meat pies are an iconic snack, certainly a must-eat for visitors and, it seems, an important part of any college student’s diet. Guest writer Noella Schink, who did her own research while studying abroad, shares her five favorite pie shops in Auckland. 

Photo: Wesley Fryer/Flickr

During college, I took a semester abroad in Auckland, New Zealand. Now, there were many memorable aspects of those six months, but what stayed with me the most were the meat pies. I mean, they literally stayed with me. Around my waistline. I couldn’t help it; they were so delicious. Some days I’d have two! Here is a rundown of the best spots to taste these devilish pastries when you...