Six Under-the-radar Culinary Destinations to Visit Next

An agricultural scientist coaxing wine from an Andean tuber he has spent a career preserving. A pickle shop in Istanbul, its jars stacked floor to ceiling. An oyster pit in the Netherlands at low tide, where a farmer passes you a shell still cold from the water.The best food travel experiences are not always found in the world’s most obvious culinary capitals. From overlooked regional specialties to deeply rooted local food traditions, these six under-the-radar food destinations invite curious travellers to taste a place more intimately. Some are known for landscapes, history or adventure; others have barely registered on the culinary map. With B&amp;R, you can experience each through the people, ingredients and meals that make it unforgettable.

<h3>Croatia: For the Long Table Traveller</h3>Croatia's best meals rarely happen in a restaurant. They happen in a winemaker's private courtyard, or at a farmhouse table piled with pršut sliced paper-thin, wild olives, and cheese so local it never sees a shop shelf. On our <a href="https://www.butterfield.com/trip/bespoke/croatia-bespoke">Croatia Bespoke</a> journey, you'll hike and cycle your way from vineyard to village through the Pelješac Peninsula and beyond, stopping wherever a table's been set—a private tasting menu at your villa with the Adriatic at your back, or coffee that turns into an hour of stories with a farmer who's worked the same hillside for decades. It's less a food tour than an open door, and Croatia keeps opening it.Perfect for: Cheese-and-charcuterie loyalists, wine-country wanderers, and travellers who'd rather sit with a local than read a menu.

Croatia

<h3>British Columbia: For the Locavore</h3>Some of the best eating on this list needs no ocean crossing. British Columbia has built one of North America’s most compelling local food scenes, fed by its own farms, forests and fishing boats. On a<a href="https://www.butterfield.com/trip/bespoke/british-columbia-bespoke">&nbsp;Bespoke journey through British Columbia</a>, you'll travel from Vancouver to Tofino on a list built by a chef who has spent years eating his way along this coast. In Vancouver, that means dinner at Nightingale, where David Hawksworth puts the province on the plate. On Vancouver Island, it means Wolf in the Fog, a Tofino kitchen known as much for its cooking as for the Christmas dinner it puts on for the entire town, free, every year.&nbsp;Perfect for: Locavores, seafood lovers and travellers who'd rather fly five hours than 15.

<h3>Türkiye: For the Adventurous Eater</h3>Istanbul gets written about constantly, though rarely past its best-known tables. The city's real food culture lives in its back lanes, and a<a href="https://www.butterfield.com/trip/bespoke/turkiye-bespoke">&nbsp;Bespoke journey through Türkiye</a> is built to get you there. On a culinary walk through the city you'll step into a turşucu, a traditional pickle shop that has clearly never met a vegetable it wouldn't submerge—cabbage, beetroot, green plums, whole chillies. Bodrum gets the same treatment, back streets ahead of the waterfront. Our partners here can set a table where no restaurant could, like dinner in the ancient city of Knidos among ruins at the tip of the peninsula with the sea on three sides.Perfect for: Market browsers, brine enthusiasts and travellers who order what they can't pronounce.

Turkiye

<h3>Vietnam, Laos &amp; Cambodia: For the Spontaneous Eater</h3>Southeast Asia's street food is famous. What's rarer is knowing which stall, which morning, which market is worth stopping the ride for. We started bringing travellers to Vietnam in 1999, and our local partners in each country have been with us for much of the journey since. On our <a href="https://www.butterfield.com/trip/small-group/vietnam-laos-cambodia-multi-active">Vietnam, Laos &amp; Cambodia Multi-Active</a> journey, you'll walk and kayak through the north before switching to two wheels for the rest of the region. The days are built to leave room, so when your guide knows the stall that cuts its rice noodles by hand each morning, and the roadside market worth an unscheduled visit, you go. Those detours? The meals you describe first when you're back home.Perfect for: Street-food lovers, market wanderers and diners who trust the detour.

Viet

<h3>Peru: For the Curious Palate</h3>Lima’s dining rooms have earned their place on the world’s best restaurant lists. The ingredients that made them famous come from much further afield. Our&nbsp;<a href="https://www.butterfield.com/2027-limited-edition-peru">2027 Limited Edition Peru</a> journeys follow them in both directions. Shop a Lima market in the morning, then cook what you bought that afternoon in the host chef's kitchen with the Pacific shimmering out the window. Dinner is at Kjölle, where Pía León, one of Latin America’s best chefs, builds her menus from ingredients most kitchens never see. Inland, the sourcing gets more direct.&nbsp;On a Sacred Valley farm, stones heat in a fire, food goes into the ground on top of them and lunch surfaces hours later—a pachamanca. Nearby, you'll meet Manuel Choqque, an agricultural scientist who has made a career of saving native Andean potatoes and tubers from disappearing, and who turns the root vegetable oca into wine on the side. Later comes a picantería lunch in Arequipa, one of the city’s traditional spice-driven eateries, and an Amazon stretch serving ingredients that have never travelled further than the riverbank.Perfect for: Food-obsessed travellers, curious cooks and anyone who wants to meet the hands behind the harvest.

Peru

<h3>The Netherlands: For the Happy Contrarian</h3>The Netherlands rarely turns up on a culinary shortlist, which says more about the shortlists than the country. A coastline built for shellfish, farms that have been making cheese for centuries and a distilling tradition older than gin all argue otherwise. On our<a href="https://www.butterfield.com/trip/small-group/netherlands-biking">&nbsp;Netherlands Biking</a> trip, you'll ride between them. Order a savoury pannekoek, the traditional Dutch pancake, taste Gouda-style wheels at the farm that pressed them, and raise a glass of jenever, the juniper spirit the Dutch were distilling before anyone thought to call it gin. On Zeeland’s coast, you’ll enjoy oysters lifted from the pits where they’re grown. And dinner is at two Michelin-starred Inter Scaldes, the country's benchmark table for decades, where a full tasting menu comes with a look at the kitchen in action.Perfect for: Oyster lovers, cheese people, cyclists and travellers who enjoy being proven wrong.Six destinations, six different arguments for travelling by appetite. From oca wine in Peru’s Sacred Valley and hand-cut rice noodles in Vietnam to Zeeland oysters and a Tofino dining room in December, these are food travel experiences that reveal a place from the inside out. Where do you want to eat first?

Netherlands

Travel beyond the usual food capitals to these five culinary destinations. From zeeland to tofino, these active luxury journeys are built around what's on the plate.

Six Under-the-radar Culinary Destinations to Visit Next

By Butterfield & Robinson

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