My Favorite Foods in Paris, Berlin, Seville, Istanbul, Mexico City and Buenos Aires
By Chef Karl Wilder
People often ask me what my favorite foods are in the cities where The Chef Tours operates, and I have never been very good at giving the obvious answers. If you ask what to eat in Paris, someone will tell you croissants. Ask about Berlin and you will hear Currywurst. Seville gets you tortilla española, Istanbul gets you kebab, Mexico City gets you tacos, and Buenos Aires gets you steak.
There is nothing wrong with any of those foods. In fact, I enjoy many of them. But they are not particularly interesting answers from someone who spends his time looking at food, talking to chefs and wandering around cities. The more interesting question is what I actually find myself wanting to eat when I am there.
These are some of my favorites. They are not meant to be a definitive list of the best foods in six cities, and they certainly are not a tourist checklist. They are the foods that, for one reason or another, make me think about the place I am eating them.
Paris: A Sourdough Baguette in the 12th
There are grand restaurants in Paris that deserve all the attention they receive, but one of my favorite things to eat in the city is much more modest. It is a sourdough baguette from a tiny, charming shop in the 12th arrondissement that is only open four days a week.
That is about as Parisian as it gets for me.
There is something wonderful about a bakery that does not seem to be operating for the convenience of tourists. You have to know when it is open, you have to find it and you have to get there. Then you walk away with a baguette that is still doing all the things a great baguette should do: a proper crust, a chewy interior and the slightly tangy character that comes from good fermentation.
I like tearing pieces off as I walk. I do not need butter, cheese or anything else. Good bread should be able to make you stop walking for a moment.
The 12th is also one of the reasons I like getting away from the postcard version of Paris. Around Marché d’Aligre and Marché Beauvau, you get a sense of the everyday food life of the city. You see the produce, cheese, seafood, charcuterie and other ingredients that people actually buy, rather than simply seeing the finished dishes that have been selected for visitors.
That is a big part of what Chef Sophie Brissaud brings to The Chef Tours. Her French Market Tour is not simply a trip around Marché d’Aligre collecting things to eat. Sophie understands the market as part of French food culture, and she knows how to explain what you are seeing, what is seasonal and why the market matters.
Chef PJ Hayes brings a different side of Paris to his experiences in Montmartre. What connects the two is that neither approach treats food as a collection of disconnected tastings. The food is a way into the city.
For more on the foods I think travelers should look for in Paris, I wrote What to Eat in Paris: A Chef’s Guide to the Food You Should Try and Where to Find It.
Berlin: Königsberger Klopse
I am deliberately not putting Currywurst here. I have eaten it, of course, but it is not something I would choose as one of my favourite Berlin foods. If I am honest, I hate the stuff. Good sausage does not need ketchup and curry powder, and bad sausage is not improved by their addition.
I would much rather talk about Königsberger Klopse.
These are meatballs traditionally associated with the old Prussian city of Königsberg, now Kaliningrad, and they became part of Berlin’s culinary history as people and traditions moved around the region. The meatballs are poached rather than fried and served with a creamy sauce sharpened with capers and lemon.
It is a completely different experience from the Berlin food most visitors expect. There is nothing particularly flashy about it. It is old-fashioned, slightly strange if you are not accustomed to it, and deeply connected to the history of the region. That is exactly why I like it.
Berlin’s food history is full of things that do not fit neatly into a modern tourist guide. The city has been divided, rebuilt, repopulated and transformed repeatedly, and its food reflects that history. You can see it in traditional German dishes, Turkish cooking, Vietnamese food and the many other cuisines brought to Berlin by successive waves of immigration.
Another favorite of mine is Leber Berliner Art, fried calf’s liver served with onions, often alongside mashed potatoes and apples. It is another dish that tells you more about old Berlin than a trendy restaurant menu does.
Berlin’s food identity is not one dish. It is the collision of many food cultures, which is one of the reasons I find the city so interesting.
Current Berlin food references still describe Königsberger Klopse as one of the city’s historically layered dishes, while Berlin’s broader culinary identity continues to reflect both traditional German cooking and the cuisines brought by immigrant communities.
Seville: Espinacas con Garbanzos
This is where I really object to the standard tourist list.
Yes, I like tortilla española. Yes, I like jamón. Yes, I like tapas. But if you ask me about a dish that really captures something I enjoy about eating in Seville, I would point you toward espinacas con garbanzos.
Spinach and chickpeas does not sound like the dish that is going to change your life.
In Seville, this simple combination can become deeply satisfying. The spinach, chickpeas, garlic, spices and olive oil come together into something earthy and substantial, and it makes sense as part of a meal that is shared across a table rather than presented as some grand culinary statement.
I also look for carrillada, the slow-cooked pork or beef cheeks that you find in Andalusian cooking. When they are properly prepared, they have that wonderful combination of tenderness and concentrated flavor that comes from giving a tough cut the time it needs.
And then there are the smaller things that appear at a good bar: mushrooms, artichokes, grilled vegetables, fish, pork, little plates of whatever the kitchen is doing particularly well that day.
This is why I like tapas culture in Seville. The interesting meal is often not one famous dish. It is the accumulation of several dishes that tell you what the kitchen is good at.
You can learn more about Andalusian food and Seville’s culinary traditions through Visit Seville’s official tourism site, but once you are there, I would spend less time looking at lists and more time looking at what is actually coming out of the kitchens.
Our Seville experiences take the same approach. Food is the way in, but the goal is understanding the city.
Istanbul: Kokoreç
Istanbul has some famous foods that I absolutely love, but one of the foods I find most interesting is kokoreç.
Kokoreç is made from seasoned lamb offal wrapped around intestines, traditionally cooked over a charcoal grill and chopped before being served, often in bread. It is not the food I would necessarily recommend to someone who has just arrived in Turkey and wants something completely familiar.
It is street food with history, technique and a very particular relationship to the way Istanbul eats. When it is good, the exterior is charred, the interior is rich and intensely savory, and the seasoning cuts through the richness.
Another favorite is hamsi when it is in season. These small Black Sea anchovies are enormously important in Turkish food culture, particularly around the Black Sea, and you will encounter them in Istanbul in preparations that are much more interesting than the generic idea of “fried fish.”
I also love the enormous world of meze, particularly the dishes that do not immediately announce themselves to foreign visitors. This is where you can spend an evening discovering things rather than ordering the three Turkish dishes you already recognize.
Istanbul rewards curiosity. The city’s geography alone tells you something about its food. The Bosphorus, the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmara, the markets and the migration of people through the city have all left their mark.
That is part of what we explore through Kadıköy Confidential, where Chef Feyzanur Demircan brings her own culinary perspective to one of the city’s most interesting food neighborhoods.
Mexico City: Huaraches
Mexico City is almost impossible to reduce to a handful of foods, but if I had to choose something that many visitors overlook, I would go for a good huarache.
Not the shoe. The food.
A huarache is a long, oval piece of masa that is cooked on the griddle and then topped with things such as beans, meat, cheese, salsa or other ingredients. It is substantial, inexpensive and wonderfully connected to the everyday cooking of Mexico City.
What I particularly like is that it starts with masa. That immediately puts you into a much deeper part of Mexican food culture than simply asking what taco you should eat.
I also have a soft spot for the torta de tamal, sometimes called a guajolota. A tamale stuffed into a bread roll sounds almost absurd until you are standing on a Mexico City street in the morning and realize that it is exactly what you want for breakfast.
The city’s own tourism site describes the tamale torta as a distinctly Mexico City variation, and its street-food guidance also points visitors toward tacos de guisado, tamales and tortas as part of everyday capitalino food culture.
Then there are the enormous neighborhood antojitos. Iztacalco, for example, has a reputation for huge neighborhood foods, including enormous huaraches, giant tortas and other dishes that are far removed from the polished restaurant version of Mexican food. The city’s official tourism site describes the borough as a particularly strong destination for this kind of neighborhood cooking.
That is the Mexico City I want to eat.
Of course I eat tacos. Everyone should. But if you come to Mexico City and spend the entire trip eating the same three types of taco, you have missed an enormous amount of the city’s food culture.
Chef Jorge Dávalos brings that broader perspective to Mexico City Confidential. His background as a culinary instructor and chef makes the experience about understanding Mexican food rather than simply ticking dishes off a list.
Buenos Aires: Fugazzeta
Buenos Aires is where the obvious answer is almost impossible to avoid. Argentine beef is extraordinary, and I am certainly not going to pretend otherwise.
But my favorite less-obvious food in Buenos Aires may be fugazzeta.
It is a Buenos Aires-style pizza, but that description does not really do it justice. It is heavily loaded with cheese and onions, and the style reflects the enormous Italian influence on Argentine food. It is rich, substantial and completely different from what many visitors expect when they think about Argentine cuisine.
That Italian influence is one of the things I find most fascinating about Buenos Aires. You can eat a steak and think you understand the city’s food culture, but then you encounter pizza, pasta, milanesa, fainá and all the other foods that reveal the migration that shaped the city.
I also love provoleta. It is familiar to anyone who knows Argentine food, but it remains one of those dishes I order because grilled cheese is a pretty difficult thing to argue with. The trick is getting it properly browned outside while keeping the center soft and molten.
And I would never leave Buenos Aires without eating an empanada or two. Not because they are exotic, but because they are one of those foods that can tell you where you are and what sort of kitchen you are eating from.
The city’s official tourism information is useful for understanding the range of culinary influences in Buenos Aires, including the Italian and other immigrant traditions that became part of the city’s food culture.
That is also what interests me about Buenos Aires Confidential. The food is only the beginning. Buenos Aires makes much more sense when you start looking at the people and migrations behind what is on the plate.
Why I Prefer the Less Obvious Foods
The foods I have chosen here are not necessarily the foods I would tell every first-time visitor to eat. That is not really the point.
There is a place for the famous dishes. If you are in Mexico City, eat tacos. If you are in Buenos Aires, eat beef. If you are in Istanbul, eat kebab. If you are in Paris, eat bread and cheese. You would be foolish to avoid the things a city does exceptionally well simply because tourists also like them.
But stop there, and you are only getting the introduction. The interesting part starts when you ask what else people eat.
What does somebody order when they have lived there for twenty years? What does the person behind the counter eat after work? What is the dish that has almost disappeared? What is the neighborhood specialty that never made it onto an international list? What food tells you something about immigration, history, religion, geography or the changing seasons?
Those are the questions that lead me toward the foods I remember.
Food Is a Way Into the City
One of the reasons we built The Chef Tours around chefs rather than generic guides is that food makes a very good doorway into a city.
A chef can tell you why an ingredient matters. They can explain what you are looking at in a market. They can tell you why one preparation is traditional and another is a newer interpretation. More importantly, they can connect the food to people and stories.
That is what I want from food when I travel.
I do not need every meal to be extraordinary. I want some meals to be ordinary but meaningful. I want to understand why people eat something, where it came from and what it says about the place.
The best food in a city is not always the most famous food.
Sometimes it is a sourdough baguette from a tiny shop in Paris that happens to be closed three days a week. Sometimes it is an old Prussian meatball in Berlin. Sometimes it is spinach and chickpeas in Seville, kokoreç in Istanbul, a huarache in Mexico City or a slice of fugazzeta in Buenos Aires.
Those foods may not make the cover of every guidebook.
They are exactly the foods I want to keep looking for.
Frequently Asked Questions About Food in Our Six Cities
What are Chef Karl Wilder’s favorite foods in Paris?
One of Karl Wilder’s favorite foods in Paris is a sourdough baguette from a small shop in the 12th arrondissement that is only open four days a week. He also enjoys exploring Paris markets, particularly Marché d’Aligre and Marché Beauvau, as a way of understanding French food culture.
What is a less touristy food to try in Berlin?
Königsberger Klopse is a good choice for travelers who want something beyond Berlin’s most famous street foods. The dish has historical connections to Prussia and consists of poached meatballs served with a creamy caper and lemon sauce.
What should I eat in Seville besides tortilla?
Try dishes such as espinacas con garbanzos, a traditional combination of spinach and chickpeas, or carrillada, slow-cooked pork or beef cheeks. Seville is particularly rewarding when you explore individual tapas rather than looking only for the city’s most famous dishes.
What is a less common food to try in Istanbul?
Kokoreç is one of Istanbul’s more distinctive foods. It is made from seasoned lamb offal and grilled before being chopped and served, often in bread. It is a very different experience from the standard kebab recommendations.
What should I eat in Mexico City besides tacos?
Try a huarache or a tamale torta. Both are deeply connected to everyday Mexico City food culture, and the city’s official tourism information specifically identifies tamale tortas, tacos de guisado and other neighborhood foods as part of the city’s street-food tradition.
What should I eat in Buenos Aires besides steak?
Look for fugazzeta, provoleta, empanadas and milanesa. These foods reveal the Italian and other immigrant influences that are central to Buenos Aires food culture rather than reducing the city entirely to beef and Malbec.
Why does The Chef Tours focus on chefs?
Because chefs understand food from the inside. They can talk about ingredients, techniques, traditions and the reasons behind what people eat. At The Chef Tours, food is the excuse, but human connection is the experience.