Which countries have the best food? What UNESCO's food heritage listings show

What UNESCO's intangible heritage lists recognise, and what they do not

The 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage defines the field as practices, representations, expressions, knowledge and skills, with related objects and spaces, that communities recognise as part of their heritage. It is passed on across generations and recreated over time. Food is not named as a domain, but it fits within social practices, knowledge about nature and traditional craftsmanship.

That wording explains the pattern. UNESCO's Courier magazine notes that the lists recognise the practices behind food, meaning how it is grown, prepared and eaten, rather than the dishes or products themselves. The Mediterranean diet is not a menu; UNESCO describes it, in the words quoted below, as a set of skills, knowledge, rituals, symbols and traditions. Likewise, Neapolitan pizza appears as the art of the pizza maker, and the baguette as the know-how and culture around it.

Under Article 16 of the Convention, the Representative List is established on the proposal of the states concerned. So an entry exists only if a government and its communities decided to put it forward. That is a strength, because communities consent, and a limit, because absence says nothing about quality.

How we built the tally of food and drink elements

We started from the Wikipedia compilation of UNESCO's lists, which links every inscribed element to its UNESCO page, and picked out elements whose titles name a dish, a drink, bread, tea, coffee, wine, beer or a cooking or meal practice. We then checked the headline entries against UNESCO's own pages for the year and the countries involved, including the Mediterranean diet, washoku, kimjang, Mexican cuisine, ceviche, Italian cooking, Ceebu Jen, the flatbread tradition, Arabic coffee and cassava bread.

We left out crops, foraging and festivals whose titles do not name food as such, among them the date palm, argan, mastic, truffle hunting, shrimp fishing on horseback and summer farming. Counting them would add one or two entries to a few countries. The result is 48 elements, close to the "no fewer than fifty" culinary practices that the Courier reports. An element that appears under another name may be missing, so treat the totals as a good approximation, not an audit.

Azerbaijan, Italy, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye lead the tally

Azerbaijan has four entries: the shared flatbread tradition (2016), dolma making (2017), the shared tea culture of cay with Turkiye (2022) and tandir bread baking (2024). Italy has three: the Mediterranean diet, the art of the Neapolitan pizzaiuolo (2017) and, most recently, Italian cooking, between sustainability and biocultural diversity, inscribed in 2025. Saudi Arabia has three, covering harees, Khawlani coffee beans and the shared Arabic coffee tradition, and Turkiye has three, with Turkish coffee (2013), the flatbread tradition and cay.

Two-entry countries include France (the gastronomic meal of the French in 2010 and baguette bread in 2022), Japan (washoku in 2013 and sake making with koji mould in 2024) and South Korea (kimjang in 2013 and jang making in 2024). North Korea also has two, kimchi making and Pyongyang raengmyon. Morocco and Tunisia share couscous, with the Mediterranean diet and harissa respectively as their second entries, while Spain pairs the Mediterranean diet with Asturian cider culture (2024). Haiti, Oman and the United Arab Emirates also have two.

Foods that belong to several countries at once

Many of the best-known entries are multinational, which is why a country-by-country count can mislead. The Mediterranean diet was first recognised for Italy, Spain, Greece and Morocco in 2010, and in 2013 the listing was extended to Portugal, Cyprus and Croatia; UNESCO's page names those seven states. Couscous, listed in 2020, is shared by Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia, according to the Courier.

The flatbread-making and sharing culture of lavash, katyrma, jupka and yufka was inscribed in 2016 for five states: Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkiye. Cassava bread was inscribed in 2024 for Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Honduras and Venezuela. The Arabic coffee listing covers the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and, newly joined in the 2024 listing, Jordan. Sharing is part of the point: UNESCO treats these as living traditions held by communities across borders, not national property.

Signature entries: cuisine, a dish, a street-food culture or a meal

Single-country entries differ in what they name. Traditional Mexican cuisine was inscribed in 2010 as a whole system of ancestral and community practice. Peru's entry, from 2023, is narrower: the preparation and consumption of ceviche. Japan's washoku (2013) is described by UNESCO as a social practice based on skills, knowledge, practice and traditions, and South Korea's kimjang (2013) covers making and sharing kimchi as a collective activity.

Thailand's Tomyum Kung was inscribed in 2024 and Senegal's Ceebu Jen, a culinary art, in 2021. Lebanon's al-man'ouche is another entry, described as an emblematic culinary practice. Singapore's hawker culture, inscribed on 16 December 2020, was the country's first entry on the Representative List, according to Singapore's National Environment Agency, and what it recognises is a way of eating together in a multicultural city as much as any single dish.

France's 2010 entry shows how broad the category can be. The gastronomic meal of the French is a customary social practice for marking important moments in people's lives, so the heritage is the meal as an occasion, not a recipe.

Famous food countries with few or no entries

Because states choose what to propose, big food reputations and big tallies do not always coincide. Countries famous for their cooking can have only one entry in our tally, or none. A low count may reflect priorities in heritage policy, the scope of the nomination or the way an element is bundled, such as a regional dish folded into a wider tradition.

The opposite also holds. A country with four entries has not been proven to eat better than one with one. The lists show where communities and governments have documented and defended a food tradition, and that is a respectable thing to measure, but it is not taste, hygiene, variety or value.

Eating through a longer stay with a kitchen of your own

A heritage listing can work as a reading list. If a place has a bread or a stew on UNESCO's lists, local markets and bakeries are usually where it lives. On a stay of a week or more, an apartment with a kitchen lets you cook what you find, and our guide to cooking in an aparthotel kitchen covers the basics. If you follow a particular diet, see gluten-free travel too.

City hubs in countries with listings include Bologna, Osaka, Lima, Oaxaca City, Seoul, Istanbul and Bangkok. You can narrow to apartments with a kitchen in Bologna or in Osaka. We make no claim about any particular property or about the food in any neighbourhood.