Nicaragua

Nicaragua wakes up to gallo pinto, rice and red beans fried together and eaten with egg, tortilla and fried cheese — the daily staple, and turning up again at other meals. The cooking is built on corn and plantain: masa into tortillas and the hefty banana-leaf nacatamal, plantain fried green or ripe. Granada claims the birthplace of vigorón, boiled yuca under pork crackling and a tangy cabbage slaw served on a banana leaf, while roadside stands near Nagarote turn out quesillo, a warm tortilla wrapped around stringy cheese and soured cream.

There's a sharp east-west split: the Spanish-and-indigenous Pacific versus the Afro-Caribbean and Miskito coast, where rondón simmers fish and root vegetables in coconut milk. After dark, fritanga grills fill the streets with meat, plantain and gallo pinto. Drink a toasted-corn pinolillo, or a glass of world-class Flor de Caña rum.