Taiwan

Come hungry to a Taiwanese night market — Shilin, Raohe, Tainan's lantern-lit lanes — and graze: an oyster omelette griddled with sweet-potato starch, a folded gua bao bun packed with braised pork belly and peanut dust, the notorious hot waft of fried stinky tofu. This is Asia's street-food island, where the small eats, xiaochi, are the whole point and dinner is a dozen stalls.

The national bowl is niúròu miàn, beef noodle soup — noodles in a dark, star-anise broth under meltingly soft stewed shin — a recipe Sichuan and Shandong refugees brought in 1949. Alongside it sit the layers of Taiwan's history: Din Tai Fung's soup-filled xiao long bao, Japanese-era railway bento, Hokkien braised pork rice. And the island's gift to the world is in your other hand — bubble tea, tea shaken with chewy tapioca pearls, invented here in the 1980s and now everywhere.