I'm nostalgic for the massive (butter) nan that seems specific to Japan.

I cast a dirty hipster vote for Portland, OR and Austin, TX.

Tokyo and Hong Kong. Haven't had a bad meal at either places.

I just had some great Italian, Greek, British and US (Burger, Grilled Cheese Sandwich) food in Manchester. Also plenty of genuine Indian/Pakistani food around.

Surely not the best city in the world for food, but I was positively surprised.

IME, Portland is very good, although the seafood isn't as good as I thought it would be. Austin is overrated...went to The Carillon (what would rank as fine dining) and came away relative disappointed. Solid cuisine, but if I had to spend more time in the south, NoLa is miles ahead.

Austin's cuisine isn't in its fine dining establishments, it's in barbecue joints and anonymous taco shacks and strip-mall Vietnamese restaurants.

Austin is best experienced with a spicy curry at Thai Kun and some mezcal at Whisler's, followed by walking down the street for two-stepping at The White Horse and copious servings from Bomb Taco in the courtyard. Then you nurse the hangover with migas tacos from Veracruz All-Natural and get in line for barbecue.

There are a lot of overrated restaurants in Austin but the city itself holds up well.

Agree. Still yet to visit them but people rave about them.

Both Hong Kong and Tokyo (and Japan in generally) are worth the visit for the food alone.

That said, don't stick to sushi and ramen. Obviously sushi and ramen are very good in Tokyo, but Japan has so much more to offer than just raw fish and noodles.

Same goes for pretty much any major city on the globe, which is why I don't think you can name a best city in the world for food.

I have some rules of thumb about culinary tourism:

1) I'll research local demographics to see if there are any expat neighborhoods without a strong presence in my home city (NYC). For example, Marseilles has a decent amount of Comorans (i.e. from Comoros). Whereas a Comoran restaurant may not be listed online - at least, not in a language I understand - I'll ask the tourism bureau/do a search for Comoran neighborhoods, and hope that a Comoran place to eat exists.

2) You've also got the regional cuisines from a country. Tokyo might introduce you to an Okinawan or Hokkaido eatery, or a Kagoshima food fair; Shenzhen, China must be one of the greatest places in China to sample food from throughout that country.

3) The capital isn't always the best place for variety. I cite Dubai/Abu Dhabi as one example. But merely having an international presence doesn't guarantee quality all-around either.

Some limitations to this in my experience as many times some crucial herbs, spices or other ingredients are lacking when not on "home ground"

A Sichuan restaurant in Shenzhen might not put certain mountain veggies in the noodle soup for cost reasons, a Hokkaido ramenya in Tokyo replace original ingredients with cheaper ones due to the high rent or a Seoul outpost of Jeollanam cuisine cut the side dishes to half for the same reason.

Smart cooks night localize ingredients completely and just use their home area cooking style and skills to present tasty dishes.

Ah yes, terroir. Well, I lament this during my usual visits to Indonesian restaurants in Queens (NYC)...can't get those tropical items fresh, though some greenhouses/farmers are growing bird's eye chilies (naturally, those things don't come cheap for buyers).

At the same time, it's not as if an "Okinawan" izakaya or restaurant in Tokyo or a Beifang dumpling place in Shenzhen will be completely untrue to their names. The opposite example of this was a Georgian restaurant in Moscow...sort of. The Russian menu listed khachapuri and khinkhali, while the English one had hamburgers and pizza.