About Map of Dishes

Map of Dishes is a world food map made as a hobby, with no ads and no sales. Its only aim is to put the signature dishes of every country on one map, with each name shown the way locals write it, how it is said, and where the dish comes from.

What counts as a signature dish

For each country we keep three to five dishes that began in that country or region and that locals treat as their own. Dishes eaten the same way everywhere are left out. When two countries claim a dish, its history says so. The map starts with 68 countries and 267 dishes and grows country by country.

Tags: when it is eaten, taste and ingredients

Every dish is tagged with when people usually eat it (breakfast, lunch and dinner, teatime, snack, late night or festive), its main tastes and its main ingredients. We set these tags from the same sources as the history; they describe the usual way the dish is eaten at home, not every version.

Pronunciation

Every dish has its name in the local script, the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and a simple English spelling. Where a native speaker has published a recording on Wikimedia Commons under a free licence, you can play it; 26 dishes have one today. We do not use computer-generated voices, so a dish without a recording says so.

Histories and sources

We write every history in our own words after reading at least two public sources, usually the English and the local-language encyclopedia articles on the dish, and list them with the date we read them. Stories that cannot be proved, such as most tales about who invented a dish, are written as legends. If you spot a mistake, please tell us.

Languages

The map is in English, Simplified Chinese, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. The Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese texts were drafted with the help of AI from our English texts and have not yet been reviewed by native speakers; corrections are welcome.

Photos and maps

The photos come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Each one names its author and licence under the picture and links to the original. We crop them to fit the map. Country and region borders come from Natural Earth, which is in the public domain.

Contact: contact@mapofdishes.com. If something on this site is hard to use with assistive technology, email us too.