Italy (Venice)

Polpo

41 Beak Street
020 7734 4479

Polpo is popular. We arrived at 6.20pm and waited at the bar for seats. Peeking into the restaurant, I wondered if they were hosting a speed dating event. There's a long row of tables for two, with the teeniest of gaps between each one. Every woman faced the restaurant and every man faced the wall. We were a boy and a girl not on a date, and I felt the itch to upset the collective chivalry. I sat facing the wall. I'm a sheep.

Polpo is popular because it knows what it's doing. Service is friendly and informal, the décor is dimly-lit and moody, the food is bite-sized and perfect for sharing. Date service, date décor and date food. They played pre-Teen Dream Beach House. I can't help but be impressed.

We started with cicheti, bites of crostini, croquettes and polenta mixed with chicken liver, anchovies, cheeses, figs, cured meats and various pestos. There are ten chiceti on the menu. Ten boys, ten girls, ten plates of cicheti. Sorry, I keep thinking this is a speed dating event.

Polpo is popular but its portions are small. That's how we managed to eat a plate of taleggio cheese, a fennel and endive salad, a platter of cold meats and, the star of the show, a cuttlefish risotto - and still leave a little peckish having spent £25-30 per head. But it's hard to find fault with any of the cooking.

They handed me the bill. My friend took it and paid with her card. I must have looked like a terrible, terrible man.

England (Lancashire)

Masters Super Fish

020 7928 6924

191 Waterloo Road

The biggest names in showbiz eat at Masters Super Fish. Look at the photo. See? We sat next to an autographed photograph of Danny Blue!!!!!!

I'm not shitting you. We quite possibly sat at the same table Danny Blue once sat at. Danny "Blue Comedy" Blue, the former member of the Monster Raving Loony Party. The rebel who screams "bollocks to political correctness". The patriot who knows what the REAL national dish is ("bollocks to chicken tikka masala," he possibly says). The radical comic who's not afraid to make mother-in-law jokes. The adult entertainer who's "rude but not crude". The legendary comedian who's literally shared a stage with Jim Davidson. The proud defender of the British sense of humour. The archetypal lad's lad who hosts stag shows with busty British strippers. The man who, in his immortal words, is "innocent until proven filthy". It's Danny cocking Blue!!!!

Blue, along with numerous other Cockney micro-celebrities, eats fish and chips at Masters Super Fish. And from this day onwards, so do I. For less than a tenner, we received an eminently shareable portion of fish and chips, mushy peas, bread and butter, pickled onions, gherkins and fried prawns. The cod was perfect: crunchy, crisp and ungreasy batter, and flaky, fresh fish. The chips and tartare sauce were spot on. If I hadn't been sitting opposite a lady, I would have consumed the sensational pickled onions in a undignified cutlery-free frenzy.

I love the food here, but not as much as I love everything else about Masters: the clientèle of pensioners on their ten-thousandth visit, ravenous cabbies refuelling, net-savvy tourists taking photos of mushy peas, and middle-class theatregoers incongruously sipping red wine; the yellowing newspaper clippings and dog-eared wallcharts of fish species; the David Brent poses and Alan Partridge desperation of Danny Blue and his photo-opping, arse-end of pier, Davro-worshipping Z-list pals.

I love the tragic, funny, timeless, wonderful Britishness of it all.

Oh, by the way, the first ever chips to be fried in the United Kingdom, hit oil in Oldham, Lancashire, in the 1860s.

England (Yorkshire)

Hawksmoor
11 Langley Street
020 7856 2154

It says this on the menu: "Our steaks come from Longhorn cattle that have been lovingly reared in North Yorkshire."

I'm legit with this one. I needed an excuse to briefly gush about yesterday's sensational dinner at Hawksmoor and the fact that the cows we ate were Yorkshirewomen works nicely. More to the point, I was never going to find a specialist Yorkshire pudding restaurant.

So, first came the rock oysters - sniff, slurp, smile - and then came the chips. One portion was triple-cooked for extra crispiness and the other was cooked in beef dripping for extra meatiness. Carrots and spinach dissolved on tongues like cream. The pork belly ribs were stupendously delicious. The bone marrow even more so. I split 800g of porterhouse, medium-rare, and quarter of a lobster with the bloke opposite me. Sharing is rarely such a competitive sport. We measured each other's intake while failing to regulate our own. After scoffing my 400g, I polished off a strip of chateaubriand a tablemate had incomprehensibly failed to eat. Soon afterwards, I made light work of a cornflake ice cream sundae. On nights such as this I'm a greedy bugger.

The plain-clothed staff, indie music (who knew Belle & Sebastian and meat go together so well?), open kitchens, and meaty shades of brick, oak and cast iron is perfect for the cool carnivore vibe. The food, most importantly, had me purring.

Egypt

Ali Baba

32 Ivor Place

020 7723 7474

I'm flabbergasted by today's food discovery. It's got nothing to do with the boring Egyptian restaurant described below. It's got everything to do with a Zimbabwean stall I found in Elephant & Castle. OK, they weren't selling dovi, the ceremonial peanut and chicken stew that will be eaten with a golden ladle in front of the world's media while fireworks explode in the sky at the conclusion of this project, but they could possibly make it on request - and that changes everything.

Knowing Zimbabwean food, the one cuisine I'm not permitted to eat, is available in London has given me a target. All I have to do now is eat every single one of the world's cuisines, including regional cuisines within countries, before the two blokes at Elephant & Castle market realise there's no market for Zimbabwean food in London and close the stall down. At this rate I'll be eating there in 2024.

Like Zimbabwe, Egypt's an African country that's been driven to the ground by an old dictator who just won't fucking die. Ali Baba's a likeable, family-owned place, but the food's as tired as its orientalist cliche of a name would suggest. I went there with a couple of Muslim friends for the iftar meal, the breaking of the fast. I'd eaten a big lunch. The hugely popular Arab TV show Ramadan - Live From Mecca was on the telly. It's such a ratings smash they show it on all the channels at the same time. The Libyan chap sitting next to us was lonely and pretended to have heard us talking about his home country.

"What's happened in Libya?" he asked with a jolt.

"Nothing much," I replied, pausing a few seconds for comic effect. "Although, you know, Colonel Gaddafi has just died."

He looked like a man who's just found out he's out of a well-paid job. He didn't appreciate our sense of humour. But there's so much fun to be had joking about the death of old dictators who just won't fucking die.

A voice from the TV started praying. We ate dates and supermarket flatbread dipped in tahina. We ate the infamous Egyptian carb-fest koshari (rice, lentils, pasta, fried onions, spicy tomato sauce), molokhia (jew's mallow) with chicken, bamia (lamb and okra stew) and ta'amiya (Egyptian falafel). With the exception of the falafel, which was crispily moreish, everything was underflavoured. Everything needed more oil, more garlic, more stock, more spice.

I wanted to like it. It's a no-frills, to-the-point, friendly-owned restaurant - and I've loved some of the local food I've had in Egypt - but Ali Baba just seems so staid. It's unatmospheric to the point of being oppressive and the food is bland. Bring on the dovi.

Kyrgyzstan

Kazakh Kyrgyz House

Pasha Hotel

158 Camberwell Road

020 7277 2228

"This is like being in Dubai," observed my dinner companion, who used to sit next to me in an office in that shithole. She was right. It was like a hotel in the poor part of town: neon lights and big windows, narrow corridors and red carpets, dubious-looking cosmetics on sale from reception, and a restaurant with Russian pop music and a fake plastic lake running through it. I felt right at home.

There's Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Turkish food on the menu, but we stuck to our guns and only ordered dishes you'd find in a neighbourhood restaurant in Bishkek. This included borsok, a fried doughnut made of eggs and honey and accompanied by sour cream and hummos, and a baklajanovaya ikra, a stewed aubergine dip with tomato, onion and garlic. It was the high point of the meal.

I hoped the beshbamak would contain horse, but due to the unavailablity of such exotic meats in Camberwell Green, we had to settle for beef, which arrived boiled to the point of tastelessness and floating with pasta in a nondescript broth. The lagman, a nicely spiced stab at spaghetti bolognaise, was much more interesting.

It's fair to assume that until six months ago the majority of Londoners knew nothing about Kyrgyzstan. Almost 100 deaths in demonstrations and riots opposing Kurmanbek Bakiyev's government have put the country on the map for all the wrong reasons. Perhaps, we wondered before our visit, we would unearth a brilliant cuisine that had the potential to make Kyrgyzstan famous for something other than violence. It's highly unlikely.

Guyana

Umana Yana

294 Croxted Road

Herne Hill

020 8671 8227

"Hello sweetheart!"

At least I think that's what the lady at Umana Yana said to me as I walked through the door with my earphones plugged in. It's a simple place, a takeaway with a single table by the window, but welcomes don't get much warmer.

The charming lady behind the counter, who, if the health and safety certificates on the wall are to be believed, is called Deborah, listened patiently as I expressed my delight at finding food in London from a country with a smaller population than Bristol. She then gave me a taste of everything in front of her. There was poulourie, a deep-fried split pea fritter; doubles just like those I found at Roti Joupa, and a channa dal, an Indian chick pea dish.

A week earlier at the Lambeth Country Show I'd relished a chicken and pumpkin roti wrap at the Umama Yana stall. On that occasion it had been prepared by Deborah's daughters; this time it was her son cooking soft, spongy rotis at the back of the restaurant. Again it was delicious, a blend of tender chicken breast and stewed pumpkin in what Debs unhelpfully described as "many different spices". There's certainly a blast of curry powder in there and perhaps some jerk seasoning, too.

A look at Guyana's history explains the eccentric nature of its cuisine. The Spanish, French, Dutch and British each had a go ruling the country, and between them imported African slaves, plantation workers from China, indentured labour from India, and Portuguese settlers (used by the Brits to bolster the white population). This ethnic mix has blended with a dominant Caribbean culture, and the flavours and recipes of Trinidad and Jamaica are very evident.

Umama Yana, named after an iconic thatched hut in the capital Georgetown, may not be the world's prettiest restaurant - there are no plates to be seen - but it's the only place I know of serving this great little cuisine.

United States of America

The Meatwagon

The Florence

131-133 Dulwich Road

(and other places too)

themeatwagon.co.uk

Until my first bite, I had my reservations about the Meatwagon. In spite of (or perhaps because of) its infrequent appearances in the wild, this plain white van has been cooking up a cacophony of fawning tweets and retweets and blog posts that have had me trying to wipe away the saliva from the inside of my screen. Its devoted followers willingly travel to obscure parts of the city (i.e. South London) and endure long waits before receiving their dinner. I couldn't see myself jumping on the Meatwagon bandwagon. I suspected an internet fad, a fast-food fantasy as disposable as a flash mob. I was so wrong. This is great street food, done the American way.

The thing I love most about the Meatwagon's cheeseburger with bacon is that it's not a gourmet burger. It's sold by a bloke in a van and served on a paper plate. You don't need a knife and fork to disassemble it before consumption. It doesn't come with a side salad. It is never - never! - made out of beans or tofu or lentils. You can't pay a pound extra for beetroot or blue cheese or, for shit's sake, baba ghanoush. I love being able to hold it in two hands, give it a firm squeeze, and taste the whole of the burger.

It's stacked, layered, precisely as tall as the space I can make between my upper and lower lips. The flavours reveal themselves one at a time, like those jawbreaker sweets I taunted my teeth with as a kid, but in rapid succession. The first bite releases the pheromones, a swell of blood and oil softening the bun, some dripping off the edge, giving my plate a rosy translucency. The cheese and mustard, at the top and the bottom respectively, are as American as corn dogs and root beer. Apparently it's not a Kraft Single, this sliced cheese, but to me it looks and tastes just as cheap and yellow and nasty and perfect. The mustard coalesces with the gherkins, the onions and the salty, streaky un-British bacon. As for the main attraction, the protagonist, the star of the show, well, you should read about here because Ibrahim does a much better job of describing it than I ever could. And I fear I'll win a Bad Sex In Non-Fiction award if I even tried.

Let's stop here. I can't see for the saliva on the outside of my screen.

Ecuador

El Rincon Quiteno

235 Holloway Road

020 7700 3670

It was the hottest day of the year and every pore in my body begged me not to go to a cramped eatery on Holloway Road and gorge on meat, beans, plantain and rice. But a voice inside my head decided it was necessary to paraphrase Homer Simpson.

"You don't win friends with salad, you don't win friends with salad, especially when vast quantities of meat, beans, plantain and rice are on offer from a cramped Ecuadorian caff on Holloway Road," said the voice.

My lunchtime companion, who can put away an impressive amount of meat for her small stature, ordered the fritada con mote y maduro frito, which loosely translates as pork cooked in pork fat with fried plantain. "Ask them to make one with extra pork," the voice inside my head said. I ignored him, but did make it absolutely clear to my hungry tablemate that we were doing a 50/50 split on this meal. Assured of hog-happiness, I ordered the seco de chivo con arroz (lamb in white wine sauce). We sipped head-spinningly oversweet soft drinks from Ecuador and Bolivia while waiting for the food to arrive.

El Rincon Quiteno, meaning "A Corner of Quito", fails to live up to its name - it looks like any other London caff. The dishes listed on the main blackboard are bog-standard fare such as jacket potatoes and sandwiches. Only a person with severe mental health problems would come to a place like this and order a jacket potato or a sandwich.

The fritada was as wonderful as you'd expect from a dish built from pork, pork fat and a flame. Each piece offered a perfect fusion of crispiness, juiciness, tenderness and smokiness. The token non-artery-destroying dish was also delicious, although it possibly wasn't what we ordered. It was lamb and it came with rice, and the sauce may well have contained wine, but it was suspiciously red and tomatoey for a white wine sauce. We saw no cause to complain.

After the meal, I walked out into the Highbury sun carrying a doggy bag. Saturday night at home with microwaved fried pork? Fuck yeah.