Among the enchiladas and the tacos and the helados and the quesadillas, you’ll find the zestiness of Greek salads and the richness of an Indian curry; the heat of Thai food and the use-your-hands snackiness of tapas.

All that avocado, tomato, lime and garlic with beans and chocolates and chilies to boot, is rich with antioxidants and good healthful things.

Flip through a Thai cook book, and you’ll be hard pressed to find an ingredient list that doesn’t run a page long.

With influences from China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar and a royal culinary tradition, Thai cuisine is the best of many worlds.

Sun, beach, service with a smile and a plastic bag full of som tam – that’s the good life.

Som tam: The popular green papaya salad is sour, extra spicy, sweet and salty.

Like the blue seas and white buildings, the kalamata olives, feta cheese, the colorful salads and roast meats are all postcard perfect by default.

Gift of the gods, olive oil is arguably Greece’s greatest export, influencing the way people around the world think about food and nutritional health.

A bite of dolma or a slurp of lentil soup gives a small taste of life in ancient Greece, when they were invented.

Gyros: Late-night drunk eating wouldn’t be the same without the pita bread sandwich of roast meat and tzatziki.

And any country that manages to make vegetarian food taste consistently great certainly deserves some kind of Nobel prize.

This is the place that spawned tyrannical sushi masters and ramen bullies who make their staff and customers tremble with a glare.

With Japanese food, you can get a lavish multicourse kaiseki meal that presents the seasons in a spread of visual and culinary poetry.

From the fruits of the Mediterranean Sea to the spoils of the Pyrenees, from the saffron and cumin notes of the Moors to the insane molecular experiments of Ferran Adria, Spanish food is timeless yet avant garde.

Down-to-earth cooking will surprise those who thought of the French as the world’s food snobs – it is the birthplace of the Michelin Guide, after all.

Foie gras: It tastes like 10,000 ducks roasted in butter then reduced to a velvet pudding, but some animal advocates decry the cruelty of force-feeding fowl to fatten their livers.

The Chinese entrepreneurial spirit and appreciation for the finer points of frugality result in one of the bravest tribes of eaters in the world.

Roast suckling pig and Peking duck: wonders of different styles of ovens adopted by Chinese chefs.

Shark’s fin soup: Green campaigners have been pushing for Chinese restaurants and markets to stop serving the dish in recent years.

Italian food has captivated taste buds around the world for centuries, with its zesty tomato sauces, those clever things they do with wheat flour and desserts that are basically vehicles for cream.