It’s currently ranked number three in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants guide. Why? Because patron-chef Mauro Colagreco has created a cuisine for this cross-cultural land – right on the border of Italy and France. He might play with the idea of Italian vitello tonnato in one dish, and French fricassée in another. A must-try dish, though, is the salt-crusted beetroot, transformed into silk-like swathes and topped with salty pops of Oscietra caviar cream. And the views over Menton – not to mention the sun setting over the Mediterranean – are bucket list experiences in themselves. 30 Avenue Aristide Briand, 06500 Menton, France. http://www.mirazur.fr.

Michelin-starred food isn’t necessarily expensive. Case in point: Tsuta in Tokyo, the first ramen restaurant to get a Michelin star. This tiny eatery is all about beautifully-made noodles, ordered at a vending machine, and eaten at a counter. But don’t let the humble surrounds fool you – a heck of a lot of work goes into these satiny little threads. Rock up before 7am to get your ticket, then return at your allotted time. And order the ramen you see pictured on the top left of the vending machine, a truffle-infused masterwork of flavour and texture. 1 Chome-14-１ Sugamo, Toshima, Tokyo 170-0002, Japan. http://www.tsuta.com.

You’ll have to wait in line but when you’re eating at L’Entrecôte on the Left Bank, chaos is part of the appeal. Rest assured you’ll eventually be seated on tiny tables mere centimetres from your fellow diners, and served beautifully dressed salad followed by steak doused with their famous, and utterly secret recipe’d, green sauce, with piles and piles of hot, salty chips. Everything is absolutely delicious, and it’s a Parisian rite of passage. 20 Rue Saint-Benoît, 75006 Paris, France. http://www.relaisentrecote.fr.

Noma is probably the most seminal restaurant open in the world today, and with its new carnation, which opened this year, and its uber-seasonal menus (seafood season from winter to spring; vegetable season from summer to early autumn; game and forest season from autumn until year end), visiting any time of year is the right time. Try dishes like rhubarb roses, or reindeer moss, lightly dipped in chocolate. It’s Nordic cooking, redefined, and may be the most delicious food you ever ingest. Refshalevej 96, 1432 København K, Denmark. http://noma.dk.

Margot Henderson’s cooking was long the underdog to that of her more famous husband’s at St John (also worth a visit – it’s the restaurant that brought nose-to-tail cooking to the world stage), but there is something particularly special about this East End restaurant. Buzz for entry and find yourself in a secret, walled garden. Meals are served in a white-washed, former bike shed (this building was once a school). The menu changes daily but dishes like plaice doused with burnt butter and capers; and tender, poached quince with silky custard and crunchy praline are a lesson in simple, classic food done perfectly. It’s a London-must. 16 Playground Gardens, London E2 7FA, UK. http://www.rochelleschool.org/rochellecanteen/.

It’s one of the world’s most important restaurants right now, and won World’s Best Restaurant at this year’s 50 Best. Massimo Bottura fuses art with food in the most delicious way – Oops! I Dropped the Lemon Tart being one of his most fêted dishes, and one that plays with the idea of perfection in plating (turns out, lemon tart is just as delicious after it has been dropped on its head). Let the tourists have Florence – head out to Modena and eat at the best restaurant in the world instead. Via Stella, 22, 41121 Modena MO, Italy. https://www.osteriafrancescana.it.

Eating Peter Gilmore’s food is the purest of pleasures all its own, but eating it within the ribcage of a Sydney Opera House sail takes things to a whole other level. Try the now signature yabbies with cool fermented cream, sour lemon jam and warm buckwheat pikelets at the Cured and Cultured bar, or eat a whole feast downstairs in the restaurant proper. Don’t miss dessert – the cherry jam lamington is as spectacular to eat as it is to behold, the cool, coconutty shards melting on your tongue like snow. Bennelong Point, Sydney Opera House, Sydney NSW 2000, Australia. https://www.bennelong.com.au.

It’s less than two hours’ drive out of Glasgow, but you’ll feel like you’re at the end of the earth when you eat at Inver restaurant on Scotland’s Loch Fyne. Co-owner and head chef Pam Brunton has worked at Noma and you can tell – much of the food here is foraged locally. The standout dish is the crab – the brown meat is blitzed up with brown butter and poured back into the shell, ready to be slicked onto salty buttered, house made sourdough. The fact that the restaurant overlooks a ruined castle and loch, and they now have glass-walled bothies in which to stage sleepovers (replete with record players and ornate breakfast hampers channelling traditional Scottish dishes) makes this not only Scotland’s best restaurant, but one of the best in the UK. Stracthlachlan, Strachur PA27 8BU, UK. http://inverrestaurant.co.uk.

This is a touristy spot, sure, but eating pastrami on rye at Katz’s Deli in Manhattan’s Lower East Side is worth every minute in that infamously long line. Long before Meg Ryan had what she’s having in When Harry Met Sally, Katz’s was a New York institution (it’s been open since 1888, you know). Go up to the counter and taste your pastrami before you buy, then watch it being layered up, meltingly tender and steaming hot, onto bread. Eat it at shared tables surrounded by neon signs, old photographs and hundreds of mismatched people milling about. It was, and it remains, one of the best pilgrimage foodie experiences anywhere. 205 E Houston St, New York, NY 10002, USA. https://www.katzsdelicatessen.com.

Dinner at Fäviken is not quite a two-hour-then-home-to-bed affair. Situated in the north of Sweden, a few hundred kilometres south of the Arctic Circle, you start with a sauna (with drinks), eat dinner in the barn, then out to the tepee for cocktails by the fireside. Stay over in the onsite accommodation before breakfast and a drive, or flight back into civilisation. Talk about an escape. Fäviken 216, 830 05 Järpen, Sweden. http://favikenmagasinet.se.