Greece’s cuisine ranked second this year, following Italy in the Taste Atlas ranking for 2025/26. Credit: Greek Reporter
Italian cuisine has reclaimed its crown as the world’s top food culture in the 2025/2026 TasteAtlas rankings, retaking first place from Greece last year.
The latest list once again turns the global spotlight on Mediterranean cooking, while also showing how rising stars are emerging from Latin America and Asia.
Italy back at number one with Greece coming second
In last year’s “100 Best Cuisines in the World” list, Greece narrowly edged out Italy with a score of 4.60 out of 5, just ahead of Italy’s 4.59, after climbing from third place in the 2023/2024 edition, where Italy and Japan led the table.
For 2025/2026, Italy has moved back into first, with Greece now in second and Peru in third, followed by Portugal, Spain and Japan, while Turkey, China, France and Indonesia round out a geographically diverse top ten.
Taste Atlas bases its awards on a huge pool of data, combining hundreds of thousands of user ratings with expert input and its own research on traditional dishes and ingredients.
In the previous edition alone, the platform processed 477,287 valid ratings covering 15,478 foods in its database. This list draws on scale and statistics rather than just anecdotal opinion, as some people might think.
@TasteAtlas Best Cuisines in the World 25/26: https://t.co/194Xj0IJX4 pic.twitter.com/e2PqzXEYwE
— TasteAtlas (@TasteAtlas) December 5, 2025
Greece’s global food influence
Even after losing the top spot, Greek cuisine continues to outperform its size on the world stage, both in the rankings and in its popularity across countries such as the Netherlands, Germany, the United States and Spain.
Earlier Taste Atlas features have singled out emblematic Greek products like Aegina pistachios, high‑end olive oils from Lakonia and Kalamata, and Fava from Santorini as examples of the country’s emphasis on carefully sourced local ingredients that promote the nation’s rich culinary tradition.
These foods sit firmly within the Mediterranean diet, which long‑running studies have associated with benefits for heart health and mental wellbeing.
Dishes and food regions
Alongside national cuisines, Taste Atlas has also published its 2025/2026 list of best dishes, with Paraguay’s hearty soup-stew Vori‑vori taking first place, just ahead of classic Neapolitan pizza, while Greek kontosouvli appears in sixth position and follows earlier recognition for Greek paidakia (grilled lamb chops) in the “100 Best Dishes in the World.”
The guide also ranks food regions, naming Campania in southern Italy as the world’s leading food region for 2025, with Emilia‑Romagna in second and Crete in third, and giving strong visibility to Greek areas such as Macedonia, the Cyclades, the Peloponnese and the North Aegean, which all place within the top ten.