4 ms·

I am completely biased but I think London is one of the best places to live in the world, everything considered. There's a guy on Instagram who spins a wheel f

I am completely biased but I think London is one of the best places to live in the world, everything considered. There's a guy on Instagram who spins a wheel for a random country and goes to eat that cuisine somewhere in London. There are maybe 1 or 2 places in the world you can do that. It's an incredible feat of human diversity to pack hundreds of global cuisines into a 10 mile radius.

lifestyleguru 9mo ago
There is only so much of food one can eat and after all potatoes and steak do the job as well.
- marbro 9mo ago
  [dead]
- CatMustard 9mo ago
  It's okay not to be that into food, but a bit odd to expect everyone else to be the same. If I had to eat steak and potatoes every day I'd be miserable by day 2.
  - stackbutterflow 9mo ago
    Conversely it's true for the parent comment. Being able to eat food from any country is a plus only to those who are into that hobby. Personally it ranks pretty low in my list of things that make a city a great city. And if we're talking about food, access to fresh, high quality and affordable produce is way more important than being able to eat Afghan food at 3am. These criteria are arbitrary and don't make a city better than another imho.
    - lifestyleguru 9mo ago
      Completely agree. "All food of the world at 3am" wears out pretty quickly. Much higher priority for me is access to fresh fruit, vegetables, fish, and meat at a good price.
contingencies 9mo ago
Back when I ran the Shenzhen Gastronomic Society I did most of the alphabet in Bangkok one trip, beginning with Afghan. I'd wager it's better food than London on average, purely based on freshness and tropical inputs. I think if you were to pick the best city on earth for food it would have to have resident international populations, a tropical climate, and at least enclaves of wealth with a relatively free visa policy. Bangkok fits the bill. For variety I much prefer it to Singapore, KL, HK, Jakarta, Taipei, etc. Best for drinks has to be HCMC. Paris and New York are up there too, but you have to be 0.1% to enjoy them exhaustively. I spent 10 years designing food robots mostly because so much damn awesome food is ~unavailable outside its origin. Now raising for GTM/growth: https://infinite-food.com https://infinite-food.com
- judahmeek 9mo ago
  Where can I find a list of food unavailable outside of its origin?
  - contingencies 9mo ago
    While you can often get bad versions of things if you go out of your way, many foods are hamstrung by supply chain, which is to say without a critical mass the labor intensive elements do not make sense or the specific crops are unavailable. Ask any migrant (eg. your next Uber driver) which foods they miss from their hometown or childhood and whether locally available versions are up to par. You'd be surprised at the details that emerge.
    - bombcar 9mo ago
      This is incredibly true even of things you wouldn't expect - Mexican food in Southern California is just different than Ohio even if you cook it yourself - because the ingredients may be labelled the same, but they're not.
- petesergeant 9mo ago
  Bangkok has the best food of anywhere I’ve been. The country is obsessed with food in general, while not being snobby about it. It is an absolute highlight of expat life there. The bar/cocktail scene can also hold its own against literally anywhere.
killingtime74 9mo ago
Where else have you lived though? The cost of living is high, healthcare is problematic, crowded, bad weather, low economic growth prospects. It's not even top 10 on most lists. Europe, Australia has way better cities. Example Sydney, life expectancy is at least 5 years more. The poverty rate in London, 26%, is double of Sydney at 13%. E.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurabegleybloom/2025/06/18/the-20-best-cities-to-live-in-the-world-according-to-a-2025-report/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurabegleybloom/2025/06/18/the... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Liveability_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Liveability_Index
- fhennig 9mo ago
  Yes I really wish people saying "X is the best place to live in the world" would add where else they have lived, otherwise their opinion is not very useful to me.
- walthamstow 9mo ago
  I'm fairly well travelled. Lived in Tokyo for a bit. There's no perfect city. London has the best combination of all attributes, for me. Have you lived in London and Sydney both, or are you just reading numbers off of Google and "best city" lists? Sydney is boring and in the middle of nowhere.
  - killingtime74 9mo ago
    I'm from Sydney and yes lived in London, Melb, Auckland and Hong Kong. My main recollection of London was narrow streets. I think we like being in the middle of nowhere (geography, nuke missile target, conflict), surrounded by ocean. It is true, it's the one downside, it takes a long time to fly anywhere else.
    - walthamstow 9mo ago
      Fair enough. I think if you like to travel, go away for the weekend etc then Sydney is not on the list. London has cheap euro flights, hub airports etc. I'm sure the QOL is good in all of those places of course, nice place to raise a family etc.
bandris 9mo ago
True. Generally whatever niche interest people have, they usually can find it in London. As a fellow passenger old lady once put it on the tube: "London might not be the prettiest but certainly the most interesting city". Though personally I find it pretty enough.
lbreakjai 9mo ago
Food only takes you so far. The housing stock is simply terrible. Extremely small, damp, badly insulated ... I lived in four boroughs, from poor Southwark to rich Richmond. Had a couple of friends sharing a luxury flat by the Emirates stadium, you could hear the neighbours two doors down. It was alright in my twenties. Built a career, made a ton of money before the IR35 reform, but you sort of felt like everyone had an expiration date, was there to build a career and then move away. It's not that interesting outside of zone 1, it's the same high street full of Prêts/Nerro/Itsu (If you're lucky) or Paddy Power/Chicken shop/charity shop, and rows of small, drafty and moldy terraced houses. I wouldn't live there, but Paris is infinitely more charming, and keep getting more pleasant as they remove the cars from the city. It's a place that feels lived in, that encourages and rewards you for wandering.
- lbreakjai 9mo ago
  Oh and it's also the least spontaneous place I've lived in. All the food in the world, but you can't really just decide to try something, because everyone knows about the place, and they don't do bookings anyway, and everything is packed all the time, so there's an hour and a half queue to get in, after which you'll be granted a generous 35 minutes to eat before being softly nudged out by the waiter. This is probably good enough for the anglosaxons or the nordics, but food is just a small part of what makes a good dining experience.
  - keiferski 9mo ago
    Yeah my biggest problem with London is how it seems to lack a real spontaneous street food culture, especially compared to New York, Paris, or Istanbul (which is particularly great at this.) I spent a couple days walking 40+ km around the city and usually I just ended up eating at Istu or Greggs or one of those similar chains. The same thing in NYC or Paris gets you an infinitely better food experience. It seems like a great city to be rich and have dinner reservations though.
    - bf9d413906 9mo ago
      40+km, every day? Or even if total, it's a proper distance. I'm fascinated by that. Do you just walk around randomly or do you plan things you want to see ? Walking is imo one of the big "secret" ways to get to know a city. I fondly recall just getting lost on purpose in major cities, and at the end of the day take a taxi, or bus, or tuk-tuk back to the place I was staying. So many things seen, and tried, and random people encountered from all walks of life, it's one of the best things.
socalgal2 9mo ago
I don't know London all that well, I've only spent about a month there. But in my limited experience the food scene didn't come close to LA, SF, NYC, Tokyo. As an example, the LA metro Area (LA, OC, SB), 46% latino, 27% white, 15% asian 7% african, 3% mixed There huge sections of those cities, several kilometers long where you drive for miles and see majority one culture. Several areas majority korean, chinese, japanese, vietnamese, middle eastern, african,
- yladiz 9mo ago
  I have the opposite feeling. I would put London and NYC on roughly the same level, but London definitely beats SF and LA in terms of variety, quantity, and quality for a lot of cuisines. Tokyo is also not as good, but it’s different because you can find high quality (higher than basically anywhere in the world), but low variety.
- foldr 9mo ago
  The great thing about London is that it has diversity without segregation. So no, you won’t find a huge area of town where almost everyone is of the same ethnicity, but the diversity is still there. Race isn’t the only index. A higher percentage of London’s population is foreign-born than LA’s. Food depends a lot on what you go for. You won’t find much good Mexican food in London, but on the other hand, you can by a better croissant in a supermarket here than you can find in most of the US.
  - socalgal2 9mo ago
    My experience is that until you get the concentrated areas you don't get the actual diversity of the foods. When you have large areas of the same culture you start to get regional restaurants from the culture, specialty restaurants from the calture, because the market is big enough and business needs to distinguish themselves. You also get the ingredients as there's a big enough market to import them. When you don't have the concentration you just get the generic representation of the food from that country.
    - deleted 9mo ago
pjmlp 9mo ago
Having spent some of my life on UK, I would rather live in Bristol or Cardiff, and travel to London on per need basis, than be located there.
interludead 9mo ago
And there are a few places globally that have that vibe
eloisant 9mo ago
You can do that in any big international city. NYC, LA, SF, Tokyo, Paris, Berlin, and I'm probably missing a lot of them. Way more than "1 or 2".
- stephenhuey 9mo ago
  You can certainly do that in Houston. Food from anywhere is something we have more of than most American cities, and you don’t have to wonder if you’ll be able to get a table in the restaurant tonight. But if you like living in densely populated London, you might not prefer how spread out Houston is. I do love visiting London to experience a totally different world from my usual daily life.
- dartharva 9mo ago
  Definitely, even Mumbai and Bangalore.
- walthamstow 9mo ago
  No, you can't do it in Paris or Berlin. I don't know enough about LA and SF but, like Berlin, they're much smaller than London. Berlin is 1/2 the pop of London. For example, there are 4 Uyghur restaurants just on my cycle to work. According to Google, Paris has 1 and Berlin has 0. Only NYC can compare for population, density and diversity.

lifestyleguru 9mo ago

There is only so much of food one can eat and after all potatoes and steak do the job as well.

marbro 9mo ago
[dead]
CatMustard 9mo ago
It's okay not to be that into food, but a bit odd to expect everyone else to be the same. If I had to eat steak and potatoes every day I'd be miserable by day 2.
- stackbutterflow 9mo ago
  Conversely it's true for the parent comment. Being able to eat food from any country is a plus only to those who are into that hobby. Personally it ranks pretty low in my list of things that make a city a great city. And if we're talking about food, access to fresh, high quality and affordable produce is way more important than being able to eat Afghan food at 3am. These criteria are arbitrary and don't make a city better than another imho.
  - lifestyleguru 9mo ago
    Completely agree. "All food of the world at 3am" wears out pretty quickly. Much higher priority for me is access to fresh fruit, vegetables, fish, and meat at a good price.

contingencies 9mo ago

Back when I ran the Shenzhen Gastronomic Society I did most of the alphabet in Bangkok one trip, beginning with Afghan. I'd wager it's better food than London on average, purely based on freshness and tropical inputs. I think if you were to pick the best city on earth for food it would have to have resident international populations, a tropical climate, and at least enclaves of wealth with a relatively free visa policy. Bangkok fits the bill. For variety I much prefer it to Singapore, KL, HK, Jakarta, Taipei, etc. Best for drinks has to be HCMC. Paris and New York are up there too, but you have to be 0.1% to enjoy them exhaustively. I spent 10 years designing food robots mostly because so much damn awesome food is ~unavailable outside its origin. Now raising for GTM/growth: https://infinite-food.com https://infinite-food.com

judahmeek 9mo ago
Where can I find a list of food unavailable outside of its origin?
- contingencies 9mo ago
  While you can often get bad versions of things if you go out of your way, many foods are hamstrung by supply chain, which is to say without a critical mass the labor intensive elements do not make sense or the specific crops are unavailable. Ask any migrant (eg. your next Uber driver) which foods they miss from their hometown or childhood and whether locally available versions are up to par. You'd be surprised at the details that emerge.
  - bombcar 9mo ago
    This is incredibly true even of things you wouldn't expect - Mexican food in Southern California is just different than Ohio even if you cook it yourself - because the ingredients may be labelled the same, but they're not.
petesergeant 9mo ago
Bangkok has the best food of anywhere I’ve been. The country is obsessed with food in general, while not being snobby about it. It is an absolute highlight of expat life there. The bar/cocktail scene can also hold its own against literally anywhere.

killingtime74 9mo ago

Where else have you lived though? The cost of living is high, healthcare is problematic, crowded, bad weather, low economic growth prospects. It's not even top 10 on most lists. Europe, Australia has way better cities. Example Sydney, life expectancy is at least 5 years more. The poverty rate in London, 26%, is double of Sydney at 13%. E.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurabegleybloom/2025/06/18/the-20-best-cities-to-live-in-the-world-according-to-a-2025-report/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurabegleybloom/2025/06/18/the... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Liveability_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Liveability_Index

fhennig 9mo ago
Yes I really wish people saying "X is the best place to live in the world" would add where else they have lived, otherwise their opinion is not very useful to me.
walthamstow 9mo ago
I'm fairly well travelled. Lived in Tokyo for a bit. There's no perfect city. London has the best combination of all attributes, for me. Have you lived in London and Sydney both, or are you just reading numbers off of Google and "best city" lists? Sydney is boring and in the middle of nowhere.
- killingtime74 9mo ago
  I'm from Sydney and yes lived in London, Melb, Auckland and Hong Kong. My main recollection of London was narrow streets. I think we like being in the middle of nowhere (geography, nuke missile target, conflict), surrounded by ocean. It is true, it's the one downside, it takes a long time to fly anywhere else.
  - walthamstow 9mo ago
    Fair enough. I think if you like to travel, go away for the weekend etc then Sydney is not on the list. London has cheap euro flights, hub airports etc. I'm sure the QOL is good in all of those places of course, nice place to raise a family etc.

bandris 9mo ago

True. Generally whatever niche interest people have, they usually can find it in London. As a fellow passenger old lady once put it on the tube: "London might not be the prettiest but certainly the most interesting city". Though personally I find it pretty enough.

lbreakjai 9mo ago

Food only takes you so far. The housing stock is simply terrible. Extremely small, damp, badly insulated ... I lived in four boroughs, from poor Southwark to rich Richmond. Had a couple of friends sharing a luxury flat by the Emirates stadium, you could hear the neighbours two doors down. It was alright in my twenties. Built a career, made a ton of money before the IR35 reform, but you sort of felt like everyone had an expiration date, was there to build a career and then move away. It's not that interesting outside of zone 1, it's the same high street full of Prêts/Nerro/Itsu (If you're lucky) or Paddy Power/Chicken shop/charity shop, and rows of small, drafty and moldy terraced houses. I wouldn't live there, but Paris is infinitely more charming, and keep getting more pleasant as they remove the cars from the city. It's a place that feels lived in, that encourages and rewards you for wandering.

lbreakjai 9mo ago
Oh and it's also the least spontaneous place I've lived in. All the food in the world, but you can't really just decide to try something, because everyone knows about the place, and they don't do bookings anyway, and everything is packed all the time, so there's an hour and a half queue to get in, after which you'll be granted a generous 35 minutes to eat before being softly nudged out by the waiter. This is probably good enough for the anglosaxons or the nordics, but food is just a small part of what makes a good dining experience.
- keiferski 9mo ago
  Yeah my biggest problem with London is how it seems to lack a real spontaneous street food culture, especially compared to New York, Paris, or Istanbul (which is particularly great at this.) I spent a couple days walking 40+ km around the city and usually I just ended up eating at Istu or Greggs or one of those similar chains. The same thing in NYC or Paris gets you an infinitely better food experience. It seems like a great city to be rich and have dinner reservations though.
  - bf9d413906 9mo ago
    40+km, every day? Or even if total, it's a proper distance. I'm fascinated by that. Do you just walk around randomly or do you plan things you want to see ? Walking is imo one of the big "secret" ways to get to know a city. I fondly recall just getting lost on purpose in major cities, and at the end of the day take a taxi, or bus, or tuk-tuk back to the place I was staying. So many things seen, and tried, and random people encountered from all walks of life, it's one of the best things.

socalgal2 9mo ago

I don't know London all that well, I've only spent about a month there. But in my limited experience the food scene didn't come close to LA, SF, NYC, Tokyo. As an example, the LA metro Area (LA, OC, SB), 46% latino, 27% white, 15% asian 7% african, 3% mixed There huge sections of those cities, several kilometers long where you drive for miles and see majority one culture. Several areas majority korean, chinese, japanese, vietnamese, middle eastern, african,

yladiz 9mo ago
I have the opposite feeling. I would put London and NYC on roughly the same level, but London definitely beats SF and LA in terms of variety, quantity, and quality for a lot of cuisines. Tokyo is also not as good, but it’s different because you can find high quality (higher than basically anywhere in the world), but low variety.
foldr 9mo ago
The great thing about London is that it has diversity without segregation. So no, you won’t find a huge area of town where almost everyone is of the same ethnicity, but the diversity is still there. Race isn’t the only index. A higher percentage of London’s population is foreign-born than LA’s. Food depends a lot on what you go for. You won’t find much good Mexican food in London, but on the other hand, you can by a better croissant in a supermarket here than you can find in most of the US.
- socalgal2 9mo ago
  My experience is that until you get the concentrated areas you don't get the actual diversity of the foods. When you have large areas of the same culture you start to get regional restaurants from the culture, specialty restaurants from the calture, because the market is big enough and business needs to distinguish themselves. You also get the ingredients as there's a big enough market to import them. When you don't have the concentration you just get the generic representation of the food from that country.
  - deleted 9mo ago

pjmlp 9mo ago

Having spent some of my life on UK, I would rather live in Bristol or Cardiff, and travel to London on per need basis, than be located there.

interludead 9mo ago

And there are a few places globally that have that vibe

eloisant 9mo ago

You can do that in any big international city. NYC, LA, SF, Tokyo, Paris, Berlin, and I'm probably missing a lot of them. Way more than "1 or 2".

stephenhuey 9mo ago
You can certainly do that in Houston. Food from anywhere is something we have more of than most American cities, and you don’t have to wonder if you’ll be able to get a table in the restaurant tonight. But if you like living in densely populated London, you might not prefer how spread out Houston is. I do love visiting London to experience a totally different world from my usual daily life.
dartharva 9mo ago
Definitely, even Mumbai and Bangalore.
walthamstow 9mo ago
No, you can't do it in Paris or Berlin. I don't know enough about LA and SF but, like Berlin, they're much smaller than London. Berlin is 1/2 the pop of London. For example, there are 4 Uyghur restaurants just on my cycle to work. According to Google, Paris has 1 and Berlin has 0. Only NYC can compare for population, density and diversity.