Ten tropical escapes where the food is half the point

Some holidays you remember by the beaches; the best ones you remember by the meals. The tropics grow the world's great larders — chillies, coconuts, spices, seafood hauled in that morning — and in the right places the cooking outshines the coastline entirely. These ten destinations reward travellers who plan days around lunch, follow queues of locals without question and regard a second dinner as basic diligence. Bring loose clothing and a flexible definition of breakfast.

Penang may be the best street-food island on Earth: Malay, Chinese and Indian traditions collide in George Town's hawker centres, producing char kway teow, asam laksa and nasi kandar at prices that make ordering three dinners rational. The UNESCO-listed shophouse streets handle the sightseeing between meals. Eat at Gurney Drive or the Chulia Street stalls after dark, and pick whichever wok has the longest local queue.

Bali's cultural capital has quietly become its culinary one, from warungs serving proper babi guling — spit-roasted suckling pig — to a cooking-class scene that starts with a dawn market tour. Between meals there are rice terraces, temples and enough herons at Petulu to fill a memory card. Book a class with a family compound rather than a hotel; you'll cook in their kitchen and eat sitting on their floor.

Sri Lanka's south serves the best-value feast in the Indian Ocean: rice and curry spreads with a dozen dishes, hoppers crisped at street stalls after dark, and crab curries in Galle Fort that justify the flight alone. Kottu roti — chopped flatbread clattering on a griddle — is the national soundtrack. Order rice and curry at lunchtime, when it's freshest, and visit December to March for dry-season weather.

The original spice island still cooks like one: Zanzibari biryanis and pilaus heavy with clove and cardamom, urojo soup at hole-in-the-wall counters and octopus curry that converts sceptics. A spice-farm tour makes sense of it all in an afternoon. At the Forodhani Gardens night market, stick to the stalls busy with locals and the freshly squeezed sugar-cane juice — and treat glistening piles of pre-cooked seafood with polite suspicion.

Vietnam's island in the Gulf of Thailand is the country's fish-sauce capital, and everything downstream benefits: bún quậy noodles you season yourself, herring salad rolled at your table and night-market seafood priced by the basket. The Dinh Cau night market in Dương Đông is the main event — pick your fish from the tank and name your cooking style. November to March brings dry weather and flat, swimmable seas.

Jamaican food runs far deeper than the resort buffet suggests: jerk chicken smoked over pimento wood, ackee and saltfish at breakfast, escovitch fish sharp with vinegar and Scotch bonnet. The pilgrimage is Boston Bay near Port Antonio, where jerk was born and the smoke never stops. Skip the all-inclusive package entirely — book a guesthouse on the quieter east coast and eat at roadside pans, where the island actually cooks.

Kerala cooking is the gentle giant of Indian food — coconut-milk fish curries, appams like lace-edged pancakes, and thalis that keep arriving until you surrender — and Fort Kochi serves it with colonial-era atmosphere and Chinese fishing nets creaking on the shoreline. Buy prawns fresh from the nets and have a shack grill them on the spot. A backwater houseboat from nearby Alleppey adds a floating feast. Visit November to February, before the heat builds.

Hoi An's lantern-lit old town is Vietnam's prettiest stage set, and the food lives up to the scenery: cao lầu noodles made — so legend insists — with water from one ancient well, white rose dumplings and bánh mì that food writers cross continents for. Take a market-and-cooking class along the river, then cycle to An Bang beach to earn dinner. Order at Bánh Mì Phượng early; the queue is long for good reason. February to April is mild and dry.

Trinidad barely bothers with beach tourism, which is exactly why the food is so good: this is cooking for locals, from doubles — curried chickpeas in fried bara bread, eaten standing at dawn — to roti the size of tea towels and callaloo rich with crab. The ritual is bake and shark at Maracas Bay: fried shark in a soft bun, buried under tamarind sauce. Go to a panyard rehearsal in Port of Spain, then eat everything the vendors outside sell.

Yucatecan food is its own republic within Mexican cooking — cochinita pibil slow-roasted underground in banana leaves, sopa de lima, habanero salsas that demand respect — and elegant, pastel-coloured Mérida is its capital. Eat at the market stalls of Lucas de Gálvez at breakfast, then day-trip to cenotes and Uxmal's Maya pyramids between meals. On Sundays the Plaza Grande fills with food vendors and dancing. November to February offers merciful temperatures; summer here is molten.