World’s best cuisines named: where Kazakhstan ranks
Tengrinews.kz – TasteAtlas has published an updated ranking of the world’s best cuisines — the list includes 100 countries, evaluated by the taste and popularity of their national dishes. Kazakhstan took 98th place in this ranking.
As TasteAtlas clarifies, the rating is based on 590,228 verified reviews of almost 19,000 traditional dishes from around the world. The final position of each country was determined by the average score given by platform users. At the same time, the service stresses that only ratings from real users were counted and mechanisms were used to exclude bots and “patriotic boosting”.
Who made the top ten
According to TasteAtlas, the top 10 tastiest countries in the world are:
Italy – 4.64;
Greece – 4.60;
Peru – 4.54;
Portugal – 4.53;
Spain – 4.53;
Japan – 4.49;
Turkiye – 4.49;
China – 4.48;
France – 4.48;
Indonesia – 4.48.
Kazakhstan’s position
Kazakhstan ranked 98th out of 100, with an average score of 3.9. Despite the low position in the overall ranking, individual dishes of the national cuisine received fairly high scores and recommendations from users.
Screenshot: tasteatlas.com
Among the dishes the platform recommends trying is samsa (4.0), a traditional pastry with a meat filling that is widespread throughout Central Asia. The description notes that it is “known for its flavorful filling encased in a crisp, golden pastry shell”.
Other highly rated Kazakh dishes include:
lagman – 4.2;shujyq – 4.2;kespe – 4.0.
At the same time, the most famous national dish — beshbarmak — received a score of 3.6.
“The name of the dish can be translated as five fingers, referring to the nomadic tribes who lived in Central Asia and would eat the dish with their hands,” the description says.
In a separate ranking of meat dishes of Kazakhstan, lagman leads, followed by beshbarmak, zhaya, zhal and qarta — all of them are traditional meat-based dishes, including those made from horse meat.
Among the most popular Kazakh products, TasteAtlas highlights kurt (3.3) — a fermented dairy product with a pronounced salty-sour taste — as well as sary mai, a traditional butter produced by prolonged churning of sour milk or cream.
Notably, in the previous ranking Kazakhstan took 94th place, with an average score of 3.9 points. For comparison, in 2023 the country was in 90th position.