Five very different places — two capitals, a border town, a hunting village and a commuter suburb — that each handed the world something it now eats without thinking: a salad tossed at a border, a curry made from leftovers, an upside-down tart, a chocolate cake and a brick of dried noodles.
On a busy Fourth of July in 1924, with his kitchen running short, the Italian-born restaurateur Caesar Cardini tossed romaine, lemon, egg and croutons at the table for his American customers — and the Caesar salad has carried his first name ever since.
Punjabi refugees from Peshawar reopened Moti Mahal in Daryaganj after Partition, and in the 1950s leftover tandoori chicken went into a gravy of tomato, butter and cream: butter chicken. The founders' descendants took each other to court in 2024 over which of them thought of it first.
At the Hôtel Tatin opposite the station, sisters Stéphanie and Caroline Tatin served an apple tart baked upside down — by legend a rescue, after the apples were left too long in butter and sugar. They retired in 1906, and the critic Curnonsky made the tarte Tatin famous in 1926, long after they had gone.
By the traditional account a 16-year-old apprentice, Franz Sacher, improvised the chocolate torte here in 1832 when the head cook fell ill and Prince Metternich wanted something new. His son Eduard refined it while training at the Demel pastry shop, then put it on the menu of the Hotel Sacher he opened in 1876 — and a court fight with Demel over who could sell the 'Original' ran until 1963.
In a shed behind his house here, Momofuku Ando spent a year working out how to flash-fry noodles in hot oil so they would cook again in three minutes. Nissin sold the first packets of Chikin Ramen on 25 August 1958; the shed stands rebuilt inside the town's Cupnoodles Museum.
Think you'd have found them? Play today's expedition, or replay this one from the archive.