This is a guest post by Chris Perrin. Chris is part mad scientist, part glutton, and part culinary adventurer who is always ready to hit the kitchen to make something delicious. And if not delicious, then certainly edible. Cooking, especially for friends, has always been one of his deepest passions and explains why he enjoys making party food as much as he does. You can always taste his mad creations at BlogWellDone.com.

Does your best friend love Thai, but you’ve never given it a try?  Maybe your boss loves Indian dishes, but you have no idea what is in them.  Walking into a restaurant that serves food you’ve never had can feel like an act of bravery, unless you know what to order.  The problem is how can you figure out what to eat when you try a cuisine for the first time?

There are a few tricks to mastering any new cuisine.  For instance, the best thing you can do when trying new food is to go to a buffet.  Buffet food is rarely as good as something ordered off the menu, but the fact that you can see what you are going to eat means that you can pick only those things that look appealing.  Buffets also let you sample just a little of each dish.

You can also ask the restaurant manager for recommendations.  Tell her what you do and do not like (“I don’t like shrimp” or “I love spicy…”).  Then ask for something like that.  She should be able to find something you will like.  If she can’t or doesn’t want to answer the question, it’s a major red flag since a manager should be passionate about her food and should want to share her passion with paying customers.

In a pinch, you should feel safe ordering a cuisine’s iconic dishes.  An iconic dish is one that is very popular for a given style of food. If it’s not good, chances are the restaurant that served it is probably not very good.

For instance, if you are getting ready to try Thai for the first time, order the phad thai (a.k.a. phat thai or Thai noodles).  This is the national dish of Thailand, which should make it as safe as anything you can order anywhere.  Phad thai is a noodle dish with chicken, shrimp, and onions in a sauce made from fish sauce, tamarind, sugar, garlic, and (optionally) chilies.  That combination shouldn’t work, but it does, and it delivers a sweet, tangy flavor with subtle hints of seafood.  It’s like nothing else.

If Vietnamese is your next experiment, there’s only one way to go: pho.  Pho is a noodle soup that is synonymous with Vietnamese food and has the added benefit of often being served “do-it-yourself” style.  In many pho restaurants, they bring you a steaming bowl of aromatic broth that smells of anise and garlic.  To dip into the broth, they also bring a plate with your choice of meat and an assortment of jalapenos, onions, sprouts, cilantro, hoisin sauce, and fiery sriracha.  At that point, you are in control of what goes into your soup and you can play with the various flavors.

Lastly, if you want Ethopian food, you are going to be treated to something that resembles Southern soul food (with things like cabbage and collards).   However, the soul food is spiced like nothing you have tasted and is served with spongy bread that you use as silverware.  Safe bets in Ethopian food are sambusans, fried meat or vegetable pastries with cool curry spices or any meats cooked in butter, like Doro Watt (chicken).  Cooking in butter gives the meat a rich taste and limits the number of brand new flavors you have at once.  This lets you ease into the cuisine.

No matter which way you go, the most important thing in trying new foods is just getting out there and doing it.  Eating new foods is like traveling to new worlds.  It broadens your horizons and, a lot of times, it just tastes good.

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(Original photo by Shubert Ciencia, used under Creative Commons license.)