Bangkok, Thailand

Jay Fai earned a Michelin star cooking from a street stall wearing ski goggles over a charcoal wok — and she's not even Bangkok's best. Yaowarat Road in Chinatown serves pad thai, boat noodles, mango sticky rice, and crab omelets that render restaurant versions obsolete. The city has over 300,000 street vendors. The average dish costs $1.50. Nothing in any fine dining capital on earth competes with this volume of excellence at this price point.