Which beach gate leads to the best pasta in Rome? Ask a local and you might hear "number seven". That's the tip from Shelina Permalloo, the 2012 MasterChef champion and first woman of colour to win the show, who shared her five favourite restaurants in a new interview around the launch of her cookbook, What to Cook when Everyone's Hungry (£25, Ebury Press).
Her Roman pick is Cancello Numero 7 in Ostia, the seaside town nearest the capital. The beachfront is lined with near-identical gates opening onto restaurants, but Romans know gate seven is the one. It's unpretentious — she describes the service as classic bare-minimum Roman hospitality — but the vongole, eaten with your feet in the sand as the sun drops, is her absolute favourite. There's a short but excellent wine list, and a soundtrack of kitchen shouting and staff gossip that somehow makes it all better. Anyone flying into Rome who fancies a coastal escape without leaving the city behind should keep it in mind.
Her list ranges wider than Italy. In Grenada — the "Isle of Spice", where nutmeg appears on the national flag — she champions Dre Flavours, chef Andre Bernard's fine-dining take on Grenadian home cooking. Expect nutmeg, mace, cinnamon and pimento in nearly every dish, eaten under breadfruit trees beside a river.
In Marrakech, she's returned three times to Al Fassia, whose name translates as "women of Fez". It's female-run, which she notes is still unusual in Moroccan kitchens. The move here is the tapas-style opener: roughly 18 small plates — olives, preserved lemons, orange blossom salad, and a carrot salad she can't stop raving about. If you want the slow-roasted lamb, order it about 24 hours ahead.
Mauritius, the island her parents left for Britain in the Seventies, gets a nod via Chez Tino in Trou d'Eau Douce on the east coast. It's family-run, and the roof terrace looks over the green interior rather than the sea — the side of Mauritius most visitors miss. Her order: fried noodles with garlic water and crushed chilli paste, Creole prawns, and an octopus curry.
The surprise of the list is Lancaster Accra in Ghana, a hotel buffet she'd normally avoid but now swears by. Freshly pounded cassava, grilled meats cooked in front of you, a light goat soup with uniquely Ghanaian spices, and — in her words — the fufu against which all other fufu will be judged.
For travellers, this is the good kind of restaurant list: personal picks tied to culture rather than PR. It's also a nice nudge to book a food-first trip — the sort where a single plate tells you more about a place than a guided tour. Anyone with Mauritius, Morocco, Grenada, Ghana or Rome on the shortlist now has somewhere specific to eat.