Asian Food Trivia
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99 free Asian Food trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Asia's food is usually quizzed through five or six famous cuisines, which leaves most of the continent untouched. The dumplings of Nepal, the fermented pastes of Cambodia, the steppe feasts of Mongolia, the pot-flipping rice dishes of the Levant and the night-market inventions of Taiwan all have origin stories that are stranger and better than the menu descriptions suggest. These 99 questions spread across twenty cuisines, from the Philippines and Indonesia through Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Myanmar and Central Asia to Iran, Jordan and Palestine. Each asks about a dish, drink or custom you can find on its own page: who invented it, what it is really made of, what its name means, and the festival or breakfast table it belongs to. Every answer comes with a one-line explanation that adds a fact beyond the question. Play it to find out how much of the continent you have actually eaten, or print it for a food-themed quiz night.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which dish, despite its name, was invented at a Taipei street stall in 1951 by a comedian from Beijing?
Mongolian barbecue
Mongolian barbecue was nearly called Peking barbecue, after Wu Zhaonan's home city, but that name was too politically sensitive in 1950s Taiwan; he later left the stall for the stage.
Q 02Hong Kong's pineapple bun contains no pineapple at all; what does its name actually describe?
Its crusty topping
Its crusty topping is the 'pineapple': the cracked, sugary crust resembles the fruit's skin, and the bun is now a fixture of Chinatown bakeries worldwide.
Q 03Which Taipei soup-dumpling chain began in 1958 as a shop selling cooking oil?
Din Tai Fung
Din Tai Fung takes its name from founder Yang Bing-yi's old employer, the oil seller Heng Tai Fung, and his supplier Din Mei; dumplings came in 1972, when the oil trade slumped.
Q 04Which Indonesian meatball soup did Barack Obama, raised partly in Indonesia, recall as a childhood favourite?
Bakso
Bakso sellers were part of Obama's Jakarta childhood: in a 2010 speech there he drew laughs by imitating the street vendors' cries of 'Satay!' and 'Baso!'.
Q 05Which Philippine fast-food chain began in 1975 as an ice cream parlour in Quezon City?
Jollibee
Jollibee's founder, Tony Tan Caktiong, held a Magnolia ice cream franchise until the hot meals he added outsold the ice cream; in 1978 he dropped it and turned his parlours into fast-food outlets.
Q 06Arak, the anise spirit of Lebanon and Syria, turns from clear to milky white when it is mixed with what?
Water
Water does it: anethole, the essential oil of anise, dissolves in alcohol but not in water, so the traditional one-to-two dilution clouds the glass.
Q 07Hong Kong-style milk tea is nicknamed after which garment, which the cloth bag used to strain it resembles?
Silk stockings
Silk stockings is the nickname because the long cotton filter bag, stained brown by the tea, looks like one; Hong Kong lists the brewing technique as intangible cultural heritage.
Q 08Myanmar's lahpet thoke is a salad built on the pickled, fermented form of which crop?
Tea leaves
Tea leaves, fermented and eaten rather than brewed, are unique to this corner of Asia; a Burmese saying holds that 'of all the leaves, lahpet's the best'.
Q 09Beshbarmak, the boiled meat and noodle dish of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, has a Turkic name that means what?
Five fingers
Five fingers refers to the traditional way of eating the dish: with the hands, scooping up the noodles and meat without cutlery.
Q 10Which cone-shaped rice dish was declared Indonesia's official national dish by the tourism ministry in 2014?
Tumpeng
Tumpeng was picked from a shortlist of 30 as the dish 'that binds the diversity' of Indonesia's cooking, though some culinary experts objected that it does not truly represent the country's food.
Q 11Which West Sumatran dish is made by simmering beef in coconut milk and spices for hours, until almost dry?
Rendang
Rendang is cooked dry so that it keeps: Minangkabau people leaving home to seek their fortune carried it on long journeys, and CNN readers voted it the world's most delicious food in 2011.
Q 12Which Malaysian national dish, literally 'fatty rice', is cooked in coconut milk and eaten with fried anchovies and egg?
Nasi lemak
Nasi lemak's 'fat' means rich: the name refers to the coconut milk the rice is soaked and steamed in, and the dish is traditionally wrapped in banana leaf.
Q 13Which frothy Malaysian milk tea, the national drink, is named for being poured repeatedly between two containers?
Teh tarik
Q 21Which Nepali dish of fermented, sun-dried leafy greens is made like sauerkraut or kimchi but without any salt?
Gundruk
Gundruk is left to ferment until it turns mildly acidic, then dried in the sun; it is made each autumn from the glut of mustard and radish greens at harvest.
Q 22Nihari, the slow-cooked South Asian stew, is named for the time of day it was traditionally eaten: when?
Morning
Morning is when Mughal-era nawabs ate it, as a breakfast course after the dawn prayer; the name goes back through Persian nahari, 'breakfast', to the Arabic nahar, 'day'.
Q 23Kashmiri noon chai, the pink tea popular across Pakistan, gets its colour from brewing green tea with milk and what?
Baking soda
Teh tarik means 'pulled tea': the pouring from a height cools the brew and gives it a frothy head, and it is a fixture of mamak stalls and kopitiams.
Q 14Bak kut teh, the pork-rib soup linked to the Malaysian port of Klang, has a Hokkien name that literally means what?
Meat bone tea
Meat bone tea contains no tea at all: the ribs simmer for hours with herbs and spices, and the tea is drunk alongside in the belief that it dissolves the fat.
Q 15Singapore's chilli crab is traced to the 1950s, when Cher Yam Tian stir-fried crabs with chilli sauce and which other sauce?
Tomato sauce
Tomato sauce went in when her policeman husband suggested she try something other than steaming the crabs he caught; the dish sold so well from their pushcart that it grew into a restaurant.
Q 16Singapore's chicken rice was adapted from the Wenchang chicken dishes of immigrants from which southern Chinese island?
Hainan
Hainan's emigrants carried the dish wherever they settled, so the same poached chicken and seasoned rice turns up across Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.
Q 17Appam, the fermented rice-flour pancakes of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, go by what English name in Sri Lanka?
Hoppers
Hoppers is an English mangling of appa, the Sinhalese form of the Tamil appam; the bowl-shaped pancakes are eaten for breakfast or dinner with a curry on the side.
Q 18Which Sri Lankan street dish of chopped flatbread is famous for the clatter of iron blades that carries down the street?
Kottu
Kottu comes from the Tamil for 'to chop', and it took off in the 1970s as a cheap way to use up day-old roti.
Q 19Which crop did Ceylon's planters grow before a leaf-rust epidemic pushed them into tea in the late 1800s?
Coffee
Coffee had made Ceylon a major force in the world market; planters nicknamed the rust fungus that ruined their estates, Hemileia vastatrix, 'Devastating Emily'.
Q 20Nepal's momo dumplings are popularly believed to have been brought home by Nepali merchants who traded where?
Tibet
Tibet is where travelling Newar merchants are said to have picked up the recipe, which explains why the dish first caught on in the Newar community.
Baking soda reacts with the gunpowder green tea to turn the brew pink, and 'noon' means salt in Kashmiri, the seasoning it is served with.
Q 24Kabuli pulao, Afghanistan's signature rice dish, is crowned with which caramelised vegetable and which dried fruit?
Carrots and raisins
Carrots and raisins top Afghanistan's national dish, whose name in one account comes not from Kabul but from qabil, a word for skilful.
Q 25Which lemongrass-scented fish and rice-noodle soup, sold as an all-day breakfast, is the national dish of Myanmar?
Mohinga
Mohinga's sellers traditionally walked the streets with a shoulder pole, the soup cauldron hanging from one end and the noodles from the other.
Q 26Which Cambodian province names the peppercorn that in 2010 became Cambodia's first geographically protected product?
Kampot
Kampot pepper was noted by the Chinese envoy Zhou Daguan in the 13th century; civil war later cut the harvest from thousands of tons a year to about four before growers revived it.
Q 27Which fermented fish paste, with a smell likened to ripe Camembert, is the Khmer staple nicknamed 'Cambodian cheese'?
Prahok
Prahok began as a way to keep fish for the months when the catch was thin; its smell, likened to Limburger as well as Camembert, earned the nickname.
Q 28The Cambodian town of Skuon draws tourists for which crunchy snack, thought to date from Khmer Rouge-era food shortages?
Tarantulas
Tarantulas the size of a human palm, fried in oil and called a-ping in Khmer, are bred in holes in the ground in villages north of Skuon or foraged from nearby forest.
Q 29In which Southeast Asian country is most of the rice crop the sticky, glutinous kind?
Laos
Laos grows mostly sticky rice, whose texture comes from one mutation: it is thought to have arisen a single time, in Southeast Asia, and to have spread because farmers selected for it.
Q 30Or lam, the tongue-numbing stew of Luang Prabang, gets its bite from simmering which ingredient?
Chili wood
Chili wood, or sakhaan, is the woody vine of a pepper plant: cooks drop splinters of it into the pot, and the original royal recipe called for deer meat.