SIT independent traveler's food options can range between snacks & DIY pasta ‘gut-bombs’ to expensive 5 Star restaurants, if available. 

If you are passionate about foreign cuisine, scour the most recent guidebooks, restaurant reviews in English, TICs (Tourist Information Centers), and ask hostel staff.

   TIP: Ask the locals where they eat or show them your list or a map of local restaurants. Let them choose.

I am not a ‘foodie’. so my culinary exploits include snacks, take out or delivered, street vendors, ’in-my-bath-sink’ salads, market groceries prepared in a hostel kitchen, and local, authentic restaurants or specialty cultural restaurants.

My usual ideal is either the hostel kitchen or an authentic, non-tourist, local restaurant near hostel with a menu item I recognize & can eat night after night. Easily pleased

Occasionally I discover a dish I can’t live without every night.  😄 

    Anecdote: Hiroshoma’s Okonomiaki:  A grilled pancake from Edo period (1683- 1868) Buddhist ceremonies. Hiroshima’s okonomiaki
style was popularized after the atomic bombing when food was scarce. [ytlk; Hiroshioma]] 

My Practice: 

    1. Breakfast:
I am usually up & gone early so I can experience the community waking up. I look for freshly baked bread that can munch on all day long or a pastry. 

Often, I visit the early open market,
buy a few different veggies, return to my hostel to purify in Clorox water [pplk: Health Safety;CloroxI] & snack on them during day.

I burned so many calories every day I could afford the carbs..

    2. Lunch:
Usually at large open market food stalls, or street food.

    Anecdote: Quito, Ecuador’s Mercado Central’s food stall with seating & great menu variety.

    3. Dinner:                                      
       a. Small authentic local restaurant or street vendor: 
Usually a locally recommended restaurant or street vender serving a dish
I'd happily eat often.

At days-end, I crave a quiet solo, predictably enjoyable meal … reading anything that distracts from my travel focus.

Of course, social media does the same.

    Anecdote: Quietly off the main drag on a side walk:    a Chaing Mai, Thailand’s street vendor stirred fried in his wok by the curb while I sat on the sidewalk’s small plastic stool & table watching, mouth watering.. So good …. night after night. [ytlk; India street food]

b. Hostel Kitchen: Most often I enjoy shopping local small/large
market foodstuffs and preparing in hostel kitchen, then settling into my reading or conversation with fellow travelers.