Rio

Charutaria Syria: Coffee and Cigarettes

Before thousands of Syrian and Lebanese immigrants arrived in Rio at the beginning of the 20th century, colonists organized the old city according to geography, chance and Spanish and Portuguese planning conventions. This meant stores in the same category – ironware, shoes, musical instruments – were grouped together, sometimes even allotted their own street. If you needed wholesale fabric, you headed to a different road than if you needed a new kitchen pot. When hard fortunes amidst the breakup of the Ottoman Empire brought residents of the regions surrounding Syria and Lebanon to Rio, many put down roots in an area then called “Little Turkey” on Alfândega Street, near the port

Buenos Aires

CB on the Road: On the Yerba Mate Trail

To call the drinking of yerba mate a fixation in parts of South America would be an understatement. Yerba mate (MAH-tey) in Argentina and Uruguay is consumed regularly by an estimated 98 percent of the population, and, like tea in other countries, has social and cultural significance and rituals associated with friendship, business relationships, leisure, hospitality, etiquette and national identity. As a social ritual, mate brewing requires a bit more than just yerba, the vessel (calabaza), straw (bombilla) and hot water (80 degrees C – 175 degrees F – is the usual temperature, but around 50 degrees C or 120 degrees F is preferred); if you are in a group setting, you’ll also need to know a bit of its language of respect and solidarity.

Tokyo

Karē wa Nomimono: Japanese Curry Roulette

There’s a general rule of thumb in Tokyo that if you see a line in front of a restaurant, it’s probably worth standing in. Maybe that’s how we first discovered Karē wa Nomimono. Or maybe it was the heady scent of fresh curry that wafts out the kitchen door before the restaurant opens every day. As many times as we’ve been back, it’s hard to remember. Touted as a national dish since at least the mid-20th century, curry rice is for many Japanese the quintessential comfort food. While some shops pride themselves on making curry just like mom used to, others are taking the classic dish in bold new directions.

Istanbul

Ali Usta's Çig Köfte: When Meatless Meatballs Sell Like Hotcakes

Locals are crazy for Ali Usta's çiğ köfte. Ali Usta is a delicious character who has his tiny shop in the backstreets of Istanbul's Spice Bazaar. Çiğ köfte made with bulgur, herbs and spices suits every vegetarian's palate if one can eat hot, spicy food. This huge container is empty by late afternoon. Be there on time! A favorite stop on our Culinary Secrets of the Old City tour.

Mexico City

Baby Fish: Savior of the Landlocked

In landlocked Mexico City – the nearest coast is 250 miles away – you might think that it would be difficult to find fresh seafood. However, ever since Aztec times, the ocean’s bounty has been brought to the valley daily. Back then, the Aztec emperors got their goods using a system of relay runners that covered those hundreds of miles from sea to city per day. Things require less footwork today: technology and Mexico’s highway system allow daily deliveries of fresh seafood to the capital from the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico coasts. That said, feeding the Mexican capital’s fish craving still requires some hustle.

Lisbon

Casa de Macau: Imperial Dining Room

The era of Portugal’s seafaring might was so long ago, it seems almost like a myth – one still patriotically related by locals today. Gastronomic evidence of the country’s imperial past remains, however, particularly in Lisbon, where Angolan, Brazilian and Goan eateries can be found among the many other restaurants serving non-Portuguese food. Yet, despite Macau being under Portuguese control for around four centuries, passing into Chinese administration only in 1999, Macanese cuisine is still a mystery. Lisbon has yet to see even one Macanese restaurant open. There is a place here, however, to eat food from Macau: a cultural association in between Alvalade and Areeiro on a main road that leads to the airport, far from Lisbon’s center.

Athens

Sunny Days and Fresh Citrus at the Athens Farmer's Market

The oranges are beckoning shoppers at the farmer's market in Keramikos, central Athens. This market is a featured stop on our downtown Athens tour. Already pleasant and bustling in March at the time of this photo, imagine what it's like in May!

Salloura, an Epic of Sweets: Chap. 5, Departures and Arrivals

Rubi wanted two things for his 13th birthday: a bicycle, and to see his dad, Ahmed, again. It was the end of November, and it had been three months since his family was whole, since Ahmed left for Germany with Rashed and other colleagues from Salloura. Rubi’s days in Istanbul were a steady grind, all blending together in a dim purgatory: wake up at 6 in the morning, get to work at the shirt factory two bus rides away by 7, iron, sew, take the boss’s orders, go home 12 hours later, eat, sleep, repeat. Before Ahmed left, he had been working at the Salloura factory, learning his father’s trade.

Queens

Queens: The Promised Land, Pt. 2

For those interested in visiting Tashkent or Samarkand, an easier trip might involve heading to the Rego Park and Forest Hills neighborhoods of Queens, home to much of the borough’s Central Asian Jewish diaspora. The neighborhoods comprise two main thoroughfares: 63rd Avenue, which changes to 63rd Street, and 108th Street. Both roads have a range of markets, restaurants and bakeries that serve local tastes and evoke places left behind. On one recent afternoon, I walked west on 63rd Avenue, away from Queens Boulevard, passing Public School 139 Rego Park, where parents and grandparents spoke Tajik, Mandarin, Arabic, Uzbek and Russian, crowding the street as they await their children’s dismissal from school.

Istanbul

Feriköylu Ömer Usta: Köfte Club

The triangle of Kurtuluş, Feriköy and Bomonti represents an Istanbul on the verge of fading away. Though still inhabited by significant numbers of Greeks, Jews and Armenians, there are more local churches and synagogues than are used by the remnants of those diminished communities. The numerous schools, houses of worship and cemeteries are relics testifying to the cosmopolitanism that once defined this segment of inner Istanbul. Another nostalgic quality of the area is its small-business culture, still thriving, yet on the verge of a major shift.

Rio

Pastel da Carmen: Midnight Munchies in the City of God

Carmen and Eduardo’s story could be an allegory for the rise and uh-oh moment of Brazil’s new middle class – except their tale is a real one, one that ends with a really nice savory fried pastel that’s become a midnight munchie hit with their neighbors in Rio’s iconic City of God (Cidade de Deus) favela. The pair’s life together started early; they met when Carmen, now 30, was just 12 years old; moved in together when she was 14; and both converted to evangelical Christianity and married in a church when she was 18. They came to the City of God, well-known from the book and film of the same name, looking for a more economical housing option.

Istanbul

Istanbul's Most Sought-After Döner

The biggest döner kebap in town with Asım Usta, building his döner fresh every morning since 1973! If you come for late lunch or dinner, you're too late! Locals start to eat this around 10.30 am. Very popular in our Born on the Bosphorus walk.

Tokyo

Sarashina Horii Soba: Noodles, with a Side of History

How thrilling to know it’s possible to reach far back into Japan’s gastronomic past merely by visiting Azabu Juban’s Sarashina Horii Soba for a bit of “living history” in the form of a pleasantly simple meal. The Sarashina cooking lineage stretches back over 200 years and is always evident in the shimmering, high-quality plates of buckwheat noodles coming from the kitchen. In 1798, Nunoya Tahei, a Mastumoto City textile merchant famous for his soba skills, founded the Sarashina soba lineage when he was encouraged by Hosina, the local feudal lord, to open a shop making a style of soba popular in the Japanese Alps area of Nagano.

Athens

Building Blocks: Feta, Greece's Big Cheese

It must be one of the world’s oldest cheeses, it’s certainly one of the most famous, and it’s practically never missing from a Greek table, no matter the time of day. A person might grab a chunk of this chalk-white substance for breakfast, crunch through layers of feta-stuffed phyllo for elevenses, put a slab of it on her village salad for lunch, have it for supper along with a vegetable casserole and then pair it with watermelon for a scrumptious dessert. The only other food that a Greek may be even more addicted to is bread. If you were to guess which nation boasted the most cheese eaters on the planet, surely you would say France, home to so many delectable and sophisticated fromages.

Tbilisi

CB Book Club: Alice Feiring's For the Love of Wine

Editor’s note: In the latest installment in our Book Club series, we spoke to Alice Feiring, author of For the Love of Wine: My Odyssey through the World’s Most Ancient Wine Culture (Potomac Books, 2016). She is the author of two other books, publishes the newsletter The Feiring Line, has written for numerous publications and has received a James Beard Award for her writing. How did this book come about? Amazingly, the Georgian government asked me for an “Alice kind of book” that they could use promotionally. It was a small, no-strings-attached, rambling essay on Georgian wine. I realized I had written a book proposal, so I developed the idea and took it from there.

Istanbul

Serious Cheese Choices in Samatya

Istanbul's Samatya neighborhood is home to one of the city's many sprawling weekly markets, where one can find excellent Ezine, a white cheese from a district of the same name in Çanakkale, at modest prices.

Queens

Queens: The Promised Land, Pt. 1

In 1654, Dutch refugees, including 23 Jews, traveling on a French ship from Brazil, arrived in North America. The refugees set foot in Peter Stuyvesant’s New Amsterdam village, now called New York. Stuyvesant did not want to accept Jews, so he imposed trade, property and tax restrictions to stifle their advancement. Most of the Jewish community consequently returned to Amsterdam or left for the Caribbean, where they could live under more hospitable conditions with relatives. When Stuyvesant ultimately ceded control of New Amsterdam to the English, the small Jewish community that had remained swore allegiance to its new rulers and began to grow.

Barcelona

CB on the Road: Promoting Peas in Sant Andreu de Llavaneres

“People know about our peas all over the world!” Marc Bertrán exclaimed as he stood, arms crossed, behind a folding table laden with jars of cooked green peas, stacks of pamphlets and a big crock of silky pea hummus with a bowl of crackers, inviting passersby to enjoy a taste of three generations’ worth of dedication. “In the 1950s,” Bertran told us proudly, “our town’s famous dish, Pèsols ofegats a l’estil de Llavaneres” – Peas stewed in the style of Llavaneres – “was featured on the menu at Maxim’s restaurant in Paris.”

Rio

Casa Cavé: Sugar-Glazed Glory

The popular saying that Rio is known more for its bar culture than for its café culture has serious counter-evidence in the old city. Beginning in 1808, when Portuguese emperor Dom João fled Napoleon and relocated his imperial court to Rio, European architects, businessmen and intellectuals followed him and attempted to show that their society could thrive in a tropical land. Many stayed on after the royal family returned to Portugal in 1822, and over the course of the 19th century filled the old city’s cobblestone streets with neoclassical row houses, Baroque revival churches and a Beaux-Arts theater. Into this mix, Frenchman Charles Cavé founded a bakery in 1860 in a pink Victorian building as frosted in white trim as the pastries it purveyed.

Shanghai

La Weixian: Sichuan Family Values

It was Mr. Liu’s huge grin that first caught our eye, welcoming us into his humble, living room-sized restaurant. Scanning the small space, we suspected we had hit upon a gem: white tile walls, basic stools, vegetables crammed into the fridges in the dining room and fiery red dishes dotting the tables of happy diners – all hallmarks of the down-to-earth eateries we’re always looking for. As we sat down and he started explaining his specialties, we could feel his genuine interest in having us taste his authentic Sichuanese cuisine, going well beyond just making another sale.

Athens

The Oldest Taverna in Central Athens

The oldest taverna in central Athens features delicious and simple food all prepared by Mr Dimitris, who has been running it since he was a child! This is a place one may stumble into on our Downtown Athens walk.

Lisbon

Building Blocks: Piripiri, the Saucy World Traveller

The small, spicy piripiri, or African bird’s eye chili, is one of Portuguese cuisine’s most unexpected ingredients, one that has travelled thousands of miles across many continents to find its place there. When the Portuguese began navigating around the globe as early as the 15th century, spices like black pepper and cinnamon became some of the most important and expensive goods on the market. Piripiri didn’t reach quite the same renown, but they have influenced many cuisines in their travels East. Initially they were taken from Brazil to Africa, where they thrived. After Vasco da Gama established the maritime route to India, the Portuguese introduced the peppers to Asia, namely India, Thailand and Malaysia.

Tbilisi

Rhea's Squirrels Café Gallery: Cheese Pie, With a Mission

The kids were playing in the park, and Dad needed a cup of coffee for the caffeine boost to keep up with his daughter. Luckily there was a café nearby – where you would least expect one. The park is a modest little playground patch in a residential neighborhood across from the funicular that hauls people up and down Mtatsminda mountain to the amusement park and restaurant above the city. The café is on the ground floor of a Communist-era apartment block, just a couple dozen paces away. It was everything a little coffeehouse should be: warm, cozy, quiet and wheelchair accessible.

Lisbon

Tasting Exquisite Presunto Pata Negra in Lisbon

This exquisite 24 and 40 month jamón ibérico from the Alentejo region of Portugal can be enjoyed on our Lisbon tour. Thanks to Rick Poon for the appetizing photo.

Salloura, an Epic of Sweets: Chap. 4, Betrayal

“It is betrayal,” As’ad Salloura declared from behind his giant wooden desk at the Salloura factory, tucked away on the outskirts of Istanbul. From here, he runs the transplanted 150-year-old sweets empire that is his family’s namesake. It had been three months since he’d last seen Ahmed, his most cherished employee, Rashed, another integral part of the staff, and two others. “No one told me they were leaving…I found out by chance maybe four or five hours before they left [for Europe],” he said, his thick dimpled fingers thumping the table as he spoke between sips of cigarettes and mate, an herbal caffeinated tea popular in Syria.

Mexico City

Spring Gone Wild: Mexico's Prickly Season

As Mexico’s northern neighbors look forward to early spring rains, in Central Mexico, the dry season will continue having its way with the landscape into May, sometime even June. The sun shines hotter by the day; dust blows scratchily against yellowed and crackly brush and scraggly, twisted branches of mesquite. Mexico City is located on desert plateau, and there, amongst the dry spines of the cacti, there are signs of new life well before the rainy season of summer officially begins. Red, orange, fuchsia and yellow blooms splash across the arid desert regions. From Sonora in the north, south beyond Mexico City to Puebla, even including parts of inland Veracruz and Oaxaca, the cacti burst into color.

Istanbul

Spring Gone Wild: Weeds and Edibles in Alaçatı

They weren’t easy to spot at first: tiny green shoots with reddish roots, scarcely an inch high, poking out of the mud along the banks of a brackish stream near the Aegean town of Alaçatı. From these unpromising beginnings come a dish known to nearly every patron of a Turkish meyhane: nutrient-rich deniz börülcesi (samphire), typically served boiled and dressed with olive oil, lemon, and garlic. The simple word ot, which translates to “herb” or “weed,” doesn’t do justice to the important – and delicious – role these wild greens play in the cuisine of Turkey’s Aegean region. Though most commonly served as zeytinyağlılar, dishes “with olive oil” like the classic deniz börülcesi salad, their versatility was on full display at the recent Alaçatı Ot Festivali, an annual celebration of all things leafy and green.

Athens

It's Springtime (AKA Garlic Season) in Athens

It's the season of fresh garlic! Garlic at its best. This basic ingredient of Greek cuisine can be found fresh at the markets encountered on our Athens walks, and now is the best time to snag a stalk.

Tokyo

Spring Gone Wild: Tokyo Sansai

One of the great joys of spring in Japan is anticipating the appearance of sansai, or mountain vegetables. When cherry blossoms begin to flutter on warming breezes, hikers take to the hills to forage for the first wild edibles. Supermarkets mount special displays of packaged (and unfortunately often hot-house-raised) young sprouted leaves, shoots and tubers. Restaurants proudly offer up special seasonal dishes, providing an opportunity to bring the freshness of the outdoors to the table, even in the inner city. A bounty of deliciousness awaits those fortunate enough to get out of Tokyo and roam the hills. Fukinoto, taranome and warabi form a trifecta of green vegetables gleaned from mountain walks. Cooks wait all year to prepare dishes of these fragrant yasai veggies.

Athens

Spring Gone Wild: Greek Horta Culture

Wild greens or horta (χόρτα) are an ancient and still very important ingredient in traditional Greek cuisine (and happen to have exceptional nutritional value to boot). Every season brings different varieties: some more bitter, some milder and sweeter, some naturally salty, all with different textures and shades of green. Almost every single taverna around Greece includes horta in the salad section of the menu. These boiled greens served with virgin olive oil, sea salt and plenty of freshly squeezed lemon juice are one of the most common salads enjoyed throughout the year, usually with fish, but sometimes also with meat. When eating out, Greeks typically ask the waiter what type of horta the restaurant serves, as they know it depends on season, region and availability of each variety.

Tbilisi

Vampire-Thwarting Chkmeruli in Tbilisi

This steaming serving of ckmeruli (Georgian garlic chicken) is guaranteed to keep vampires away for a week. One may encounter a tasty (and protective) dish like this on our Tbilisi walk.

Rio

Simsim: Open Sesame

Anyone with observant eyes and a rumbling stomach will notice how newcomers to the city – and their snack foods – are cropping up like the pink beijo-turco flowers that grow in Rio’s forests after a heavy rain. There’s Hasan with his eggplant esfiha pastries amongst the popcorn vendors and candle-lighters at the Nossa Senhora da Glória church of Largo do Machado; energetic and trendy Armin with his falafel in Botafogo; tired Hafez with his boxes of savory snacks, trying to find shade on the Rua das Laranjeiras. Brazilians didn’t need to be told to like Arab food, and now they’re getting a fresh wave of that culture’s already iconic snacks. The bready esfihas and bulgur wheat kibe may be to Brazilians what chicken tikka masala is to Brits, a formerly foreign food now amongst the country’s most ubiquitous for drunk munchers and rushed lunch-breakers alike. Arab migration dates back over a century in Latin America, and Brazil’s Lebanese diaspora is the largest in the world, with a population as high as 10 million. Some 10 percent of Brazil’s congress is of Arab ancestry.

Lisbon

Santa Clara dos Cogumelos: Fungus Fanatic

In the heart of Alfama’s historic flea market is a surprise: Lisbon has a small restaurant dedicated entirely to mushrooms. Located inside the charming old market building from where there is an excellent view over the Tagus river, Santa Clara dos Cogumelos (Saint Clara of Mushrooms) is a very peculiar eatery: from starter to finish, including desserts, are unexpected combinations of shiitake, oyster, porcini, black trumpets or truffles, all cooked using a variety of techniques.

Hamur: Dough Nation

Turkish Cypriot Hülya Çavuşoğlu had always been a good cook but had never thought about making it her profession. That changed in 1995 when, looking for a change, she quit her job in a government office and started a business making and delivering home-cooked food, specializing in mantı, a dumpling found throughout the Turkic world, and börek, stuffed pockets of dough. Business boomed, her husband Ahmed gave up his job as a tailor to do front-of-the-house and they moved to a tiny shop with four tables, naming it Hamur, which means “dough” in Turkish. Located just outside the old walls of Lefkosa, the slice of Cyprus’s capital located in the breakaway northern part of the island, it’s a remarkable little restaurant, serving the freshest of hand-made mantı and börek to everyone from students to diplomats trying to negotiate a settlement between north and south.

Istanbul

Istanbul's Old Hans: The Original Makers Fair

Architectural and historical monuments of the Ottoman Era, the hans and caravansaray that freckle the old city, have mostly been left to their own devices. Originally built as imposing weigh stations for incoming traders, today they are crumbling in places and patched up with duct tape in others. These buildings are still living spaces of commerce and craftsmanship, or simply storage, a tradition which reaches back centuries. Wandering around one han which hosts a bustling trade in yarn, or visiting an Armenian silversmith in his tiny vaulted cell tapping detail into an elaborate dinner plate is a magical experience.

Athens

Rows of Roasting Coffee Beans at the Central Athens Food Market

This row of coffee beans, roasted and then grinded, is enough to wake up an entire city. One might stumble upon such a scene on our Culinary Secrets of Downtown Athens tour.

Mexico City

Barbacoa Renatos: Flavor Underground

We’d heard from a colleague that Renatos had the best barbacoa game in town, and we finally got the chance to confirm this claim for ourselves a couple of weeks ago. This family joint in Mexico City’s Azcapotzalco neighborhood has been in business for 55 years. Its owner, Renato Álvarez, gave us a little history lesson about his family and their barbacoa business. The barbacoa recipe prepared in Renatos is from the state of Hidalgo, famous for mutton slow-cooked in a pit dug into the ground.

Salloura, an Epic of Sweets: Chap. 3, Deadlines

It was a hot, humid June in Istanbul. A deadline hovered over Ahmed. He gave himself three months to make the biggest decision of his life: Would he stay? Or would he go? The reasons to leave Istanbul far outnumbered the ones to stay. He was working day and night for a salary that barely made ends meet. The long hours weren’t new – his life in Aleppo was work, 15 hours a day, seven days a week. But unlike in Turkey, Ahmed made more than enough in Syria: he bought a brand new house for his family just before the war; his wife, Laila, was a respected housewife, pushing her kids to study; his two older kids, Rubi and Ruseel – little Rivana wasn’t even born yet – went to good schools. Rubi even had a private English tutor.

Tokyo

Savoy Pizza and Cheese Shop Shibuya: Odes to Italy

We consider ourselves fabulously lucky every time we snatch up one of the ten counter stools or the three-seater table inside the triangular shaped and miniscule Savoy Pizza. Up a few steps as the street curves around behind itself, this smallest of small restaurants is easily missed; the space seems carved out of the corner of a building, almost like the bow of a ship. The best way to find it is to look for the clutch of hungry people hanging around outside, waiting for their slice of Neapolitan-style heaven. It is the kind of place that one is told about and then hesitates to tell more people lest the line outside never end.

Athens

Yperokeanio: Sea Worthy

The first and most vivid impression one has of Piraeus is its port: bustling, ugly and uninviting. Just a place you have to endure in order to get to your destination, usually a beautifully serene Greek island. Piraeus, however, is definitely an exciting place for anyone looking for a culinary adventure, as it is a melting pot of cultures with many interesting places hidden in the backstreets, away from tourists. The whole area next to Hadjikyriakeion for example, a girls’ orphanage built in the 19th century, is well known to locals for its humble, yet high-quality tavernas, serving fresh fish and simple meze all year round.

Shanghai

Every Shade of Green: Shanghai's Spring Foods

In Shanghai, wet markets hold the telltale signs that spring is finally upon us. Stalks of asparagus as thick as a thumb spring up first, alongside brown and white bamboo shoots so freshly pulled from the earth that dirt still clings to their fibrous shells. But the most exciting spring green is fava beans (蚕豆, cándòu), also known as broad beans. Their short season in Shanghai – usually just about four to five weeks – means they’re in high demand, and stalls are filled with workers shelling the labor-intensive beans by the bushel.

Shanghai

Pepper-Powdered Enoki Mushrooms at Shanghai's A Jun

A Jun grills up more than just seafood at their Shouning Lu shop. These enoki mushrooms are powdered with four types of pepper before being thrown on the fire.

Lisbon

Fish and the City: The Peixe em Lisboa Festival

Lisboetas can’t get enough of fish and seafood, and the annual Peixe em Lisboa festival celebrates that love with an abundance of food-centric activities. The main event every year finds a handful of Lisbon’s top restaurants competing against each other to see who can create the top fish dish. There is also a food market with some 70 displays and daily events and workshops. It’s a chance to taste some sublime culinary creations and to meet creative local chefs and small-scale food producers from different regions.

Northward Bound: African-Americans in Queens, part 2

The 20th century saw millions of African-Americans leave the South for cities in the North in what is called the Great Migration. And with them, they brought their food traditions, and they opened eateries and groceries and other businesses to serve these rapidly expanding communities. In Queens, African-Americans settled in Flushing, Corona and Jamaica. Today, even with the influx of many new immigrants in recent years, Jamaica continues to be home to many African-Americans. Byron Lewis, an African-American pioneer in multicultural advertising and founder of UniWorld Group, grew up in Queens. His parents’ families both traveled from the South during the Great Migration, ultimately settling in South Jamaica, where Byron, the oldest of six, his parents and grandmother lived on Pinegrove Street from the 1930s on.

Shanghai

Steaming Wontons Served Late at Night in Shanghai

Er Guang Wontons serves up steaming wontons well into the evening every night. The pork-stuffed dumplings come slathered in peanut chili sauce, as all late-night snacks should be.

Lisbon

Cervejaria Ramiro: Crustacean Station

Cervejaria Ramiro is the undisputed temple of seafood in central Lisbon. The 50-year-old business represents an old-school type of eatery: a beer hall where the seafood is fresh and cheap, with a choice from the daily menu or directly from the large aquariums that look out to the street. Taking up two floors of a late-Art Nouveau building on Avenida Almirante Reis, Cervejaria Ramiro is perpetually crowded. The clientele has not been affected by the recent urban regeneration of the area, which is turning the degraded Intendente neighbourhood, long affected by social exclusion, into a fashionable district. In fact, the restaurant was already popular in the 1970s, when eating seafood was new to the capital.

Istanbul

Horhor Dürüm Evi: Family (Kebab) Values

We could devote a weekly column to the culinary treasures of Istanbul’s polyglot Aksaray district and probably never have to worry about running out of things to say. The area is jam-packed with places to eat, and while we've written about many of them, Aksaray just keeps on delivering. Having previously covered the Syrian, Georgian, Azerbaijani and Uighur restaurants that make Aksaray a true patchwork of culinary destinations, our most vulnerable soft spot still lies in the strip of kebab restaurants inspired by the cuisine of southern Turkey’s Hatay and Urfa and located adjacent to the metro station.

Athens

Remoutsiko: Suburban Meat Up

The working-class area of Brahami has never been Athens’ hottest gastronomic destination. It is a mostly residential neighborhood, halfway between the city center and the exotic beach-loving southern suburbs. Like most of the city’s suburbs, in the not-so-distant past, this area was once made up mostly of fields. Now formally named Agios Dimitrios (St. Dimitrios, after St. Dimitrios’s church), it has a vibrant local market. It’s also home to Remoutsiko, a family-owned, family-friendly taverna focusing on meat. Housed in an old converted barn, the restaurant has been around for some 30-plus years.

Mexico City

Café La Habana: Literary Grounds

For more than six decades now Café La Habana has served great coffee from the state of Veracruz and also sells the beans by the kilo. As in many Mexican restaurants, it offers café lechero, which is one or two shots (depending on the customer’s preference) of very strong espresso in a large glass that is then filled up with hot milk. One of our favorite drinks here, however, was the café bombón (roughly translated as “marshmallow coffee”), a cortado double espresso shot with ground coffee sprinkled on top.

Istanbul

Late-night Sucuk Ekmek in Beşiktaş

After midnight deep in the heart of Beşiktas, these two gentlemen can be found slinging grilled sandwiches of thin, sliced sucuk, peppers and tomatoes. It's one of our favorite street snacks, and one of the perfect follow ups to a cold one or four.