Jambalaya, the rice dish that stands at the crossroads of culture and cuisine, is a staple of celebration, mourning and everything in between in Louisiana. From tailgates to Mardi Gras to repasts and backyard cookouts, it is a ubiquitous food that can be a main or a side dish. The roots of the dish can be traced to West African jollof rice, as well as Spanish paella. At its essence, jambalaya is an odds-and-ends dish that feeds a multitude, a humble rice dish with some meat and/or seafood cooked into it by way of a flavorful broth. As for the origins of the name jambalaya, there are as many theories as the grains of rice contained within. Some believe it to come from the Provençal word jambalaia, which means a mishmash.

The vast majority of the food in Bangkok is, without a doubt, Thai. But peek under the hood and you’ll find ingredients, cooking techniques, and dishes that can be traced back to places far beyond Thailand. Influences brought by Chinese immigrants – namely Hokkien, Hakka, and Teochew people – have done the most to shape food in Bangkok. Immigration from the Muslim world has also had a massive impact on the city’s cuisine. And even contact with Europeans has come to shape Thai food. The result of all this is the fascinating, delicious jumble of ingredients, cooking techniques, dishes, and influences that today we recognize as Thai food.

It’s been a long journey – literally – for pastry chef Juliana Penteado, culminating in her small-but-beautiful bakery in Lisbon’s São Bento neighborhood, and another shop soon to come. The Brazilian chef first enrolled in a cooking school in São Paulo at age 12 where, she would spend six years studying. As a young girl, she went back and forth between cooking and baking, but the latter would eventually win. “I also like cooking but baking has a more delicate and feminine side which make my eyes sparkle,” she tells us. It’s that inspiration which shines through in the elegant, lovingly made pastries that have become her calling card.

Buenos Aires is overflowing with places to drink wine — from natural wine specialists and stylish newcomers to a classic bar that’s been pouring since the ’90s. Here are the best wine bars to visit right now.

Call it the Sultanahmet Squeeze: How to stay close to the monuments of the Old City yet avoid eating in tourist traps? We get asked this question a lot. Since the Sultanahmet area is primarily a tourism zone, locals-only haunts are few and far between. At most restaurants, prices tend to be higher than usual, while quality and service are unreliable at best. That said, there are some fine places to eat in the area. We’ve compiled a short list of restaurants to help you avoid the traps.

Boris Ivanovitch, a White Russian refugee who was among the more than 100,000 who fled the Bolshevik Revolution to Constantinople, and Judith Kreschanovsky, an immigrant from Hungary, set the trajectory of the menu when they first set a table at Ayaspaşa for the public. Such a restaurant only ever could have opened in the early years of Republican Istanbul, where people who might have never otherwise met anywhere else on earth crossed paths in “The City.” The menu was and is composed of recipes that Judith cooked herself, and features elements of Russian and Hungarian cuisine.

Kirk and Kerry, brother and sister, are the heart and soul of Frady’s One Stop Food Store, a Bywater neighborhood institution that has been around in some shape or form since 1889. After a typically busy lunch rush, the duo sit at a table outside the yellow-painted shop, watching over their quiet corner of New Orleans. They shout hello to an older neighbor as he totters by. Kerry notices his limp and asks Kirk about it.

Jean-Pierre Ferrato has vin coursing through his veins. Since as young as he can remember, he spent time at Chez Ferrato, his grandfather’s wholesale-retail wine shop. Grandpa Ferrato would siphon French and Algerian table wine from giant wooden barrels into glass bottles, then bring them to restaurants and individuals on his delivery tricycle. Customers would return the bottles, les consignes, for Ferrato to wash, dry, then reuse again. The process was a ton of work – “It was eco-friendly before the word even existed,” winks Jean-Pierre. The ever-smiling Marseillais is still satisfying locals’ thirst for wine eight decades after his grandfather launched his shop in 1940, making his own vintage by upping the wine quality and swapping the barrels for tables topped with Corsican dishes.

In the heart of Almagro, Parrilla Lo de Mary carries the weight of Buenos Aires history on its grill. Opened on the eve of Argentina’s 2001 economic collapse, this family-run steakhouse has endured through protests, bank runs, and pandemics — all while keeping the tradition of the parrilla alive with smoky asado de tira, indulgent matambre a la pizza, and the unmistakable spirit of resilience.

Call ahead by a couple days and Serdil will arrange a deep dive on Diyarbakır dishes you can't experience anywhere else, not in the city, not in the region, not anywhere else in the country. On our last visit in September, he started the meal with a local caprese made from lavaş peyniri (a flat, mild sheep's milk cheese), reyhan (purple basil, which grows all over the countryside), and tırnak ekmek (handmade bread from a local baker, first popularized in nearby Gaziantep). He presents his dish, and those after, with a story of how it came to be and where the ingredients are from. More bread was served with a bright green salt Serdil had made from a rare Kurdish herb he called "zuzak," explaining just how difficult it has become to track down. It was tangy and slightly sweet, and no one from either of our dining groups (eight in total, we were at capacity), had ever heard of it before.

A Bangkok street food staple, phat phak bung fai daeng (flash-fried morning glory) delivers fiery garlic-chili heat in under two minutes. Crisp greens, wok smoke, and a splash of oyster sauce make this simple stir-fry one of Thailand’s most beloved everyday meals.

How, where, and why people are eating in Buenos Aires, Argentina, as reported by our local team. Plus our "Quick Hits" for how to have the best culinary adventures in the city.

The bustling Umeda district is the unofficial downtown of Osaka, and new visitors to the city might be surprised to find that much of it is underground, in the form of “Osaka Station City,” the nickname for the one-square-mile subterranean metropolis that connects to all major trains in the area. One could spend a whole day here without seeing sunlight! But avoiding the rays isn’t the charm of this spot – it’s the food scene. Here are some of our picks for the best places to eat in Osaka Station City.

“I still don’t know where the siphon bottles for the vermut are,” says an employee of Marina, a small bar in the newly renovated Mercat de Sant Antoni. It’s clear as we’re walking around that the staff of the market’s few bars and its many vendors are still settling in and adapting to their brand new spots. At the same time, hundreds of visitors have been exploring the revamped market each day since its opening last week asking, “Where can we eat or drink something?” So far, that seems to be the question on everyone’s mind, particularly locals. But this is not another food hall, this is a proper neighborhood market focused on selling quality fresh produce and other food product

Imagine you are Marcel Proust at the beginning of his novel In Search of Lost Time, or the feared food critic Anton Ego in Ratatouille, the Pixar masterpiece that won the 2008 Oscars for Best Animated Film. In the exact moment you taste a madeleine dipped in tea or a forkful of ratatouille, your palate is activated you are catapulted back in time, to that first Sunday morning you tried the dessert or to that time when, after falling off your bike, the dinner your mother prepared you somehow seemed to make everything better. It is this emotion, this involuntary memory flashback, that cousins Nico Virga and Angelo Fascetta had in mind when they opened their restaurant. Located on Via Cavalieri di Malta, behind the Church of San Domenico – known as the Pantheon of Sicilians – Osteria Mangia e Bevi is a charming eatery that offers not only simple home cooking from Palermo, but also a true taste of grandma's cooking. Grandma Antonietta’s, more specifically.