Worldwide

Milk Street on the Road: Istanbul

Bridging Europe and Asia and connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, the city of Istanbul has always been a place of intersecting cultures. Over 8 days and 7 nights, you’ll get a local’s access to the blend of history and modernity that defines this metropolis. Your guide is local expert Gonca Karakoç; no one knows Istanbul’s ustas (masters of traditional crafts) like her and you’ll be welcomed into places no other tourist can go. Your resident chef is author and teacher Özlem Warren, a regular guest at the Milk Street Cooking School and on Milk Street radio. 

Athens

Ta Stachia: Late Night Pies

Pies, sweet and savory, constitute a massive chapter of traditional Greek cuisine, and are also a timeless popular street food all across the nation. Most classic Greek pie shops tend to open early in the morning, as pies are popular for breakfast, and close in the afternoon, usually after they have sold out for the day. That’s why Ta Stachia, a small shop in Exarchia, stands out – an after-hours pie shop, it runs steadily throughout the night, not only feeding all the pub crawlers and nighthawks, but also staying open until about noon for the early birds who walk their dogs or set off for work or school.

Tbilisi

Tartan: Take-Out Wizards

You are motionless, stuck in a traffic jam after a long day at work while your stomach growls. You know the rest of the family will be hungry when you get home and that the fridge is empty and sad. Shopping and cooking is out of the question, so you turn onto a Vera side street, zig-zag through one-way lanes to Tatishvili Street, double park, and run into a tiny gastronomic oasis that has been saving lives like yours for nearly a decade. Its name is Tartan. Located in a step-down ground-floor apartment, takeout cafeterias don’t get homier than this. The front room is taken up with a long counter of refrigerated display cases half filled with enough ready-made dishes to lay down a feast when you get home.

Los Angeles

Banana Leaf: South India Express

Perusing the menus of most Indian restaurants in Los Angeles, one may forget that India is the seventh-largest country in the world, with over 30 states and union territories. A limited handful of the same recipes – chicken tikka masala, tandoori, naan – repeat themselves time and time again. These are the dishes most commonly found on Indian restaurants’ menus across the U.S., including Los Angeles, and they all hail from North India. Sridhar Sambangi is looking to change this at Banana Leaf, which serves regional specialties from South India. Sambangi spent more than 30 years working in technology startups, which included a cloud-based food ordering service for restaurants. Food has always been his passion, though, and he finally took the leap to start his own restaurant with Banana Leaf.

New Orleans

Beignets & More: Strip Mall Vietnamese Oasis

Beignets & More is the kind of place you want everyone to know about – and you don’t want anyone to know about. Tucked between a defunct Cineplex and an Off-Track Betting location in a strip mall in Chalmette, a downriver suburb of New Orleans, it is a family-run gem of Vietnamese cuisine. But the name is a cloaking device of sorts: The beignets, which are made fresh daily, seem like an afterthought. Until recently, we’d never even had them. In all the years we’ve taken the short drive to this nondescript restaurant, we have always stayed on the “More” side of the menu.

Marseille

Caterine: The Quaint Canteen

Rue Fontange is a narrow street with small, inspired businesses that seem to complement one another. The vitrine of Vinyl is lavishly covered in white-marker script, through which we can still see wine, records, and meals by Oumalala (now serving here); across the street is Gallery Charivari, which when we visited was featuring Syrian artist Khaled Dawwa’s astonishing sculptures from his Compressés series, different takes on a heavy man slouching into a chair; further along lies the fine book selection of Histoire de l’oeil, with its garden and cabanon out back, a small red shed we can also see if we walk straight through Caterine restaurant next door to its dining patio, which feels like a continuum of the same garden.

Naples

Bop Dumpling: Secret Street Snack

Luca Affatato opens the unmarked single shutter on via Battistello Caracciolo – a charmless street linking the Avvocata and Arenella hill boroughs, at a few steps from the Salvator Rosa Metro Art Station – most days at 7 p.m. If he doesn’t, it’s for two possible reasons: either he’s busy at a popup event at some other Neapolitan venue, or he has run out of his one-and-only dish – Asian-style dumplings – and needs time to make new ones. In any case, he warns his faithful patrons on Bop Dumpling’s Instagram feed, which is pretty much the only way to be updated about opening times, menus, events and a bit of Affatato’s private life, unless you have his mobile number – which many customers do.