Rio

Rotisseria Sírio Libanesa: The Open Table

On a Monday at 1 p.m., private equity investor Nargilla Rodrigues and her two colleagues bring a fourth co-worker to the Rotisseria Sírio Libanesa in Rio’s Largo do Machado neighborhood to initiate him to their weekly lunch ritual. An army of diners in business attire have packed the small restaurant and clump around the to-go counter. Rodrigues grabs a standing table and fires off an order of stuffed cabbage leaves, kafta and lentil rice like they are shares in a fire sale. With the same auctioneer’s speed, but a deeper boom, Antonio Oliveira, an employee at the restaurant for 19 years, sends the order back to the kitchen. Soon the bankers’ small table is overflowing.

Lisbon

CB Book Club: Nuno Mendes’ “Lisboeta,” A Love Letter to Lisbon

Nuno Mendes is excited. He’s standing at my kitchen counter, where laid out before him are pieces of half-moon-shaped dough, each encasing a juicy meat mixture. They’re about to go into a pan filled with bubbling oil. My mom, Lica, is nervous. She is sharing her mother’s recipe for pastéis de massa terra, a traditional Portuguese savory pastry, with the highly esteemed chef of Chiltern Firehouse and Taberna do Mercado in London. He has heard about her mouth-watering pastéis from a mutual friend and decided to see for himself just how good they are. Worried that the dough isn’t quite right, she drops in the first one and the pastry bubbles up crispy, as it should. When it’s finished, she gives it to Mendes, who takes one bite and says, “Wow, these are amazing!”

Barcelona

Best Bites 2017: Barcelona

This was an intense year for Barcelona, with a complex political situation stemming from Catalonia’s bid for independence from Spain. It was a storm that the culinary scene could not help but get caught up in. Bars and restaurants have always been a temple of leisure and pleasure, but we sometimes forget that they also serve as a space for people to connect and debate. And in the spirit of debate, food and drink constitute another form of expression, an indication of a restaurant’s cultural leanings. In Barcelona this year, we could taste the continued interest in developing and strengthening Catalan cuisine, often considered an extension of Catalan identity. But we also observed the food scene’s openness to other regional cultures and global influences.

Tokyo

Best Bites 2017: Tokyo

This year saw record-breaking numbers of tourists descend on Tokyo, and a handful more Michelin stars to further the capital’s lead over every other city in the world. Feeling vicariously fatigued from all this attention, for the most part I tried my best to avoid both the throngs of tourists and Michelin-grade ostentation this year, though both proved impossible to elude completely. For that reason, my most memorable meals in 2017 were a combination of old favorites and unexpected discoveries. Ushitora: I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve spent an entire evening unwinding at a corner table in Ushitora.

Athens

Best Bites 2017: Athens

As we think back over the truly delicious meals we enjoyed this year in and around Athens, it appears to us that the food scene here is going from strength to strength, despite the continuing prolonged recession. And most of these memorable feasts focused on procuring the finest local ingredients and employing them in traditional Greek or Mediterranean recipes in imaginative but not surreal or outlandish ways. Below are some of our Athens correspondents’ favorite memories from the last year of places and meals that reflected this encouraging trend. A Little Taste of Home: The overall excellence makes it difficult to choose just three places, but I have absolutely no difficulty in singling out the best bite of all.

Tbilisi

Aripana: All Over the Map

We spent the summer in Georgia’s Shida Kartli region, a vast expanse of fertile terrain in the heart of the country that we have fallen crazy in love with. One day, over a glass of local Chinuri wine, we wondered aloud, “Every other region in the country has signature dishes, but what about Kartli? What are its signature dishes?” We asked our neighbors and got a lot of shoulder shrugs. Shota, a 65-year-old contractor, re-called his grandmother’s soups. “They had fruit,” he said. Seventy-year-old Maro said she too ate fruit soups as a child. Thus began our plan to dig up forgotten Kartli recipes, someday.

Athens

Building Blocks: Amygdalota, Messenger of Good Tidings

The resilient almond tree flourishes in a dry climate with very little water, which makes it an ideal tree for Greece, especially in the south and on many of the islands. So it’s no surprise that almonds have featured prominently in Greek cuisine and pastry making dating back to at least the 3rd century BC, or so historians believe. Today in Greece you’ll most likely find almonds in desserts or sweet treats. Since this particular nut generally symbolizes happiness, prosperity and good luck, it plays an important role in Greek weddings and baptisms, with sugared almonds and other sweets made with almonds, like amygdalota, being offered post-ceremony.