Our contributors highlight the Asian neighborhoods worth planning a food-focused trip around in 2026.

Our contributors highlight European neighborhoods worth planning a food-focused trip around in 2026.

Our contributors pick the food neighborhoods across Europe worth planning a trip around in 2026.

Our contributors pick the food neighborhoods across the Americas worth planning a trip around in 2026.

Healthy Himalayan dumplings at Darjeeling Kitchen & Café in Long Island City, Queens

A Mesa do CAM looks like a museum cafeteria, but the cooking tells a different story: seasonal vegetables, deep sourcing, and a rare commitment to sustainability in Lisbon

Choiga Coffee, a family-run roastery, resists Seoul’s trend-driven café culture with slow-brewed, carefully crafted cups.

Every king cake has a story, and some bakers choose to weave a part of their personal journey into the ones they serve in the months and weeks leading up to Mardi Gras. Norma’s Sweets Bakery is one example of this culinary storytelling. Across its two locations – one in the Kenner suburb and a second in New Orleans’ Mid-City – the Castillo family has baked their Honduran immigrant heritage into a new Carnival staple.

From street tacos to sweet breads and legendary fondas, Santa Tere Market captures the essence of everyday life in Guadalajara – loud, delicious, and full of heart.

Bilbao’s oldest restaurant, Los Fueros, continues to honor Biscayan cooking featuring prawns and stews.

Early January is the start of Georgia’s real holiday season: the New Year (Jan. 1), followed by Orthodox Christmas (Jan. 7) and then the Old New Year (which follows the Julian calendar, falling on Jan. 14). In between those main celebrations, friends and relatives visit each other, and all of these occasions make something like a two-weeks-long feast, or supra. Tables are replete with all that the Georgian gastronomy can offer. This festive season ends the longest fasting period of the Orthodox calendar. Even though a big chunk of the population might not fast, hosts make sure to have on their table plenty of fish and meat prepared in various ways.

‘Tis the season of the Japanese New Year’s trinity: osechi, oseibo and nengajo. Like newsy Christmas cards, the nengajo is a recap of family or personal news mailed in postcards during the weeks preceding the end of the year and efficiently delivered all over Japan promptly on January 1. The winter gift-giving season is in full swing, with companies and individuals sending oseibo gifts as thank-you expressions for kindnesses over the year. Most gifts are food or household items like cooking oil or soap. The best of the traditions is osechi ryori, traditional New Year’s cuisine. Osechi is not something one can find in a restaurant because it’s eaten only one time a year, at home or when visiting others at home.

When I think of Christmas and the festive season, I’m immediately transported back to my childhood. Christmas to a child is something magical – the massive tree lit up and surrounded by gifts, stockings hung on the fireplace, a warm home filled with loving faces. And, of course, food always plays an important role in my memories of the holidays. Even though I don’t come from a very traditional family, certain customs – particularly those related to food – were devotedly repeated every single year with no second thought. Every year during the Christmas season, I realize how much I miss these rituals.

A whimsical garden café just outside Tvilisi, Gardenia Shevardnadze is the life’s work of Georgia professional gardner, Zura Shevardnadze.

Holiday traditions tend to be tied to numbers. In southern Italy there is the Feast of Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve, while in Poland, the night before Christmas is celebrated with borscht, herring and poppy seed cake at the 12-course Wigilia. Here in Provence, our lucky number is 13, with the Treize Desserts de Noël. By no means a static tradition, the 13 Desserts of Christmas have evolved over the centuries. Its first mention in 1683 by Marseille cleric Francois Marchetti in Explication des Usages et Coutumes des Marseillais (An Explication of Customs and Traditions of the Marseillais) detailed 13 breads, not desserts, alongside cakes and dried and fresh fruit. The table was topped with three tablecloths to represent the Holy Trinity – a custom that some families still practice today.