CB has teamed up with the creators of “Native Dish: United Flavors of NYC,” NYC Media’s new food TV series, to offer a behind-the-scenes look at some of the New Yorkers featured in these short videos. The series, which aims to celebrate New York City immigrants from all over the world, focuses on one individual and one dish at a time as a means through which to explore the myriad cuisines represented in the city and the people who make them. This month we are spotlighting Jamyang “Jimmy” Gurung, a Nepalese immigrant from the Himalayas, who manages the Himalayan Yak, a Nepalese/Tibetan restaurant, and Raksha Thapa, a waitress and former teacher from Kathmandu Valley. The Himalayan Yak team delve into their still-deep connection to Nepal and their love in sharing their cuisine and yak momos with New York.

We recently spoke with travel writer Caroline Eden about her culinary travelogue, Black Sea: Dispatches and Recipes, Through Darkness and Light (Hardie Grant; May 2019). Eden has written for the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Financial Times, among other publications, and has filed stories from Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan for BBC Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent. Eden is also co-author of Samarkand: Recipes & Stories from Central Asia & the Caucasus (Kyle Books; July 2016), a Guardian book of the year in 2016 and winner of the Guild of Food Writers Award for best food and travel book in 2017.

On our Bodega culinary walk in Barcelona, we visit the neighborhood bodegas where locals meet up for vermut and wine, as we learn how to (and how not to) use the porró.

Like most Syrians who fled their war-ravaged country and made their way to Turkey, Fatma Jabal, a 19-year-old from Aleppo now living in Istanbul, had to get creative in order to make a living. With a baby boy to take care of and her husband struggling to provide for their family while working as a carpenter, Fatma tapped into something she’s been doing since she was a child: baking cakes and cookies. Making desserts had been something Fatma has loved from early on growing up in Aleppo, which she left in 2014 in the midst of the worsening conflict there. For her, each treat she bakes is a work of art that just happens to be edible. “The first thing I did in the kitchen was sweets,” she says. But Fatma realized she needed to develop her budding baking prowess to start charging customers.

There was a dowdy little joint in Batumi, Georgia’s Black Sea port town, where two middle-aged women churned out the most exquisite Adjarian-style khachapuri pies in an old pizza oven. It was a must-stop for every trip to the coast, as there were few places in Tbilisi that could scorch such an authentic acharuli. As the years passed, the seedy potholed streets that hosted a pool hall, brothels and our favorite khachapuri joint transformed into a gentrified neighborhood of gift shops and boutiques catering to the ever-growing number of tourists flocking to Batumi. Meanwhile, the boat-shaped acharuli has become one of the most emblematic dishes of Georgian cuisine and is not only found all over Tbilisi, but is also being served in New York and Washington, DC.

Addy has cornered the Astoria market in Kenyan cuisine. Even so, large portions of his menu are devoted to dishes familiar all around the world, and popular with all ages. They include a dozen or so flavors of chicken wings and a fistful of burgers, some basic, some overloaded. (Lean forward over the plate, is our advice, when biting into a Juicy Lucy.) To our surprise, the American South stakes a claim at Addy's after all: The country-fried steak, served atop mashed potatoes and accompanied by a brimming cup of gravy, is one of the best we've ever had. Because mishkaki is new, at first, to most of Addy's clientele, he's simplified the presentation rather than risk confusing his customers. Typically, at a Kenyan roadside stall, mishkaki is served with flatbread, the meat arrives on the skewer, and the customer adds sauces and other accompaniments to his or her liking. In Astoria, mishkaki is served with rice and a salad, and the chunks of meat, sans skewers, are already seasoned, à la Addy. We can practically taste the sizzle.

At any time of day you’ll see crowds of people at the ancient, welcoming restaurant. At lunchtime, many regulars come daily not for the pizza, but for Maria’s home cooked dishes. “Here we serve traditional Neapolitan dishes,” says the 74-year-old. “Pasta and potatoes, pasta and beans, pasta sorrentine style or bolognese. The menu changes every day, and the bread is made every morning, here, directly in the pizza oven … with my hands.” There’s something about the pizzeria that transmits a sense of history, particularly its inner room, the walls of which are covered in declarations of love for the restaurant and drawings made on paper napkins by loyal customers over the decades. “It is as if customers wanted to leave something of themselves,” Attilio tells us proudly. “They wanted to return some of the goodness they just tasted with something that would last.”

Think of Ramadan, which just began in many parts of the world, as a kind of monthlong biathlon that consists of an all-day race to beat back the hunger and thirst of fasting, followed by an all-night marathon of eating and drinking in order to fortify the body for the next day’s fast. In recent years in Turkey, iftar, the traditional break fast meal that used to mostly consist of some dates and a freshly baked round of Ramadan pide, has started to become an increasingly trendy affair, with ministers, businessmen and regular people trying to make an impression by hosting ever more lavish meals.

On our Born on the Bosphorus walk, we visit the fresh market in Beşiktaş where vendors boast fresh erik (sour green plums), çağla (unripe almonds) and types of local kiraz (cherry). The taste peak for these spring specialties is somewhat short, leaving expats to hunt for vendors that will ship early and fast enough.

The recent loss of the world’s first baijiu-themed bar, Beijing’s Capital Spirits, to hutong landlord issues has refocused the spirit’s lens on Shanghai, where bars are incorporating the grain alcohol into their drinks program. Baijiu may be the most-consumed spirit in the world – thanks mostly to China’s massive population – but its name has only recently started to make waves outside the country. This growing recognition is in part thanks to the trend of mixing baijiu into cocktails. At Healer Bar, this blending of Eastern flavors with Western drinking culture is a deliberate choice that is meant to educate as well as inebriate. Before owner Phoebe Han opened her bar, the Xi’an-native mixed cocktails with some of the city’s best bartenders at Kee Club, The Nest and The Apartment, but she wanted to change the way people perceived Chinese spirits.

“We want to show people what Greek cuisine is really like. It’s not just souvlaki, gyros and moussaka. So in July and August when we’re closed, we travel all over the country looking for recipes, and because we love Greek wines too, we find recipes that go with them,” Xenophon says. We took a long time studying the menu – nibbling on their own olive bread – because even the dishes that sound familiar are not always what they appear to be. Take, for example, spanakopita (spinach pie). Here, it’s actually a salad. Moreover, their cheese dip, myttotos, made of three white cheeses plus black garlic, “goes back to the time of Hippocrates,” and the liver with apples, a combination we’ve never heard of, is a recipe from Karditsa in the northern Greek region of Thessaly.

On our Tokyo Time Machine culinary walk, fourth generation chef Tsuchihira shares his life story as he explains how miso is made.

Naples is a city strewn with street vendors. Bread, thin pizzas meant to be eaten folded, fried pizzas, octopus broth, roasted artichokes, cones full of fried goodies, donuts, panzerotti and rice balls – there’s little you can’t find one of Naples’ vendors selling. Together, these numerous street sellers and their small stands play an important economic and cultural role in the city. In the midst of all these vendors there’s one that somehow manages to stand out. Some know him simply as Carmine. Others call him Carmine the Wizard because of his enchanting roasted chestnuts, which warm the hands and the stomachs of Neapolitans in winter. Whatever you call him, he’s an icon of Naples street food.

Back when it was called Noisette, we'd passed by Paris Oven in the (not quite) year that it had been open. But whenever we’d walked down those sometimes clamorous blocks of 30th Avenue in Astoria, Queens – not far from a bagel shop, a pizzeria, a comfort-food hotspot and a New Orleans-themed bar-restaurant, whose windows open wide toward the street during happy hour – we’d given little notice to the quiet bakery-café with the French name. That changed during one recent stroll, not long before dark, when a hand-drawn signboard beside the door wished us “Ramadan Kareem” and beckoned us to come inside.

The red storefront and Cyrillic lettering made it clear this was not just another kebab shop. Hesitant at first, we scouted around the outside – the restaurant is tucked into a side street, flanked by a shipping office and a construction site, and does not appear to exist on Google Maps. The menu, written in dry erase marker on a board hanging from the wall, was entirely in Mongolian. Nevertheless, armed with the names of a few traditional Mongolian dishes – khuushuur (a sort of meat-filled empanada), mantuun buuz (dumplings) and tsuivan (noodle stew) – gained from some cursory YouTube research, we sheepishly approached the counter. As we attempted to order, our host smiled. “I’ll make you something, don’t worry,” she assured us, and ran into the kitchen.