At Culinary Backstreets, we tend to opt for tradition over trendy, street over chic. We delve into a city’s blind spots when it comes to local favorites. Taking that approach makes it too easy to dismiss new spots out of hand. So, if it weren’t for our friend Liz hounding us for months about a newish “falafel place” near her house, we almost certainly would not have thought about visiting it. But that’s the great thing about friends – they take us out of our routine and generally bring us to unexpected places, as was the case with Kebab Nation.

While Bolhão’s century-old original structure is being restored, the vegetables, fruits, fish and flowers of the market have been brought to a decidedly less striking indoor location with no windows. The place is new, strange to many, but the usual faces are there. We know their names, their smiles. The only thing we’re uncertain about is the setting. “It looks really beautiful,” says Rosa, “I thought it was going to be a mess, as it was something to remedy, but it’s beautiful.” Rosa tells us that she hasn’t been to Bolhão for at least a year, which is about how long the original location has been shuttered for renovation. As we walk with Fernando and Rosa, a chorus of “good days” rings out from all directions. We pass through corridors of fruit, nibble on some chorizo, smell the flowers. “Excuse me, where’s the herbalist Augusto Coutinho?”

Where the A train dead-ends at Lefferts Boulevard, Liberty Avenue stretches on into the heart of the enclave known as Little Guyana, part of the larger Richmond Hill neighborhood. To most Americans, and even New Yorkers, this population remains obscure. “People don’t know who we are,” says Lakshmee Singh, a talk show host and community leader in Queens, Richmond Hill, once a predominantly German and Italian neighborhood, has seen a steady stream of Guyanese immigrants since the 1970s. Today, it’s home to the largest Guyanese community outside of Guyana itself, with Guyanese immigrants representing the second largest foreign-born community in Queens.

On our Porto culinary walk we visit Luis at Azeitoneira do Porto, which has been serving loyal customers since 1862 - and is training the next generation to take over the family business.

Next to some wooden shelves overloaded with spirits, a photograph of Natália Correia hangs on the wall. The photo’s placement makes it appear as if Correia, cigarette in hand, is surveying the small room, which is crowded with semi-broken tables. The late poet and upstart co-founded this tiny bar/café a few decades ago, and her presence is still felt here and in the neighborhood more generally: A nearby street, with a spectacular view of the city, is also named after her. Botequím is one of Graça’s oldest bars, located on the ground floor of Vila Sousa, one of the worker apartment complexes built at the end of the 19th century.

On our Song of the Sea culinary walk in Lisbon, we witness Brazilian Arabica coffee beans being roasted while we get into the history and significance of coffee in the culture and cuisine of Lisbon.

Sampling the freshest tamales streetside in Queens is just one of the cornerstones of our walk in the borough, which samples a wide variety of cuisines from all over the world. 

Chef, food writer, and MasterChef champion Tim Anderson shares his love of Tokyo and Japanese food culture in his new book, “Tokyo Stories: A Japanese Cookbook” (Hardie Grant, 2019). After moving to London, Anderson, who is originally from Wisconsin, won MasterChef in 2011, a title that catapulted him into a position as one of the UK’s most prominent voices on Japanese food and led to the opening of his own izakaya, Nanban, in Brixton at the end of 2015. We recently spoke to Anderson about his love for Tokyo’s food culture and how he translated this eclectic and wide-ranging culinary scene into a cookbook.

Bars, cafés, taverns and restaurants have historically functioned as meeting spots for all kinds of urban communities, from intellectuals to politicians and artists – revolutions have even been planned around the table. Nowadays in Barcelona, another community, one that has flourished in numerous cities around the world, has started gathering in these types of venues: cyclists. The number of cyclists in Barcelona has increased some 30 percent in recent years, according to the City Council – in 2017 alone, 38 percent of residents moved around the city on two wheels. With more than 230 km of cycling lanes and a fleet of 7,000 brand new municipal bikes, the city is still adjusting to coexisting with so many bikes and riders.

Christos Mplantis, a 37-year-old farmer based in Marathon, a region in northeastern Attica, has farming in his blood. His father, Alexandros, was a farmer too, and starting at the age of ten, Christos began joining his father at farmer’s markets, or laiki (λαϊκή), around Athens any time he was off school, particularly during the summers. Although working the land and selling at markets became second nature to him, Christos didn’t immediately think to follow in his father’s steps. He went to technical school to become certified as a plumber but couldn’t find a decent job after graduating. So, around 17 years ago, he found himself in a familiar spot: working next to his father.

Being a street butcher in Naples is not for the faint of heart. “Rain, sun, wind, heat, cold… being on the street seven days a week means knowing how to face every type of weather,” says Gaetano Iavarone. He is part of the invincible team behind Macelleria Iavarone, a butcher shop in Naples’ Sant’Antonio Market run by Domenico (Mimmo) and his three sons, Gaetano, Lorenzo and Davide. The so-called “street butcher shop” has a huge display of meat outside with only a small cash register inside. Also inside is a larger photo of Gaetano the elder, Domenico’s father, who opened the butcher shop 60 years ago. Domenico took over the reins 30 years ago and now runs it with his close-knit team of sons.

Pizzeria Gino Sorbillo has been serving pizza made with bio flour, which is made from grains that haven’t been exposed to fertilizers or other pesticides, and mother yeast, the proportions of which are top secret, since 1935.

We were strolling through the Dezerter’s Bazaar building when a little woman, about 5 feet tall, interrupted a pair of our German guests with “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” Instantly charmed by her bright expression and linguistic dexterity, they stopped and chatted away in German. That’s how Tina Nugzarashvili became a must-stop on our Tbilisi market walk. Tina occupies stall number 10 in a building that used to be the epicenter of Tbilisi’s main farmer’s market, two blocks from the central train station. The old structure, built in the 1960s, was an enormous space under a tin dome crammed with mountains of corn and wheat flour, wheels of cheese stacked a meter high, plastic buckets of spices, pyramids of corn-fed chickens, and piles of fruits and vegetables, some neon red, others green and orange.

On our Keramikos Calling walk in Athens, we visit the weekly open-air market, tasting whatever is in season from the vendors and getting a feel for the neighborhood. 

“I missed the traditional foods I grew up with in Cádiz,” said Natalia García, a young woman with dark hair, bright red lipstick and a smattering of tattoos across her upper arm. “I was actually born in Germany, and my mother was a professional cook, so I was always around food,” she tells us. Despite the German heritage, García’s strong accent and open, friendly demeanor are pure Andalusia. “Whenever I told people [in Barcelona] I was from Cádiz, they would get excited. Everyone loves Cádiz, especially the food.” After living in Barcelona for just one year, García decided to open La Chana, a bar that reminded her of home, in the heart of the non-touristy neighborhood of Poble Sec.