Tacos Beto is not a pretty place. Stacks of soda bottles, enough for weeks to come, serve as a wall that shields customers from the wind blowing down Avenida Dr. José María Vertiz. The plastic tables and plastic stools that surround the bottles seem older than the invention of plastic. A long, dusty awning hanging above the sidewalk seating advertises a brand of soda that Tacos Beto no longer carries, maybe never carried. The only visible beauty encountered at the restaurant sits on the arched wall above the steel fryer, or comal bola – orange and blue paint spell out the words “Tacos Beto – los de cochinada” (“Tacos Beto – the garbage ones”).

A fragrant Goan dish, vindalho is a fusion of the Portuguese vinha d’alhos (meat with wine and garlic) with Indian spices. We got a taste of this dish, with its flavors of cinnamon, cloves and vinegar, at a laid-back neighborhood association, where people of all ages gather to play chess, dance or share a meal.

From the start, I knew that I wouldn’t find what I was looking for: my great uncle’s baklava shop. A large office building rises where his shop used to be, right around the corner from the dome of St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church in Astoria, Queens. But I still couldn’t help looking up the address. My great uncle, Michael Eliades, owned two pastry shops in Astoria, one being the Kismet near St. Demetrios, which employed my grandfather when he first arrived in the United States. When my family sought to leave Istanbul, Turkey, it was my great uncle who got my grandfather a visa as an “Oriental pastry chef.”

Despite the big wooden casks on the wall and the creaky shelves crowded with bottles behind the bar, wine is no longer king at Cal Siscu, an old bodega (wine store and tavern) in Hospitalet de Llobregat, a city located on the periphery of the Barcelona metropolitan area. The new ruler, who has deigned to keep these old relics from an earlier era, is seafood – every day the bar’s counter is covered with trays of majestic treasures from the Mediterranean and the Atlantic like prawns, clams, barnacles and sea snails. Founded by Francisco “Siscu” Rosés in 1933, Cal Siscu originally sold bulk wine and liquors. At that time, the only seafood served came from a can. Customers frequented the tavern, which also doubled as a home (Siscu and his family used to live upstairs), to fill up their wine jugs and sip on a vermut with some olives and conservas like tuna or sardines.

Back in the days when we spent more time living without electricity than with, when the police had the sole function of extorting money from citizens, and we were never sure whether the Borjomi mineral water we were buying had been mixed in a bathtub, there weren’t many options for diners desiring a break from the generic Georgian menu of those times. Of course, there were the Turkish steam table restaurants in Plekhanov, but our spoiled western palates periodically demanded more. There was Santa Fe, a Tex-Mex inspired restaurant we can credit for introducing “Caesar Salad” (with mayonnaise!) and “Mexican Potatoes,” spud chunks fried with a generous dusting of paprika, which have somehow become staples on virtually every Georgian menu in the city. Then we discovered a place with flavors our taste buds were no strangers to.

Jay Parker, the owner of Ben’s Best in Rego Park, is a third-generation deli man. Born in 1951 and raised in the nearby Queens neighborhood of Fresh Meadows, he first worked at the family business in the early 1960s. Since 1984, when he took the reins, he’s clocked 60 to 70 hours a week. Yet “this is my dad’s store,” Jay tells us. “His name is still on it.” Not far from where we sit in the dining room, a portrait of Ben Parker looks on, as if in agreement. Ben’s Best is a kosher delicatessen, an increasingly rare business model even in New York. A kosher deli adheres to Jewish dietary laws (by serving, say, corned beef on rye but not ham on rye) and operates under rabbinical supervision (otherwise it would be merely “kosher-style”).

Spring means a rebirth, a restart and, for Catholics, a resurrection. The sunnier weather and warmer temperatures are invigorating, allowing you to shake off the long and cold winter. It’s one of the best mood boosters out there. But the season alone doesn’t fully awaken, ahem, everything. If you’re looking to arouse your sensuality, you can always count on Naples’ notoriously stimulating, almost erotic gastronomy. Yes, we’re talking about aphrodisiacs. The concept comes from our Greek ancestors, who believed that certain foods were capable of improving sexual performance and accordingly named them after Aphrodite, the goddess of love, beauty and, perhaps most importantly, pleasure.

It may look like ice cream at first glance, but this street vendor in Queens is selling a different kind of sweet treat: espumilla. The Ecuadorean dessert is an unbaked meringue normally sweetened with guava puree and served in cones topped with a tart berry syrup, , a nice contrast to the extra sweet meringue.

It was the first of April and an absolutely pristine Istanbul spring day, the kind where one can break a slight sweat walking up a hill then catch a cool breeze in a nearby patch of shade. Returning to the city from a lovely weekend on Büyükada, we were smitten with spring and wanted to indulge in its finest offerings. In a fit of hunger-fueled inspiration, we quickly realized what we were craving: yenidünya kebabı. This spring-only affair is a specialty from southeast Turkey’s Gaziantep where chunks of minced beef and/or lamb are skewered in between sections of newly arisen yenidünya, or loquat, diminutive orange fruits that are as tantalizingly tart as they are sweet.

It’s no easy task handling a 70-kilo longfin tuna or a 20-kilo corvina. But over the past few weeks, we’ve watched our favorite fishmongers in Lisbon’s Mercado da Ribeira do just that – looking more like weightlifters or wrestlers, they endeavor to fillet the big, fat Atlantic fish that usually make their appearance in April. Even more humble specimens, like mackerel, are also at their fattest (and tastiest) come spring. That’s the joy of feasting on spring fish and seafood in Portugal – so much is in season that you can’t go wrong. To get a better sense of this spring’s “gifts from the sea,” we visited some of our favorite chefs to learn about how they are building their menus around seasonal fish and seafood.

Towards the end of our Naples walk, we visit a family-run bakery where we make our own Neapolitan caponata, a salad made with the bakery’s special bread, called freselle, mozzarella and heirloom piennolo tomatoes.

Springtime in Greece brings an abundance of fresh produce. Local farmers’ markets erupt with joy at this time of year – in addition to the cheerful vegetables, herbs and beloved wild greens from different regions, the farmers (already sunburnt) shout out to customers with voices that show a clear pride in their harvest. Perhaps our favorite spring crop is the artichoke, a vegetable (technically a flower) that has been widely consumed by the Greeks since antiquity. The artichoke plant doesn’t usually grow over a meter high, and the most scrumptious part is the unopened bud (when it does bloom, the bud grows into a beautiful purple flower resembling a milk thistle).

Flowers may be a visual treat, but they are also a regular ingredient in the cooking of numerous cultures. It’s not uncommon to find roses, violets, orchids, chrysanthemums or any number of flowers – more than 200 in the world are catalogued as edible – adding a pop of color or a surprising flavor to a dish. Flowers have particularly deep roots in Spanish cuisine. They featured most prominently in the food of Al-Andalus, the territory of southern Spain governed by Muslims during the medieval period. Influenced by the Arabs, Andalusian cooks used rose and azahar (orange blossom) to aromatize water and make syrups, jams and pastries.

Being the geographic dead center of the country, Mexico City is the hub for all produce heading in any direction. In other words, all roads lead to the sprawling Central de Abastos, the distribution center and wholesaler in the south of the city. “Spring” here is the dry season – the temperatures get hotter by the day until May, even June, when the rainy season begins – but conventional produce is always in season somewhere in Mexico, no matter how parched Mexico City itself might be. But say you’re looking to stick to a “100-mile diet” – surrounding the city there are fertile soils of volcanic valleys as well as high desert regions. So what surprises do they offer in spring?

For 48 weeks out of the year, Meijiawu village is pretty quiet. But in the weeks before and after Qingming, the Tomb Sweeping Festival held every year in early April, the tea terraces looming over the town come to life before sunrise. Tea pickers sweep through the fields, collecting the first buds of the season by hand. These emerald slivers will make up the bulk of the farmers’ annual income, although several more harvests of lesser leaves throughout the year will supplement them. Like wine from Bordeaux, Dragon Well (龙井 – Lóngjǐng) tea comes only from the hills near Hangzhou (although in China, counterfeit leaves – like bottles of Château Lafite – are everywhere). Meijiawu village (梅家坞村) is just a short drive from the actual Dragon Well (or “Longjing”) Village.