As one approaches the port of Ermoupolis (named after Hermes, the god of commerce), the main town of the island of Syros and capital of the Cyclades, one cannot help but marvel at its beauty and grandeur. Imposing public buildings and private mansions, marble-paved streets, a large Italian-style piazza and numerous churches make the city one of the best preserved examples of 19th-century architecture in Greece. This should not come as a surprise: in the aftermath of the 1821 Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire, Syros developed into an important commercial, cultural and industrial center, as refugees from Asia Minor, Chios, Crete and other areas found a safe haven from the war on the small island.

Like the classic optical illusion of the faces and the vase, look at Rio and you’ll see two sharply contrasting versions. First is the seemingly easygoing beach city of rubber sandals and gushy greetings as insincere as they are well intentioned. (“Passa lá em casa!” “Come by my home!” The carioca will actually be quite stunned if you show up at his home afterward.) On the other side of the illusion is the Rio that loves formality, titles, certificates and hierarchies. A Rio judge has a decade-long lawsuit against the doorman of his building, who refused to call him “doctor” and “sir,” which recently reached Brazil’s Supreme Court, which declined the case.

You sit down for a meal with family or friends, and no one can decide what to order. Well, some can, some can’t, and it goes on for ages. The waiter stiffens when you ask one more time for her to come back. But go to the basement restaurant of Shavi Lomi in Old Tbilisi, and you have the answer for dithering relatives and pals: the gobi, or “Friends’ Bowl,” filled with a colorful selection of classic Georgian dishes. The word shares the same root as the Georgian word for “friend” – megobari – and so, of course, a gobi bowl is for sharing. It’s a big wooden bowl, filled with a mix of different dishes and as many spoons as you need.

In Argentina and Uruguay, asado – beef cooked over a parrilla, or open pit grill – is a fundamental part of local culture. On weekends, Sundays especially, grill smoke can be seen rising from backyards, rooftops and even small balconies, as well as, of course, from restaurant ventilators. Out of town, there are asados in chacras (small countryside farms) and in parks and picnic areas in forests. Asado’s defining role in these countries has existed for quite some time; it was even mentioned by Charles Darwin in his journals from 1833, when he was traveling towards Buenos Aires in the company of gauchos and native people.

Let’s say you have only two or three days in Rio. You want to experience a little real Brazilian culture and don’t want to restrict yourself to the obvious tourist stops, overhyped bars and restaurants or usual “gringo” nightlife spots. Our recommendation? Spend a night or day – or both, even – at Feira de São Cristóvão. The feira, which means “fair,” is organized by people from the northeast (nordeste), which is the poorest region in the country. That poverty has led millions of northeasterners to migrate to Rio over the last 50 years to seek a better life. And Feira de São Cristóvão is where they express themselves culturally, musically and, last but not least, gastronomically.

After almost a century of desertification, it’s sometimes hard to believe the state of downtown Lisbon – Baixa – today. Hotels, startups, boutiques and restaurants are exploding up and down these long, narrow avenues, originally modelled on 18th-century Parisian thoroughfares, and all but abandoned by the 1990s. As the few remaining owners of the old light fittings shops and cheap canteens pray to the gods of damage limitation, a few of the new businesses do fit well into the surroundings. Japanese canteen Tasca Kome is one of them. Like all typical Portuguese tascas – traditional taverns and bars that serve food – the atmosphere at Tasca Kome is cozy and friendly.

“The people with permits, they are not working. We vendors on the streets, we need more permits,” yelled Mehdi, a New York street vendor of Bengali origin, at a recent protest for more permits. Street vending in the city – in particular food vending – is largely the domain of immigrants like Mehdi, seemingly an easy way to start earning an income. But selling food from a street cart is no easy ride. Sean Basinski, Director of the Street Vendor Project, which advocates on behalf of street-based sellers, says food vendor licenses are relatively easy and inexpensive to acquire. There is no cap on the number of food licenses issued. There’s a catch, though.

No matter how long your stay in Mexico City, you’ll simply never “taste it all.” In the cycle of each day, from tamales, atole and morning licuados to midday comida and evening tacos, this great culinary city is in perpetual motion. Want Yucatecan cuisine? Oaxacan? Restaurants abound where you can experience the cuisines of other regions, but the street food, fondas and market stalls in general reflect the regional cuisine of Estado de México. To properly understand “Mexican food” and its regional diversity, get out of town. Just a little more than two hours from Mexico City’s Centro Historico is a Pueblo Mágico called Tepoztlán. The bus ride there passes through three national parks along the way.

“We say if you leave a Cretan pappou [grandfather] alone in the Cretan mountains, six months later you’ll find him fatter,” said dietitian-turned-restaurateur Panayiotis Magganas. He smiled wide. “Our land is incredibly rich.” The fertility of Greece’s largest island is part of the inspiration behind Peskesi, his restaurant in old town Heraklion that showcases the diversity of Crete’s cuisine through recipes he says are slowly being forgotten. “Even people from Crete don’t know some of these dishes,” he said. Set in an intricately refurbished Byzantine-era mansion, the restaurant still retains some of the charming details of the once-collapsing space, including a 100-year-old lemon tree that is the centerpiece of one dining room.

It might have become one of the more fashionable places in Rio for a caipirinha, yet the name of this father-son joint – “Portuguese Kiosk” – suggests humility. Indeed, the pair got their start a decade ago in one of the numerous huts that line the city’s beaches. While the majority of their competitors served the tasty, tried-and-true Rio basics – traditional caipirinhas made with cachaça; beer and French fries – to sandy-toed beachgoers, Manoel Alves, now in his early seventies, wanted to offer something different. He tried importing cheeses from Portugal, his parents’ homeland (hence the venue’s name), but found that the international products went bad too quickly to please health inspectors.

Queens these days is New York’s street cart central. According to the Street Vendor Project, which advocates for vendor rights in the five boroughs, the largest concentration of street vendors with licenses lives in that borough. This concentration of streetside sellers is easy enough to see on six-mile-long Roosevelt Avenue, which runs through six of Queens’ most ethnically diverse neighborhoods with a dizzying assortment of vendors catering to almost every taste and nationality, depending on the time of day. It’s not always easy work. At a recent monthly meeting of street vendors in Corona, Queens, the air was thick with grievances about the conditions they have to work under.

We were cutting grapes in a vineyard in eastern Georgia’s Kakheti region when two young men led a goat by a rope to a nearby tree and sliced its neck with a hefty hunting knife. Our lunch. They offered us a sliver of fresh raw liver with sardonic smiles, insisting it was the best part, but we passed and waited for the meat to be cut, skewered and roasted over the coals of tsalami, or vines. Served with bread, razor-sharp sheep cheese, whole tomatoes, cucumbers and rkatsateli wine, nothing could have been more Kakhetian. Since that harvest, we have been to scores of Kakhetian restaurants in Tbilisi, most of which were gratifying, but none had goat on their menus.

Watching old Greek movies from the 1950s, '60s and '70s has been a rite of passage for every single generation raised in Greece from the '80s onwards. When we were young, these movies played endlessly on TV, getting us acquainted with the Greece our parents grew up in.There were a number of things that both puzzled and delighted us – chief among them, the patisserie-as-meeting-place. The heroine, wearing a pillbox hat over expertly coiffed hair, would meet her girlfriends or potential love interest in grand-looking pastry shops, where she would be served by waiters in uniforms and eat a pasta, an individual portion of dessert: soft sponge cake with almond and cream or chocolate fillings.

Cacilhas is the waterfront area of Almada, a small city reachable via a €1.20 ferry ride from Lisbon’s Cais do Sodré terminus. The district is heavily marked by its shipbuilding past and has an industrious character that, for now, is still preserved in its food culture. Right in front of its boat station is a concentration of traditional marisqueiras, typical seafood houses from where you can glimpse a sweeping view of almost the whole of Lisbon across the other side. The seafood platter is a must in any of these traditional spots. It is usually composed of stuffed crab, spiny lobster and giant prawns, accompanied by the classic amêijoas à bulhão pato – clams cooked in garlic, coriander, pepper and olive oil.

Athletes, spectators and everyone else gathered in Rio for the Summer Olympics will have no shortage of good eating options – and not just in the usual touristed areas. We’ve rounded up some of our favorite spots around town. CADEG The 100,000-square-meter market is divided into three warehouse-style floors, with a pavilion just for flower sales at the rear of the second floor. (The building sits on an incline, so you can enter from the street either on the ground floor or from behind the second.) The market is open 24 hours. Early mornings on Thursday and Saturday are the top time for flower shopping. Saturday afternoon is Cantinho das Consertinas’s Festa Portuguesa, with up to 1,000 attendees queuing for a host of salt cod dishes on the second floor.