Healthy eating and Chinese food are often hard to combine, but Karen Chen has discovered the recipe. After the success of Jianguo 328 (a homestyle Shanghainese restaurant that forgoes MSG and uses filtered water to boil its excellent noodles), the Taiwanese restaurateur decided to look west – where spice is king – for her next venture: Yi Zhang Hong. The friendly Sichuan restaurant is cobbled together with a narrow staircase leading up to cheerful dining rooms over three floors. On each level, bright folk art hangs on white walls above long banquettes and blond wood tables, and the red-tiled bar on the first floor is decorated with bottles of imported wine and beer and canisters of local tea.

Green peas, grape leaves and squash are on offer at the market in the lovely neighborhood of Kuzguncuk, an essential component of our Born on the Bosphorus tour.

Istanbul’s Aksaray district is a difficult place to get to know. It's probably the most diverse district in all of Turkey and with a very high turnover rate. Those Georgian ladies you saw dragging an overstuffed plaid duffel down Buyuk Langa Caddesi yesterday? They might be halfway to Batumi by now. The Syrian family by the bus stop? They may be on their way to meet a man in Izmir about a boat. Who knows? Aksaray’s unknowableness makes some locals uneasy; there's got to be mischief in all that motion, with all of those foreigners. Such is the stigma of Aksaray, den of thieves.

It’s a mid-week spring day in Tbilisi and we have joined Dali Berdzenishvili and her family for a special picnic lunch. There’s a zesty looking spread covering most of a yellow and blue tablecloth: heaps of khachapuri (cheese bread), blinchiki (meat rolls), sliced meats and sulguni cheese, salads, a trademark Georgian dish of pickled greens known as jonjoli, a bowl of strawberries and a few slices of leftover Easter paska cake. For drinks, there are several bottles of semi-sweet red and a bottle of homemade grape juice. Dali says her late husband, Zviad, loved a picnic like this. And it is Zviad who brings them all here – because they are eating next to his grave.

Rego Park and Forest Hills are home to much of Queens’ Central Asian Jewish diaspora. The neighborhoods comprise two main thoroughfares, 63rd Avenue (which changes to 63rd Street) and 108th Street. Both roads have a range of markets, restaurants and bakeries catering to local tastes. Here are a few notable addresses. Queens Gourmet Bazaar Food Brothers Yusuf and Juda Saz run this long, narrow market that is filled with Persian staples. Mini barrels of nuts, seeds, dried fruits, several Samarkand raisin varieties as well as fruit molasses, barberries, and other provisions in cans and glass jars cover the floor and walls. The brothers make some of the ready-made food in-house.

Before thousands of Syrian and Lebanese immigrants arrived in Rio at the beginning of the 20th century, colonists organized the old city according to geography, chance and Spanish and Portuguese planning conventions. This meant stores in the same category – ironware, shoes, musical instruments – were grouped together, sometimes even allotted their own street. If you needed wholesale fabric, you headed to a different road than if you needed a new kitchen pot. When hard fortunes amidst the breakup of the Ottoman Empire brought residents of the regions surrounding Syria and Lebanon to Rio, many put down roots in an area then called “Little Turkey” on Alfândega Street, near the port

There’s a general rule of thumb in Tokyo that if you see a line in front of a restaurant, it’s probably worth standing in. Maybe that’s how we first discovered Karē wa Nomimono. Or maybe it was the heady scent of fresh curry that wafts out the kitchen door before the restaurant opens every day. As many times as we’ve been back, it’s hard to remember. Touted as a national dish since at least the mid-20th century, curry rice is for many Japanese the quintessential comfort food. While some shops pride themselves on making curry just like mom used to, others are taking the classic dish in bold new directions.

Locals are crazy for Ali Usta's çiğ köfte. Ali Usta is a delicious character who has his tiny shop in the backstreets of Istanbul's Spice Bazaar. Çiğ köfte made with bulgur, herbs and spices suits every vegetarian's palate if one can eat hot, spicy food. This huge container is empty by late afternoon. Be there on time! A favorite stop on our Culinary Secrets of the Old City tour.

In landlocked Mexico City – the nearest coast is 250 miles away – you might think that it would be difficult to find fresh seafood. However, ever since Aztec times, the ocean’s bounty has been brought to the valley daily. Back then, the Aztec emperors got their goods using a system of relay runners that covered those hundreds of miles from sea to city per day. Things require less footwork today: technology and Mexico’s highway system allow daily deliveries of fresh seafood to the capital from the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico coasts. That said, feeding the Mexican capital’s fish craving still requires some hustle.

The era of Portugal’s seafaring might was so long ago, it seems almost like a myth – one still patriotically related by locals today. Gastronomic evidence of the country’s imperial past remains, however, particularly in Lisbon, where Angolan, Brazilian and Goan eateries can be found among the many other restaurants serving non-Portuguese food. Yet, despite Macau being under Portuguese control for around four centuries, passing into Chinese administration only in 1999, Macanese cuisine is still a mystery. Lisbon has yet to see even one Macanese restaurant open. There is a place here, however, to eat food from Macau: a cultural association in between Alvalade and Areeiro on a main road that leads to the airport, far from Lisbon’s center.

The oranges are beckoning shoppers at the farmer's market in Keramikos, central Athens. This market is a featured stop on our downtown Athens tour. Already pleasant and bustling in March at the time of this photo, imagine what it's like in May!

Rubi wanted two things for his 13th birthday: a bicycle, and to see his dad, Ahmed, again. It was the end of November, and it had been three months since his family was whole, since Ahmed left for Germany with Rashed and other colleagues from Salloura. Rubi’s days in Istanbul were a steady grind, all blending together in a dim purgatory: wake up at 6 in the morning, get to work at the shirt factory two bus rides away by 7, iron, sew, take the boss’s orders, go home 12 hours later, eat, sleep, repeat. Before Ahmed left, he had been working at the Salloura factory, learning his father’s trade.

For those interested in visiting Tashkent or Samarkand, an easier trip might involve heading to the Rego Park and Forest Hills neighborhoods of Queens, home to much of the borough’s Central Asian Jewish diaspora. The neighborhoods comprise two main thoroughfares: 63rd Avenue, which changes to 63rd Street, and 108th Street. Both roads have a range of markets, restaurants and bakeries that serve local tastes and evoke places left behind. On one recent afternoon, I walked west on 63rd Avenue, away from Queens Boulevard, passing Public School 139 Rego Park, where parents and grandparents spoke Tajik, Mandarin, Arabic, Uzbek and Russian, crowding the street as they await their children’s dismissal from school.

The triangle of Kurtuluş, Feriköy and Bomonti represents an Istanbul on the verge of fading away. Though still inhabited by significant numbers of Greeks, Jews and Armenians, there are more local churches and synagogues than are used by the remnants of those diminished communities. The numerous schools, houses of worship and cemeteries are relics testifying to the cosmopolitanism that once defined this segment of inner Istanbul. Another nostalgic quality of the area is its small-business culture, still thriving, yet on the verge of a major shift.

Carmen and Eduardo’s story could be an allegory for the rise and uh-oh moment of Brazil’s new middle class – except their tale is a real one, one that ends with a really nice savory fried pastel that’s become a midnight munchie hit with their neighbors in Rio’s iconic City of God (Cidade de Deus) favela. The pair’s life together started early; they met when Carmen, now 30, was just 12 years old; moved in together when she was 14; and both converted to evangelical Christianity and married in a church when she was 18. They came to the City of God, well-known from the book and film of the same name, looking for a more economical housing option.