Biting into a freshly-made globe of mozzarella, porcelain smoothness yields to a creamy interior and milk trickles down the cheeks. For any Neapolitan, this is true pleasure. And everyone knows the best spot for such an afternoon delight is at a cheese factory in the countryside – namely in the Caserta and Salerno provinces. There, some of the best Mozzarella di Bufala Campana DOP is shaped daily from fresh buffalo milk. For those of us stuck in the city center and craving that addictive bite of fresh mozzarella, one of Sogni di Latte’s two locations is our first stop.

The Gion district of Kyoto embodies the romanticism that surrounds Japan’s ancient capital. Filled with machiya (traditional long wooden houses), it harbors several “teahouses,” where geiko — the Kyoto term for geisha – entertain their high-class guests with quick-witted conversation and skilled musical performances. Yet just north of Shijo Street, the neighborhood evolves into a very different kind of entertainment area. Narrow alleyways are filled with small bars, many of which are kyabakura, hostess clubs that sell the fantasy of female attention. It’s a pocket of Kyoto where one needs confidence or an introduction to open many a door. And it’s also hiding one of the city’s best kept ramen secrets.

Salty, sticky, and above all pungent, dambalkhacho certainly isn’t for the fainthearted. But for iron-nostrilled khinkali-lovers, the soft, moldy cheese is one of the main attractions at Asi Khinkali, a cozy cellar restaurant in Tbilisi's Marjanishvili district. Made in the mountains, dambalkhacho is challenging to find in the city, but Asi Khinkali has it on the menu both fried and hidden inside their delicious khinkali. Friends Lasha Kozhrisvhili and Paata Jorjikia opened Asi Khinkali three years ago, right at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. “At the start, we had a little space just for online takeaway orders and then we moved here two years ago,” explains manager, Levan Shadize.

The post-punk cultural movement of the 1970’s could be described as a period of breaking with traditional elements, embracing the avant-garde and mixing a variety of different influences. It’s also how chef Felipe González describes his restaurant, Otra Cosa Taberna (which translates to “Something Else Tavern”), located in the neighborhood of Sant Andreu. “I like to define Otra Cosa Taberna as ‘post-punk market cuisine’ because is very much a market cuisine; we buy what the neighborhood has to offer,” Felipe explains. “But we’ll also do with these products whatever we want. The interpretation of cuisine, for us, is super free and very ambiguous. You might be eating a Peruvian causa but with octopus and a mayo with olivada, and we totally flip it to present it in a completely different way. The game has no limits.”

Driving east from Oaxaca City, Mexico, into Santiago Matatlán – the town of about ten thousand souls that’s known as the “World Capital of Mezcal” – one’s vista is suddenly dominated by the color green. Across the landscape of gently rolling hills, enormous patchworks of planted agave fields supply the eye with an entire spectrum of verdure, from sage to emerald to jade. The large, spiky magueys, as they’re also called, are everywhere you look, their dusty shades contrasting with the brighter green of the grasses and cacti also dotting the region’s slopes. But we’re not here for mezcal. Instead, different agave beverages are on the menu today: fresh aguamiel and lightly fermented pulque, harvested daily on this land by fifth-generation owner Reina Luisa Cortés Cortés of A&V La Casa del Pulque.

On a busy street in Beşkitaş, nestled between a camera shop and a turşu stand, sits an unassuming storefront offering çiğ köfte. Open only after 3 p.m., it’s easy to walk by and not take notice of what seems like an average fast-food joint. But this is Çiğköfte Yiyelim (which translates to “Let’s eat çiğ köfte!”), and is one of our favorite spots for this dish from southeastern Turkey because of the unique variations offered. Çiğ köfte is a mixture of fine bulgur wheat (sometimes along with raw minced meat), onions, olive oil, tomato and pepper paste, herbs and spices including parsley and cumin, lemon and water that is kneaded together by hand and formed into oblong pieces with characteristic finger-sized indentations in the surface.

Your friends or family are visiting Lisbon for the first time. Where do you take them to eat? If you’re us, it’s a no-brainer: Pica-Pau. Open for less than a year now, the restaurant, for us at least, has become a go-to introduction to the dishes, ingredients and flavors of Portugal. Or, more accurately, the dishes, ingredients and flavors of Lisbon. “Lisbon is a culinary region, just like Trás-os-Montes or Alentejo,” says Luís Gaspar, referring to Portugal’s far north and south, both regions with distinct, recognizable culinary legacies. He’s the chef behind Pica-Pau, and collaborated with the restaurant group Plateform to create a venue that centers around the sometimes-neglected cuisine of Lisbon.

We all have our favorite watering hole – that place close to home where you can have a bite to eat, sip on your preferred drink, have a chat with neighbors, friends, strangers. A place where you feel welcome and frequent often. La Santita, a tiny Latin American restaurant located on the tree-lined Boulevard Eugène Pierre, embodies this description. A sister restaurant to the popular El Santo Cachón, La Santita opened just a little over a year ago, and has rapidly become a neighborhood favorite. Here, owners and Marseille transplants, Chilean-born Cristobal Urizar and his French wife, Mathilde Gineste, serve up traditional Latin American favorites with French verve. After meeting in Honduras while on holiday, the pair moved to Marseille and have called it home for 15 years.

It’s fall and the wonderful farmers markets of Athens are filled with the season’s harvest; fresh walnuts and chestnuts, persimmons, pomegranates, quince and, of course, the two queens of the season: pumpkin and butternut squash. I love using butternut squash or pumpkin in a variety of recipes and these traditional fritters are one of my favorite ways to enjoy this nutritious vegetable. This is a recipe that I include in my cookbook Salt of the Earth (Quadrille, 2023), and it is inspired by the traditional version from the region of Messenia in southern Peloponnese. In my take on this dish, I add some chopped green olives as I like variety in textures and flavors and the olives, along with crumbled feta, add a beautiful layer of umami to the fritters.

Jambalaya, the rice dish that stands at the crossroads of culture and cuisine, is a staple of celebration, mourning and everything in between in Louisiana. From tailgates to Mardi Gras to repasts and backyard cookouts, it is a ubiquitous food that can be a main or a side dish. The roots of the dish can be traced to West African jollof rice, as well as Spanish paella. At its essence, jambalaya is an odds-and-ends dish that feeds a multitude, a humble rice dish with some meat and/or seafood cooked into it by way of a flavorful broth. As for the origins of the name jambalaya, there are as many theories as the grains of rice contained within. Some believe it to come from the Provençal word jambalaia, which means a mishmash.

From the bustling Melikishvili Avenue, we ascended a few steps to arrive at Praktika. The venue features three rooms adorned with white walls, well-worn parquet flooring, and standard-issue tables and chairs. Its resemblance to study rooms is no coincidence; Praktika is situated just a stone's throw away from Tbilisi State University, the city’s largest university, most of the customers are students, and the space is a former language school. The café’s humble appearance is not suprising. Praktika, which opened its doors in August 2022, owes its inception to a crowdfunding initiative led by the socialist movement Khma (meaning "voice" in Georgian). Its primary aim was to establish, as they put it, a “people’s café that will provide affordable and tasty food to students, workers, working students and everyone else in need.”

It’s no secret that Los Angeles has an amazing Korean food scene. L.A.’s Koreatown is the largest in the United States, with over 500 restaurants, so Angelenos are lucky enough to find restaurants that specialize in less common dishes, beyond the popular Korean barbecue or bibimbap. One such dish is yeomso tang (also spelled yumso tang), a stew traditionally made with Korean black goat meat, which we tracked down at Mirak. Black goats get their name, naturally, from the black hair that covers their body. They are native to Korea, where eating black goat is believed to have numerous health benefits. Not only is it a leaner meat, it’s also believed to be very nutritious.

Our introduction to Yakinikuen takes place on a Saturday night. Two German friends, former Tokyo residents and long-time fans of the restaurant, were determined to take an edible trip down memory lane. “We’ll already be in the queue. Hurry!” they told us. Reservations at Yakinikuen, apparently, are only taken for weekdays before 7 p.m., and so they had lined up to secure a table. “It’s an underground joint with the best meat,” they said.

In the Spanish-speaking neighborhoods of Queens, empanadas are everywhere. Literally "covered in bread," an empanada at its most elemental is made from dough that is folded over a filling, sealed and then baked or fried. This basic recipe gives rise to innumerable variations. All-purpose wheat flour is a common foundation for empanada dough, but the dough might feature cassava, corn or plantain flour instead. The fillings are generally savory, but sweet fillings are not unusual; guava paste and cheese is one familiar combination. The largest menus we've come across in Queens include several dozen different empanadas.

The upper-middle class residential neighborhood of Dikilitaş in Istanbul's Beşiktas district is certainly pleasant enough, but is not a place we pass through very often and has few culinary attractions that we know of. So when we encountered Bay Köfte, a food truck churning out sandwiches one cannot find elsewhere in the city (or the country for that matter) we were intrigued instantly, and have since been back to Dikilitaş twice – this new street food favorite is sure to take us to the neighborhood much more often.