We all have that friend. A friend we should probably call more often. One who is always there for us, but we don’t see often enough. A friend who we can pick up where we left off with, no matter how much time has elapsed between conversations. A friend whose company always leaves you satisfied and wondering: Why didn’t we do this sooner? Buffa’s Bar and Restaurant is that friend. An outpost in the Marigny neighborhood on Esplanade Avenue, divided from the French Quarter by a neutral ground (which is New Orleanian for “street median”). A few blocks away, the classic dive bar Port of Call draws tourists and locals in a line that stretches around the block for their potent drinks and hearty burgers.

From downtown Athens, one’s eyes rest on the timeless vision of the Acropolis up on the hill, looming grandly above this ancient Greek city. But in the bustling market streets below, another classic, though less well-known, Athens exists.

As difficult as the last two years have been for food businesses, it has offered many establishments an opportunity to rethink how they do things and come back with a greater sense of purpose. Take the example of Oaxaca’s Oscuro Brebaje, a café that took a pause, only to emerge stronger and more inviting. Founded in 2015 by a young barista, Andrés González Martell, Oscuro Brebaje started off serving artsy frappés, light breakfasts and unforgettable cakes – all of which have become the signature bites of this unassuming café located in the old neighborhood of La Noria. Here, locals and visitors interact in the peaceful and picturesque streets full of old houses and colorful facades.

It started with a resurfaced meme. A 1953 black-and-white photo of a Ukrainian-emigrant-owned restaurant in Washington, D.C., offering free borscht to celebrate Stalin’s death. Seeing it reposted now has reminded me of the culture war that simmered last year over the hearty, beetroot-heavy soup when celebrity Ukrainian chef Ievgen Klopotenko started a campaign to have UNESCO recognize it as a part of Ukraine’s cultural heritage – partly in response to a 2019 tweet published by a Russian government account that claimed “#Borsch is one of Russia's most famous & beloved #dishes & a symbol of traditional cuisine.”

Cauliflower shawarma, lentil arayes and a killer sabich – Amit Sidi is cooking some of the best vegan food in town at B’Ivrit, her Israeli street food pop-up. Amit is not vegan. She’s not a trained chef either. But she rolls up to bars around northeast LA – and Smorgasburg every Sunday – offering an impressive lineup of dishes, both creative and classic. It almost didn’t happen at all. Amit grew up in Israel, and after she moved to LA she spent most of the next 15 years working in Hollywood, as a producer and in the costume department. She liked that world – especially costumes – but, as she puts it, “it’s mentally very draining… and there are a lot of angry people.”

Any Shanghai denizen who has lived in the city for longer than a few months worships at the altar of xiǎolóngbāo (小笼包). These steamed buns of goodness – tiny pork dumplings with a slurp of soup wrapped up in a wonton wrapper – provide delicious fodder for debates among Shanghai’s fiercest foodies.

Beignets & More is the kind of place you want everyone to know about – and you don’t want anyone to know about. Tucked between a defunct Cineplex and an Off-Track Betting location in a strip mall in Chalmette, a downriver suburb of New Orleans, it is a family-run gem of Vietnamese cuisine. But the name is a cloaking device of sorts: The beignets, which are made fresh daily, seem like an afterthought. Until recently, we’d never even had them. In all the years we’ve taken the short drive to this nondescript restaurant, we have always stayed on the “More” side of the menu.

These days, you can buy an Adjaruli khachapuri anywhere from a pizza chain in Bueno Aires to a grocery store in Tokyo. In Tbilisi, you can get this usually cheese- and egg-filled bread topped with meat and beans, cucumber-tomato salad or wild mushroom stew — the Adjaruli khachapuri has been having a years-long moment. Because of its ubiquity, outside of Georgia the word “khachapuri” has come to mean Adjaruli khachapuri, and the other word is forgotten. But at what cost! Adjara is the subtropical autonomous republic of western Georgia bordering Turkey and the Black Sea, and its cuisine has more to offer than solely the iconic cheese bread.

Hidden between two well-trodden avenues – the busy Halaskargazi and the glitz and glam of Vali Konağı – Kuyumcu İrfan Sokak is a back street in the high-end neighborhood of Nişantaşı. Here, cozy little lokantalar (Turkish diners), tobacco shops and chic cafés dwell in the shadow of the ancient Greek and Armenian buildings that give this part of Nişantaşı an aura of timeless elegance. Adding to that atmosphere is the miniscule pizzeria Azzurro Neopolitano, which in the two years since it opened has managed to snag the attention of pizza aficionados – and Italians – all over Istanbul. A quiet man, co-owner Ünal Yıldız comes out of the kitchen, his hands still dusted with flour.

Although it's a highlight of our local culinary wanderings, when seen within a map of New York City as a whole, Ridgewood is an unremarkable-looking neighborhood. It describes a downward-pointing triangle, bounded to the north and east by the Queens communities of Maspeth, Middle Village and Glendale. To the west it shares a long, irregular border with Brooklyn, mostly with the far-more-hip neighborhood of Bushwick. In the 19th century both Bushwick and Ridgewood offered gainful employment and more attractive housing to German-Americans living in the cramped Kleindeutschland of Manhattan's Lower East Side. Bushwick was developed first, and became home not only to residential properties but also to many breweries and factories.

When El Chato, considered to be Barcelona’s oldest Basque restaurant, opened in 1941 in El Fort Pienc, the neighborhood was a decidedly industrial one. In fact, the restaurant’s main clientele for decades were Basque truck drivers who were dropping off or picking up goods in the area. Much has changed since the 40s. El Fort Pienc is now home to office workers as well as families, lured to the area by its proximity to the center of town. Meanwhile, Basque cuisine has gone on to become one of the world’s most celebrated, its home region filled with numerous Michelin-starred restaurants.

It was Mardi Gras morning 2012, and my Hubig’s Pie was missing. On Lundi Gras (AKA “Fat Monday,” which has evolved to include traditions of its own), I had hidden it away – apple I believe, but I can’t quite recall – to serve as my breakfast before a full day of parading, revelry and maybe a little debauchery. For those not in the know, a Hubig’s is a deep-fried hand pie, with flavors like apple, lemon, peach and chocolate. They were sold by the Simon Hubig Pie Company, founded in Fort Worth in 1922 by an immigrant from the Basque region of Spain. The company then went on to open bakeries in several cities in the southeast, including New Orleans.

Mention “Les Baumettes” to a Marseillais and many immediately think of the prison that shares the name. Since the 1940s, this peripheral neighborhood has housed the city’s biggest penitentiary, where Marseille’s most notorious gangsters and French Connection collaborators did time. The prison is also infamous for France’s last execution by guillotine – shockingly recent, in 1977. For hikers and rock-climbers, on the other hand, Les Baumettes (whose name means “little grotto” in Occitan) is a gateway to the limestone fjords in the Calanques National Park. For Marseillais in the know, that entrance hides a unique place that is at once an eatery, escape and a voyage back in time.

It was the summer of 2020, and walking into Fahri Konsolos felt like a mirage, like Brigadoon. There were whispers throughout Kadıköy about That Cocktail Bar, maybe the first “good one” in Istanbul. But with the pandemic restrictions on bars with certain licenses, it took a bit of luck to catch it while open. Closed, we would never have glanced twice at the tiny shopfront, it melted so completely into the surrounding bars. If you managed to arrive on a night that Fahri Konsolos was open, however, you were in for a very special treat.

New Orleans is the last communal city in America. Our seasons are Mardi Gras, festivals, football, second lines and crawfish, and we share them together. And it is no accident that our Carnival season and our festival season are bridged by crawfish season: the ultimate act of communal eating. From late January to early June, give or take, folding tables covered in newspaper are laden with bright red crustaceans, corn, potatoes and smoked sausage, staples of the boil. We stand around the table, peeling and pinching the tails to extract the spicy meat, sucking the heads to taste the boil liquor, drinking ice cold beer, listening to music and telling stories.