Editor's note: Our recurring feature, Building Blocks, focuses on foods and ingredients that are fundamental to the cuisines we write about. This may come as a surprise, but little Greece is Europe’s fourth most important honey producer after Spain, Germany and Hungary. Every year, between 12,000 and 17,000 tons of this liquid gold are stolen from the country’s roughly 1.5 million hives and poured into jars to satisfy the local desire for honey. And it seems Greeks can’t get enough of it. They rank high among the world’s consumers, slurping up 1.7 kg per person every year as they use it to sweeten tea, drizzle over yogurt, slather on toast and soak baklava and other desserts. By contrast, the average American ingests a mere 400 grams.

In a tangerine orchard in Mızraklı, one of the many mountainous villages in Turkey's southern Hatay province, Yeliz Yoğun sat next to a burn pit rolling yufka – Turkish flatbreads – for her mother, Sabah, to bake. On this summer morning, the temperature was already high while standing under the trees, away from the fire, and the sun was not at its highest yet. Sabah was sitting next to the flame but was determined to finish all the dough they had prepared since the first light of the day. An NGO called Dünya Evimiz (“The World Is Our Home”), provides Yeliz and Sabah with donated flour as part of a program to distribute free yufka or tandır bread baked by women to people living in tent camps around Hatay.

Walking among the stalls of Mercado Coyoacán is as exhilarating as it is slightly overwhelming: mountains of fresh fruit, rows of piñatas hanging from the ceiling, chocolate-covered scorpions, and mystical candles that promise to bring love and fortune all coexist in this sprawling space. The familiar phrase, “¿Qué va a llevar?” (What are you buying?) echoes down each aisle, but as tempting as it is to bite into a creamy slice of mamey – a sweet, orange-fleshed fruit that has plenty of fans in Mexico – we are here with one mission: to eat our weight in tostadas. The market is in the heart of Coyoacán, one of Mexico City’s most whimsical neighborhoods. With cobblestone streets, coffee shops, art galleries, and boutiques, it’s especially popular for weekend visits.

To find the entrance to the Attari Sandwich Shop, you need to listen for the sounds of a bubbling fountain and the chatter of groups of people dining. While the official address is on Westwood Boulevard, the entrance is actually around the corner on a side street due to a remodel of the building. There’s a sandwich board sign aiming you in the right direction, but it tends to be blocked by parked cars, so it’s important to keep ears and eyes open. When you do find it, you will walk through a patinaed gate into a small, inviting courtyard area with the water feature in the center and the smells of food being grilled wafting through the space.

The hordes of pizza lovers who descend on Naples usually head for Via dei Tribunali in the city’s historical center, famed for its parade of pizzerias. If they arrive by train, they will exit the central station, go straight through Piazza Garibaldi and head right for the Centro Storico, where the guidebooks they carry always (erroneously) say they will find the best pizzerias. Locals in the know, meanwhile, head ten minutes in the opposite direction, towards an area that has less foot traffic and appeal for tourists, but that is home to Carmnella – truly one of Naples’s best pizzerias. Evidence of this can be seen in the pizzeria’s dining room; by noon, Carmnella is already full, unusual in a city like Naples, where locals are used to having lunch between 1 and 3 p.m.

“We’ve tried our best to return to deeper ways of cooking,” says Beatrice Ajaero, sitting in the front room of Nneji (nn-Nay-jee). The name of her grocery and takeaway restaurant – which opened in Astoria during the early summer of 2020, not long after the coronavirus pandemic crested in New York City – has been translated, simply, as “mother.” That’s too pat a translation from the Igbo language of southern Nigeria, Beatrice explains. “May I never be disconnected from my maternal heritage” gives a fuller sense of the meaning. More prosaically, “nneji” expresses the desire that “may I never forget where I come from.” On the signage outside the shop, three words echo that spirit: “Africa, food, kindred.”

For a city famous for making one of the best-known wines in the world, it took Porto a long time to catch up with viable options for bars offering good glasses. But Portugal's second-biggest city has finally reached an effervescent wine peak that lives up to its worldwide fame – not to mention the country is now the world's leader in wine consumption, at around 58 liters per capita. Today, bars in Porto are wildly different from days past: their wine-by-the-glass lists feature many small producers and venture away from conventional bottles, they have young chefs in the kitchen taking a more international approach to their menus (with influences from the Middle East to Latin America), and offer service that is both professional and welcoming.

Throughout Mexico, both foods and drinks are centered around corn, a tendency that’s most evident in Mexico’s wide variety of antojitos, or “little cravings,” small, portable snacks featuring some variation on the corn tortilla – of which the taco is undoubtedly the most well-known globally – antojitos are one of the joys of Mexican cuisine, and vary impressively across the country’s 32 states. In the southwestern state of Oaxaca, there’s no shortage of delicious antojitos – at breakfast, soft, steaming tamales wrapped in the region’s abundant banana leaves are the name of the game, while night owls have ample opportunity to crunch into a tlayuda, a giant tortilla folded over lots of shredded, mozzarella-like quesillo cheese, then griddled over hot coals until crispy on the outside and molten on the inside.

At a quick glance, the dimly lit entrance of Chinatown’s Far East Plaza shows a handful of humble restaurants selling familiar rice noodle dishes, banh mi sandwiches, and pho. Once inside, rays of light guide you to a busy open-air plaza that hosts a thriving, out-of-sight destination for curious eaters where vendors have long lines, sell-out early, or prefer reservations. Among the many businesses celebrated here, open only Friday through Sunday and selling out within a few hours, is Baker's Bench by Jennifer Yee. Peering into a small glass case as if they were gazing at precious gems, customers visiting Baker's Bench are privy to rows of flaky chocolate croissants, moist blueberry muffins, rich black sesame cookies and buttery Danish pastries.

Before we start this story, we must first explain the role of the platia in Greece. Platia (πλατεία, pronounced pla-tee-ah and sometimes spelled plateia) means “plaza” in Greek, and can refer to a central town square or a small neighborhood square. All ages meet at the platia: babies in strollers, loud children running and playing like there’s no tomorrow, teenagers having their first smoke or kiss, parents, grandparents, cats, dogs! These squares are to be found all around Greece, even in the most remote village. The role of the plaza in an Athenian neighborhood is even more vital and precious. It preserves the idea of a neighborhood, where everyone gets to know each other and share something in common.

It’s a warm summer day, yet inside Stramuntana, a restaurant in Porto devoted to the cooking of Portugal’s northern Trás-os-Montes region, a hearth is blazing. “In the past, people in Trás-os-Montes used wood-burning ovens all year,” says Lídia Brás, Stramuntana’s co-chef and co-owner, when we express our surprise in seeing a fireplace in operation during the hotter months. “There was no electricity or gas. Everything here is thought through to be authentic." It’s a small lesson in the foodways and culture of Portugal’s northernmost region, as well as an illustration of this restaurant’s deep dedication to authenticity.

Whenever I come back to Japan, I crave eggs. We go straight to our buddy's house and his wife almost always makes us a bowl of rice with a raw egg on top of it. And that's often my kick-off to being back. There are definitely restaurants where you can get that, but the eggs here are so incredibly delicious that I just crave them [by themselves], with some seaweed sprinkled on top and a little good soy sauce. It is, for me, one of my all-time comfort dishes. We almost always start our days at the FamilyMart, which is one of the convenience store chains near where I stay when I'm visiting. My wife and I have an egg salad sandwich about every other day for the whole trip. For $1.75, they are shockingly delicious.

Up above Freedom Square where the Sololaki and Mtatsminda neighborhoods blend together, there is a 100-year-old building with an apartment five steps below the sidewalk. It’s a warm, intimate space, part living room, part museum. A massive collection of wine glasses hang from the ceiling, 19th-century framed portraits of Georgians decorate one wall above a piano, while opposite are glass cases displaying antique ceramic pitchers and elegant, polished drinking horns called kantsi. There are also two vintage silver vessels – exquisite ashtray-sized pans with long stylized handles used in days of old for drinking wine to special toasts. This cup is called an azarphesha, and this entire collection (and the walls containing it) belong to Luarsab Togonidze, a folklorist, author, entrepreneur and co-owner of this welcoming restaurant, also called Azarphesha.

When a streetcar ran down Queens’ Metropolitan Avenue in the first half of the 20th century, soda fountains like Eddie’s Sweet Shop were commonplace in big cities and small towns across America. Today, this hundred-year-old corner gem on Metropolitan in the leafy, Tudor-style enclave of Forest Hills is one of the last of its kind left in the country, and it certainly shows its vintage. On summer afternoons, Eddie’s still fills up with crowds of happy Queens kids, and the diversity of the clientele reminds you that fortunately, it’s not the 1920s anymore. The shop itself, though, is practically unchanged – every piece of equipment behind the counter, from the shiny Frigidaire to the tiny metal cabinet hand-painted with the words “hot fudge,” could be from a museum.

Tarlabaşı, right in the heart of Istanbul’s European side, has the reputation of being among the worst areas in the city. While it is certainly run down, we have spent considerable time in the quarter over the years and have had no problems. Its reputation is exaggerated, and if you aren't looking for trouble, you aren't likely to find it. Amid the once-elegant and now dilapidated century-old apartments built by the Greeks and Armenians that originally lived in the area, there are other buildings from a variety of eras on the verge of collapse, while a massive “urban renewal” project that has been ongoing for over a decade amid legal and financial issues has stuck out like a sore thumb as the rest of the rugged quarter retains its character.