Everybody knows moussaka – it’s one of the most popular Greek dishes, along with souvlaki and Greek salad. In Greece, it’s commonly written in English, often in large letters, outside touristy tavernas. But many people don’t know that moussaka, which is traditionally made in summer, when eggplants are in season, has a cousin named melitzanes papoutsakia (eggplant papoutsakia). This dish is similar to moussaka but comes together much more quickly: Halved eggplants are baked, stuffed with a beef sauce (like the one used in moussaka) and then topped with a kind of Greek-style béchamel made with eggs.

At a shopping center like this, we’d expect an ice cream parlor. In a long strip of businesses set back from the street, we spot a pharmacy, a photo lab and a dry cleaner, a mobile phone store, two eyecare shops and a cinema (“returning soon,” proclaims the marquee; “stay safe”). And our eyes take in lots of food, all of it kosher, in this predominantly Jewish area of Kew Gardens Hills: a dairy restaurant and sushi bar, a bagel-and-appetizing shop, a butcher, a Chinese restaurant, a schnitzel specialist, a pizzeria that also fries up falafel. If we hadn’t visited before, however, we’d never imagine that this particular parlor has a repertoire of more than 10,000 flavors. (Not all at once, of course.)

Last week we stopped at Prego, a Georgian-owned Italian restaurant, for an extra-large pizza paradiso, a delicate thin crust brushed with a light tomato sauce and baked, then topped with thin slices of ham, fresh tomatoes and shredded lettuce, and sprinkled with fresh parmesan. For summer, there isn’t a more refreshing pizza pie. We were the only seated customers and had to wait around 30 minutes for the kitchen to finish an enormous two-scooter delivery order. We might have grumbled had this not been July 2020, when a global pandemic has every restaurant owner in the country gnawing their fingernails to stubs. We were happy to see that our favorite place for pizza was serving at all.

In Spain, the word chiringuito evokes fond memories of summers spent at the beach. While the country’s coastline is famous, chiringuito technically refers to something more beach-adjacent: the small, mostly permanent bars and restaurants that line the sandy shores. The term, which has post-colonial Caribbean roots, is relatively recent, having been used for the first time in 1949, as the name for a restaurant in Sitges, a village southwest of Barcelona (that restaurant, by the way, is still frying squid on La Ribera beach). But the tradition of eating and drinking by the beach in Spain goes back further than that. Covered wood terraces or open-air tables with fishermen grilling sardines and serving wine were widespread along the Andalucia Coast over the last couple of centuries.

From Gascogne’s prized ducks to the buckwheat gallettes of Bretagne, each chunk of France has its distinct food traditions. In Marseille, the capital of Provence, the recipes brim with the region’s olive oil, garlic and tomatoes as well as plenty of Mediterranean fish. On menus around town, you’ll find an anchoïade here or artichauts à la barigoule (braised artichokes) there, but it is hard to find a restaurant that is fully devoted to the Provençal classics. Chez Madie les Galinettes is one of the few. From alouettes sans tête (beef roll ups in tomato sauce) to soupe de poisson, the menu reads like a Marseille mamie’s (grandmother’s) cookbook. You’ll feel like you’re dining in a local’s home, thanks to the familial warmth of its ebullient owner, Delphine Roux.

Since its founding in 2015, the Queens Night Market has inspired a thrill in the borough and beyond, one that – for us at least – calls to mind boundless childhood summers. Running Saturday nights from April to October, it brings vendor-chefs together from over 80 countries for the community to gather and celebrate with great food. While the pandemic has put the 2020 season on indefinite hold, this spring fortuitously saw the release of the official Queens Night Market cookbook, The World Eats Here: Amazing Food and the Inspiring People Who Make It at New York’s Queens Night Market (The Experiment; May 12, 2020). Co-authored by Queens Night Market founder John Wang and Storm Garner, a filmmaker and oral historian, the cookbook showcases 88 vibrant and diverse recipes directly from Queens Night Market’s vendor-chefs.

Olhão in the Algarve doesn’t have the picture-perfect scenery – the beautiful rocky cliffs cascading into the sea – normally associated with the region. But this fishing town managed to avoid the overdevelopment that has plagued other fishing villages in the region, like Albufeira or Armação de Pêra, now cautionary tales of how not to approach urban planning. At the heart of Olhão’s fantastic old city center, known for its cubist architecture, is one of Portugal’s best markets. It’s divided into two large red buildings with green domed towers, a distinctive feature that defines the town, especially when seen from the water. One building sells fish and shellfish from the rich Atlantic waters while the other has fruits, vegetables, nuts, cakes and cheese from the eastern side of the Algarve.

Athens’ image as a concrete gray city with few green spaces and a lot of traffic might be hard to shake. But would you believe only 6.5km away from the bustling city center lies a beautiful, lush forest with ancient paths and Byzantine monuments – and a little canteen where you can enjoy lunch near an ancient spring? In the forest, a 30-minute walk from the Kaisariani cemetery and off the Kaisariani Monastery loop trail is a bustling picnic area and ancient spring, a well-kept secret of Athens. Come here to seek a rare moment in city life: either snacking on a wooden bench by the water, under the trees awakened by a gentle breeze or at one of the tables and chairs under grass umbrellas by a tiny stone building that serves as the forest’s canteen, Kalopoula Refreshments.

Georgia had planned to open its borders to tourists on July 1, and we had intended to do some wine tasting in Kakheti about the same time – two plans that failed utterly. While no one is really sure why Georgia spent weeks preparing us for an open border only to snuff the plan at the last minute, our plan fizzled because we could not find a designated driver. But we still had a holiday. We stayed at Vazisubani Estate, a 19th-century palace that belonged to Sulkhan Chavchavadze, a nobleman with a penchant for winemaking and 20 hectares of vineyards, which became victims of a history that included the Romanovs, as well as the Soviets.

Over the past decade, it’s become increasingly difficult to find mom-and-pop-owned restaurants that serve Shanghainese classics. The local homestyle cuisine, a sub-brand of Shanghainese known as 本帮菜 (benbangcai), is often elevated and served in fine-dining environments, thanks to the city’s place as the economic capital of the country and the wealthy Shanghainese who benefit from their hometown’s prosperity. But occasionally you can still discover new hidden gems tucked away down the city’s backstreets. So when we hear about a spot we haven’t tried before, we are all ears. Like when our coworker Kelvin Ip told us about his favorite Shanghainese hole-in-the-wall just a couple blocks from the Bund.

As a chef and a mom, I love to get creative with food scraps, the parts that many people would normally throw away – stems, fat, seeds, rinds, skins, bones, etc. To me this is the heart of contemporary gastronomy – cooking with as little waste as possible and managing to create beautiful flavors and textures with humble ingredients. It’s an approach that’s beneficial not just for our own health but also that of the planet. This urge to limit food waste has led me to study the history of Greek and Mediterranean cuisines, which traditionally revolved around what we now call “sustainable cooking.” One great example of a historic culinary tradition that was all about using everything at hand is the spoon sweet, a type of fruit preserve with ancient roots and the official welcoming treat of Greece – it was traditionally served upon arrival in a Greek home.

Perched at Marseille’s northern border along the Mediterranean, the port of L’Estaque once teemed with fishermen. Starting in the 17th century, local pêcheurs would catch sardines, tuna, mackerel and poissons de roches (the rockfish that are essential to the city’s iconic bouillabaisse.) In the 1960s, these independent fishermen were swallowed up by the increase in industrial fishing, which led to a decline in the fish population – particularly sardines. Though pleasure boats now outnumber the port’s barquettes (traditional wooden fishing boats), L’Estaque’s fishing heritage hasn’t totally dried up. In 1976, Marseille’s wholesale fish market moved from the Vieux-Port to the Port du Saumaty, just south of the village. And, since 1997, L’Estaque is home to one of the city’s best fresh fish restaurants on the sea: Hippocampe.

The day starts very early for Don Ponciano Díaz and his wife, Sara. It’s 5 a.m., and they’re already at their bakery, Panadería Díaz, which is located in San Antonio La Isla, some 73 kilometers from Mexico City. One pale incandescent bulb lights the space, and the large wooden worktable is empty – but not for long. They run through a checklist of everything they will need for the day’s bread baking: water, flour, yeast, manteca (vegetable shortening), salt, sugar, eggs, butter and baking powder. The bread trays have to be prepared in advance, some with lard, others with flour. Molds, wooden sticks, knives, buckets, pitchers, pewter mugs and other utensils are all at the ready.

“Ó freguesa hoje temos a bela sardinha!” From afar, the fishmonger calls me to see her “beautiful sardine.” It is indeed a thing of beauty, this fish that the Portuguese love, especially in the summer when they are at their best – fat and full of flavor. Maria Alice has sardines, but also an incredible array of fresh fish from the waters south and north of Lisbon: cuttlefish, octopus, horse mackerel and mackerel as well as the prized ocean sea bass, sea bream and red snapper. Her friendly face is a reminder of how welcoming Mercado da Ribeira has been for generations of sellers and customers. Just as stalls are passed down from parents to children, so too is the habit of shopping there.

When Michelangelo made his Moses statue at the beginning of the 16th century, he found it so lifelike that some say he asked the statue, “Why don’t you speak?” Michelangelo’s Moses, which is now housed in a church in Rome, never said a word. But centuries later, in 2009 to be exact, a customer entered Lello Massa’s deli in Naples and, after biting into a ball of Lello’s mozzarella, exclaimed, “This mozzarella speaks.” “I didn’t think for a moment. I took a large sheet of paper and a red marker and wrote: my mozzarella speaks,” says 46-year-old Lello. And from that day on, this served as the new name of his rosticceria.