The coronavirus infection rate is currently slowing down in Georgia to only several a day (with an occasional exception), and this is about four weeks after Easter, during which some churches insisted on still holding services and had us all biting our nails. Travel restrictions are being lifted, and the government has penciled in June 8 as the day restaurants with outdoor seating can reopen. We just don’t know what conditions will be imposed on everyone. Will waitstaff and clients have to wear masks? How many people per table? Will khinkali be served in individual portions instead of on a huge communal platter? There are lots of questions, perhaps the biggest being, “Who will survive?”

Editor’s note: As our cities begin reopening and adapting to the new normal in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, we are asking CB team members as well as chefs, journalists and food personalities to share the meal they are most looking forward to eating in our new “First Bite” series. First up is Célia Pedroso, our Lisbon bureau chief. Choosing a place for a first bite in Lisbon after all the restaurants, cafés and pastelarias have been closed for more than two months is not easy – there are so many options, and so many foods I’ve been missing. But after a few inquiries, I realized many places won’t open on Monday, May 18, the official date given by the government for the opening of restaurants, cafés, kindergartens and museums. So that narrowed down the list of possible venues.

Is life in Queens normal yet? Well, it seems to be looking that way. Or as close to normal as it can get before the stay at home order, officially called “New York State on PAUSE,” is lifted. Lines at supermarkets are getting shorter, and restaurants are slowly reopening, although often with shortened hours and a reduced menu, and still only for delivery or takeaway. The vendors at the weekly Jackson Heights Greenmarket are working under the new normal. You point at the vegetables and fruits you want, and they bag them for you. A different person charges you. I can grab a cup of coffee at any of my local bakeries, making it almost feel like the pre-pandemic days. But

I have always loved dolmades, stuffed grape leaves, and my family obviously knew it. My grandmother would make loads of them and would call my mom to tell her, “I made dolmades for Carolina.” Dolmades, just for me! I especially liked the ones with just rice and herbs that we eat cold – you can pop them in your mouth like candy. Likewise, avgolemono, the smooth yet tart lemon and egg sauce, is another favorite of mine. My grandfather George was an expert on making this. As a child I’d stand next to him while he was whisking quickly but with a masterful technique he had acquired over the years of being married to my grandmother Rena. She would stand next to him, like a general, on the lookout for possible mistakes and giving him directions.

On Saturday, May 2, we were finally able to eat real Neapolitan pizza once again. No more homemade pizza, thank goodness (a timely measure as yeast is becoming harder to find across Italy). The threats of Vincenzo De Luca, the president of the Campania region, to use flamethrowers in response to those who violated the lockdown bans didn’t come to fruition. A fire, however, was finally rekindled in Naples: that of the city’s thousands of pizza ovens. Pizza is back but you can only buy it takeaway or have it delivered to your home, with a series of health rules to follow. It is not possible to eat in a pizzeria, and this, we will see, completely alters the relationship between the city’s residents and their pizza.

From a humble petisco (“snack”) in tascas to a fancy dish in elegant restaurants, peixinhos da horta are experiencing a revival in Lisbon. Chefs have perfected their crispy texture and experimented with dipping sauces, turning them into a simple and delicious starter or a snack to pair with a cold glass of white wine. Peixinhos da horta (which translates as “little fish from the garden”) are nothing but green beans deep-fried in a batter. As a child, I often ate them on summer holidays in the Algarve; my granny fried them in small batches of four or five, similar to how she prepared small horse mackerel, in a delicate batter and served them with soupy tomato rice on the side.

It wouldn’t be an understatement to say that Turkey remains starkly divided on a range of issues, be it the controversial 2017 presidential system referendum or whether the classic scrambled egg dish menemen, which is always made with chopped green peppers and tomatoes, should also be prepared with onions. While the referendum squeaked through with 51 percent voting affirmative, the pro-onion camp narrowly edged past the naysayers by the same mark in a 2018 Twitter poll launched by popular food writer Vedat Milor, in which more than 430,000 people voted. (For the record, we prefer it soğansız). One thing that everyone can agree upon, at least those without gluten allergies, is that Ramazan pidesi, baked golden brown in the form a glorious puffy, chewy, robust disc topped with sesame seeds and/or çörek otü (nigella seeds), is delicious and something to look forward to.

Since the coronavirus crisis began in France, our computer and TV screens have been with barraged with public health missives. The Alerte France ads feature a four-pronged plan to “protect yourself and others.” The first step, “wash your hands very often,” has made good old-fashioned soap the best anti-viral weapon – especially due to the drought of antibacterial gel. Consequently, the emblematic savon de Marseille – an olive-oil based soap that makes use of Provence’s green gold – is more popular than ever, turning the city’s savonneries into unintentional ambassadors of public health. One of them, Savonnerie Fer à Cheval, has been particularly prepared for the role.

Oaxaca’s natural food projects have long had a presence in the city, but they are gaining new importance in light of the current coronavirus crisis. In a time of disruption and disconnection, they see themselves as helping to restore the links between humankind and nature. While the medical and scientific communities are going to great lengths to fight the local spread of the coronavirus and Covid-19, many Oaxacans are also realizing that this is a good moment to recognize that science and natural healing traditions can coexist. It’s something that locals are appreciating now more than ever – all the producers and vendors we spoke to reported a considerable increase in the demand for healing food products in the last few weeks.

It’s 9 p.m. at Fu Chun Xiao Long, and the waitress taps me on the shoulder to let me know they’re about to close. The Shanghainese snack shop has been serving up xiaolongbao (soup dumplings) and paigu niangao (deep-fried pork cutlets and rice cakes in gravy) until midnight for decades. But in the post-Covid-19 world, they shut their doors earlier, knowing that late-night business won’t be at the same level as it was last year, or even the last 10 years. Early closures aren’t the only changes to Shanghai’s dining scene. Most local restaurants have signs up requiring masks for entrance, despite the fact that the local government deemed them unnecessary several weeks ago. (We take them off to eat, of course.)

The next installment of CB Pantry Raid, a series in which our walk leaders give a guided tour of the local pantry, will take a slightly different approach. Esneider Arevalo, our lead guide in Queens, will be taking us with him as he visits the Jackson Heights Greenmarket, where New Yorkers can buy fresh produce from area farmers. Tune in on Sunday, May 10, at 1 p.m. EDT (GMT-4) on Instagram Live. Unlike the other cities we work in, Queens doesn’t have a typical pantry. Just look at the boroughs’s diverse markets – some sprawling, many more pocket-sized – to get a sense of the many immigrant communities, both old and new, that call Queens home.

Neapolitans have a special affinity for pasta. It’s a staple pantry, sure, but also more than that – in Naples, pasta is part of the pervading spirit of the place. Not only do we have great respect for this ingredient, but we also appreciate the minute differences between shapes, differences that would surely be overlooked elsewhere. This sensitivity, like many gastronomic rules, has been handed down for generations. With the aim of sharing such knowledge (and taking inspiration from my Pantry Raid presentation on Instagram Live), I put together a pasta guide, which will allow you to make and order pasta dishes as true Neapolitans do, and avoid the mistakes that true Neapolitans would never make.

In the next installment of CB Cooks, a series that brings our walk leaders into your home for a live cooking demonstration, Carolina Doriti, our Athens bureau chief, will be cooking dolmades avgolemono, stuffed grape leaves with avgolemono sauce. Her Instagram Live will run on Thursday, May 7, at 11:30 a.m. EDT (GMT-4). If you want to cook along with Carolina, here are the ingredients you’ll need (although all are welcome to come watch, even if you’re not cooking).

Legumes have been at the core of the Greek diet since antiquity, with chickpeas being especially popular. We find references to them, and the ways they were cooked, in the works of several ancient writers and poets, including Homer, whose epic poems provide insight into the eating and cooking habits of the time (roughly the 8th century B.C.). Revythi (ρεβύθι) is the Greek word for chickpeas, and it derives from the ancient Greek word erevynthos (ερέβυνθος), which referred to both the plant and the seed. Sappho (c. 630-570 B.C.), the greatest female Greek lyric poet, spoke of “Χρύσειοι ἐρέβινθοι ἐπ ̓ ἀιόνων ἐφύοντο,” which translates roughly as “Golden chickpeas that have for centuries been growing.”

The consumption of sake is a sacrosanct affair in Japan. In Japanese, the term “sake” technically denotes all alcohol, though it is often used interchangeably with the less ambiguous “nihonshu.” The true genesis of the island nation’s archetypal brew is lost to time, though the divine concoction of water, rice, yeast and koji mold likely originated, or at least became more standardized, sometime during the Nara period (710-784 AD) when Empress Genmei consolidated rule over an agrarian society. Most people in this fledgling nation state participated in animistic and ancestral folk worship, within which rice, and by extension nihonshu, came to play important ritualistic roles.