“Have you been to Bahía, Donald?” José Carioca, a dapper, green-and-gold, happy-go-lucky parrot, poses this question to Donald Duck in the (mostly) animated 1944 film The Three Caballeros. For its beauty and charm — and, oh, the food! — José insists that Bahía (buy-EE-ah), a coastal state in northeastern Brazil, has no rival. It’s a full-throated endorsement, particularly from José: His surname, Carioca, identifies him as a native of Rio de Janeiro. Even for a parrot-about-town who has experienced the beauty of Rio’s beaches and the excitement of its nightlife, Bahía is a magical place. That spirit has been transported to Astoria, Queens, not by magic, but by the devotion of Bahían sisters Elzi and Erli Botelho Ribeiro.

When it comes to food from Central and South America, some dishes have become ubiquitous in the US – like the taco – while others haven’t seeped into the country’s consciousness in quite the same way. “We’d like for a salteña to be like a taco,” David Oropeza tells us at our table outside Bolivian Llama Party (BLP), the Sunnyside restaurant he co-owns with his two older brothers, Alex and Patrick. True to that mission, the trio has done more to popularize the salteña than anyone in the city. But a salteña is no taco. In fact, at a glance it resembles nothing more than a fat baked empanada – a resemblance that can vanish with one incautious bite.

Bhanchha Ghar (Bahn-sah Gar) is the only four-time winner of New York City’s annual Momo Crawl. Early one afternoon, more than a thousand event goers fanned out from the block-long, pedestrian-only Diversity Plaza, at the western edge of Jackson Heights, and called on dozens of nearby restaurants, cafés, trucks and carts. Each dished out at least one style of momo, a filled dumpling best-known from Tibet and Nepal. Several hours later, after momo-crawlers had returned to the plaza and the popular vote had been tallied, Yamuna Shrestha, the owner of Bhanchha Ghar, once again proudly raised the Momo Belt high. The decorated yak-hide belt returned to its glass case, mounted on the back wall of the upstairs dining area, where it overlooks an open kitchen and a handful of tables.