Palermo

Hama: Sicily meets Ghana

Ghana and Sicily may not seem like a natural fit, but they come together perfectly at Hama, a Palermo restaurant that brings the two places’ cuisines together while also offering an edible lesson about Sicily’s centuries-old role as a meeting point between Europe and Africa. The name Palermo derives from the ancient Greek panormos and refers to any place where a boat can be docked easily. As a gateway to Europe, Sicily has been a cultural melting pot for many centuries. Today, this long history of cultural and social interactions is woven into the fabric of the city: as street names, as linguistic particularities, and culinary specialties. Migration from Asian and African countries is particularly evident in Sicilian life, especially here in Palermo.

Barcelona

Jamón Ibérico: Spain’s Leg-endary Ham

Ham is one of Spain’s best-known culinary treasures, and different types of the cured meat offer their own flavors and characteristics depending on the breed of pig, how the animal has been fed and raised and how its meat has been processed and cured. The wide selection of ham in Barcelona can be a bit intimidating, but it’s easy to decipher and make your selection with a little local know-how. The two major categories of Spanish jamón serrano ham are jamón del país and jamón ibérico. Serrano refers to the ancient technique – dating back to Roman times – of curing the ham in salt and then dry-aging it to extend preservation and increase the flavor and umami.

Tokyo

Kooriya Peace: Shaved Ice Mountain

It’s 9 o’clock in the morning and the narrow streets that fringe Inokashira Park are largely empty. This part of Kichijoji, a lively neighborhood in west Tokyo, has yet to wake up. Storefront shutters are yet to be lifted; staff inside cafés can be glimpsed preparing for the day. Yet, on one corner, a couple of girls duck into an enclosed alleyway and reappear five minutes later. Next, a solo lady strides inside, emerging after a minute or two. People drift in and out, marking an unusual pattern of activity. This is the entrance to Kooriya Peace, a renowned kakigori (shaved ice) store that’s so popular customers secure their dessert hours in advance – although for early birds it might become their breakfast.

Porto

Casa Louro: Same As It Ever Was

When we arrived, there were one or two customers quietly drinking wine at the bar. Later, a man entered and bought cured ham by the kilo, complaining about how much fat it contained. A food tour stopped by, filling the silence with English-language explanation. A bit later, the mailman stuck his head in; he had no letters to deliver, but it was clear that he was angling for a drink. The clientele that late morning at Casa Louro, a bar and restaurant in Porto, seemed to be a microcosm of the city’s life. Indeed, with hams hanging from the ceiling, soccer paraphernalia on the walls, and crusty old customers, it looks like the quintessential Portuguese bar. And in many ways it is, but Casa Louro is also something of a dying breed.

Queens

Little Banchan Shop: Korean Mix-n-Match

We'd always thought of banchan (bahn-chahn) simply as the numerous small dishes that arrive, unbidden, to surround the main courses at a Korean restaurant meal. But until we sat down with Hooni Kim and Catharine Chang at Little Banchan Shop, in Long Island City, we didn’t fully understand their central role in Korean cuisine – not only in public settings but also in the home. Hooni, a chef and restaurateur, opened Little Banchan Shop in August 2022. Catharine, who practiced corporate law in a past life, manages the front of the shop while Hooni presides in the kitchen. The main room is a simple oblong – bright, sparingly decorated, well-stocked yet uncluttered, with a "huge window into our kitchen," notes Hooni, so customers can see that the banchan is made in-house.

Marseille

Blé d’Art: Spellbound by Music and Merguez

In the first book of his Marseille noir trilogy Total Chaos, Jean-Claude Izzo describes his hometown: “Marseille isn't a city for tourists. There's nothing to see. Its beauty can't be photographed. It can only be shared. It's a place where you have to take sides, be passionately for or against. Only then can you see what there is to see.” On a steep hill sandwiched between Cours Julien and Place Jean Jaurés, sits a tiny sandwich shop and a man who embodies Izzo’s quote in its entirety. A friend who shares a love of this city and its hidden treasures told us about this place, which she happened upon one evening. So together we climbed one of Marseille’s many collines to Blé d’Art, a small, but impossible-to-miss, brightly painted storefront.

Barcelona

CB On the Road: Galicia, the Globe’s Capital of Conservas

Mention seafood from Galicia, and you can expect an almost Pavlovian response from a chef. This corner of northwestern Spain has a reputation as the source of Europe’s highest quality fish and shellfish. But not all of Galicia’s seafood makes it to fancy dinner plates; a significant amount ends up in tiny metal cans. But these aren’t the sardines you used to eat with Saltines in your broke college days; tinned seafood from this remote region of Spain is among the most sought-out and expensive in the world. The History How did out-of-the-way Galicia become the canned fish and seafood hotspot that it is today? To get an answer, we started with a visit to Mariña López Rodríguez, director of Museo de la Conserva, a museum in Vigo, Spain, dedicated to Galicia’s canning industry.

Oaxaca

Liquid Assets: Tejate, Oaxaca’s Drink of the Gods

It’s not yet 11 a.m. on a May morning in Oaxaca City – typically the hottest month in this midsized capital of the southwest Mexican state – and the day is already fixing to be a scorcher. At this moment, we’re padding the streets of Oaxaca’s bustling downtown market district, and we can feel the heat radiating off the cement below our feet. Deciding the morning’s errands will have to be put on pause, we duck into one of the main entrances to the famed Benito Juárez market, where we know we’ll find Valentina and a big, brimming jícara – a hollowed-out gourd used as a no-waste drinking vessel – of tejate. We navigate past little stalls where vendors hawk such varied items as big, knotted balls of the milky, melty cow’s cheese known as quesillo; sweet, yeasty pan dulce sprinkled with colored granulated sugar; and big, round tortillas in two styles: soft and pliable (blandas) and crispy and crunchy (tlayudas).

Marseille

Sur le Pouce: Couscous and Comfort Food

The walk to Sur le Pouce, a popular Tunisian family restaurant, is a straight shot from Marseille’s central boulevard, La Canébiere. We make our way along rue Longues des Capucins, behind Alcazar, the main public library, pass the Chinese wholesale clothing stores – Joy Lady, Wei Wei, and New 35 – and arrive ten minutes and several wonderous lands later to the corner of rue de la Convalescence. At the door of Sur le Pouce, we find ourselves in the heart of downtown Marseille and the populaire, working class, Belsunce neighborhood, largely inhabited by people of Maghrebi heritage, both French nationals and recent arrivals.

Tbilisi

Ghebi: Subterranean Comfort

Few locals, let alone tourists have reached the isolated mountain village of Ghebi in Georgia’s northern borderlands of Racha. However, many have passed through the doors of its namesake basement restaurant in the bustling left bank district of Marjanishvili in downtown Tbilisi. For more than a decade, the eatery has been steadily serving up comfort food from the region including lobio, the red bean stew with or without the aged Racha salted ham called lori, bean-stuffed pies called lobiani, and skhmeruli, the garlic saturated pan-roasted chicken dish. Located on Aghmashenebeli Avenue, which is more well known for its profusion of Turkish lokantasi diners with ready-made buffet spreads and Arab restaurants that attract many of the city’s foreign residents and visitors from South Asia and the Middle East, Ghebi remains a staunch local haunt frequented by tables of Georgian men toasting their chachas late into the evening over tables loaded with food.

Mexico City

Romulo’s: Market Mariscos

Back in 1972 when Marsicos Romulo’s opened at the Mercado 1 de Diciembre, a neighborhood market in Mexico City´s Colonia Narvarte, it was just a small seafood joint surrounded by fruit and vegetable stands. What started as a tiny bar with only three chairs soon became known for its fresh ingredients and abundance of dishes. Eventually, Romulo’s acquired the adjacent premises and a couple more stands just in front of the original, meaning a bigger kitchen and some tables for his customers. Ten years later, Romulo’s opened a full brick-and-mortar restaurant just one block away at Calle Uxmal 52, with the same name and food on offer. Even then, the original location in the market just kept growing.

Barcelona

Hermós Bar de Peix: Beautiful Fish Bar

Hermós Bar de Peix is the new fish bar by Alexis Peñalver, owner of our longtime Gràcia neighborhood favorites La Pubilla and its tapas-focused little sibling Extra Bar. It might sound a little self-flattering, but the bar’s name (which means “Beautiful” in Catalán) is, in fact, a powerful local symbol. Hermós is the ironic nickname of the homely, humble fisherman of the book El Quadern Gris by the famous Catalan journalist and food writer Josep Pla. Hailing from L’Empordà on the northern Catalan coast, the character’s only relief for the pains of life are the suquets the peix – fish stews. Hermós the bar is a tribute to the magnificence of the Catalan fishing tradition, celebrated here with fire, casseroles and bottles of wine in a little bar inside La Llibertat Market, right next to its fishmonger.

Athens

Agriolouloudo: A Coffee House For All

Introduced during Ottoman times, the kafeneion – the old-fashioned kind of coffee house – has long been a fixture in Greece. By 1860, Athens already had more than 100 establishments that were serving what has been called both Greek coffee and Turkish coffee (name debates aside, we can all agree that it’s more or less the same thing, a small cup of strong coffee with a thick sludge at the bottom). They were (and still are) the domain of men, who would congregate there to talk politics and socialize over coffee as well as more substantial fare, usually simple meze and ouzo or tsipouro. Although the traditional Greek kafeneion still exists in many Athenian neighborhoods, it’s slowly dying out.

Naples

Antica Pasticceria Lauri: Untraditionally Traditional

“It all started with a picture of a millefeuille…but we didn’t make any,” Luigi Lauri begins, as he tells us the story of how his family’s bakery, Antica Pasticceria Lauri, has become a unique fixture in the Neapolitan culinary landscape. In a city like Naples, having the word “Antico” (old) preceding the name of an eatery of any kind conveys a sense of comfort to the customer, a guarantee that the place sticks to the beloved, never-changing recipes of the Neapolitan tradition. This promise certainly doesn’t apply to Antica Pasticceria Lauri. Lard, one of the staple ingredients of Neapolitan patisserie, is banned here. And, although it seems impossible to imagine a babà, the local mushroom-shaped sponge cake, not soaked in the rum that defines its very essence…well, here, that’s exactly how it’s made.

Istanbul

CB On the Road: Midyat’s Pizzeria Babylon

Editor’s Note: Pizzeria Babylon is moving to a new location, but will be open again soon for business! Check out their Instagram and Facebook for updates from Ishok. Nestled in Turkey's southeastern province of Mardin is the historic region of Tur Abdin, meaning “The Mountain of God's Servants” in the language of the Syriac people (also known as Assyrians). These Orthodox Christians have called the area home for millennia and still speak a Semitic mother tongue that is the most similar living language to the Aramaic spoken by Jesus Christ.

Marseille

Asabiya: The Pulse of Marseille

Marseille does not resemble the picture-postcard version of France. The locals here have a saying, "D'abord, on est Marseillais, ensuite on est Français." (First, we’re Marseillais, and then we’re French.) It is a city connected by a rich immigrant population and small neighborhoods, each with their own personality and identity. One of the most vibrant pockets of the city is Cours Julien, or Cours Ju, as it is called here. If the Vieux Port is the heart of the city and Noailles is the stomach, what does Cours Julien represent? On a recent visit to the neighborhood, that question was answered. The tiny streets are crowded with small boutiques, tattoo shops, bars and restaurants, all camouflaged by the work of graffiti artists.

Palermo

Trattoria da Pino: Old School in the Old District

The Borgo Vecchio neighborhood in Palermo is sandwiched between the affluent Politeama-Via Libertà district and the historic fishing community of Castellammare, also known as la Loggia. On one side you have the Via Libertà, an arterial road peppered with theaters and gardens that the legendary composer Richard Wagner once described as the Champs-Élysées of Sicily. On the other, you have the scent of the foamy sea. In 1556, the neighborhood stretched from the San Giorgio gate to the Santa Lucia church. As a result, it adopted the name of this physical boundary and became known as Borgo di Santa Lucia. Lured by the promise of development of a nearby port, the street quickly attracted artisans and merchants from other regions and the district grew in stature.

Athens

Geitonia: The Neighborhood Spot

Kypseli is exploding. It’s the new “cool” neighborhood, thanks to the influx of creatives who own cutting-edge restaurants, clothing brands, and art galleries. It seems as though every few days, a new cafe, bar, record store or plant shop opens, and increasingly, Athenians young and old are looking to snap up any available apartments even as prices start to rise in tandem with the growing “it” factor. The neighborhood, whose name means “beehive” in Greek, was considered the countryside before 1834, but when Athens became the country’s capital, the area slowly urbanized, especially after the neighborhood’s main pedestrian street, Fokionos Negri, was built over a stream. But after World War II, as Greeks flooded into the city, construction in the area ramped up to accommodate interested buyers, and today, Kypseli remains a densely populated area - supposedly one of the most populated in all of Europe.

Tokyo

Ura Sablon: Noodle Chalet

Ramen joints are often easily recognizable, either by large windows illuminating slurping customers, a vending machine dispensing meal tickets at the doorway, or the brightly lit signs; usually it’s some combination of the three. When it comes to Ura Sablon, however, one might easily pass it by. The narrow entrance is tucked away between a storage locker and an air conditioning unit; a small notice, illegible unless up close, is attached to a traffic cone; and the paper lantern reading “tsukemen” – a kind of dipping noodles – could easily have ended up there by chance.

Lisbon

Acarajé da Carol: Burger of Bahia

It’s a bit of culinary magic. Plain old black-eyed peas are transformed into a fluffy white cloud, before somehow changing once again, this time into a crimson, crispy fritter. This is acarajé, and as a dish with origins in Bahia, the homeland of Afro-Brazilian spirituality, other types of magic can also play a role. In Lisbon, you can witness the results of this transformation at Acarajé da Carol. “There are other people [in Portugal] making acarajé, but they’re not from Bahia!” the eponymous owner – full name Carol Alves de Brito – tells us. Bahia, Carol’s homeland, is the region of Brazil with the strongest links to Africa. Salvador, the state’s capital, was once a major destination in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and today it’s the largest Black city outside of Africa.

Athens

Ta Stachia: Late Night Pies

Pies, sweet and savory, constitute a massive chapter of traditional Greek cuisine, and are also a timeless popular street food all across the nation. Most classic Greek pie shops tend to open early in the morning, as pies are popular for breakfast, and close in the afternoon, usually after they have sold out for the day. That’s why Ta Stachia, a small shop in Exarchia, stands out – an after-hours pie shop, it runs steadily throughout the night, not only feeding all the pub crawlers and nighthawks, but also staying open until about noon for the early birds who walk their dogs or set off for work or school.

Queens

Arya Cafe: Tibetan Tranquility On a Busy Boulevard

Queens Boulevard, a major thoroughfare that cuts through the heart of the borough, accommodates many lanes of automobiles traveling to and from Manhattan. Some eateries that flank it seem geared for auto traffic, too: One stretch of roadway, in Elmhurst, sports a classic diner, an Argentine steakhouse and a fast-food restaurant marked by golden arches. Driving by, or even walking by, we might easily miss a corner business that looks out on those other eateries. From outside, on a sunny day, the storefront seems more like a mirror than a window; modest signage marks the doors. Opening them, we enter Arya Cafe and leave behind the glare of the sun and the honking hustle and bustle of passing cars, trucks and buses for the murmur of conversation, mostly in Tibetan.

Tbilisi

Tartan: Take-Out Wizards

You are motionless, stuck in a traffic jam after a long day at work while your stomach growls. You know the rest of the family will be hungry when you get home and that the fridge is empty and sad. Shopping and cooking is out of the question, so you turn onto a Vera side street, zig-zag through one-way lanes to Tatishvili Street, double park, and run into a tiny gastronomic oasis that has been saving lives like yours for nearly a decade. Its name is Tartan. Located in a step-down ground-floor apartment, takeout cafeterias don’t get homier than this. The front room is taken up with a long counter of refrigerated display cases half filled with enough ready-made dishes to lay down a feast when you get home.

Los Angeles

Banana Leaf: South India Express

Perusing the menus of most Indian restaurants in Los Angeles, one may forget that India is the seventh-largest country in the world, with over 30 states and union territories. A limited handful of the same recipes – chicken tikka masala, tandoori, naan – repeat themselves time and time again. These are the dishes most commonly found on Indian restaurants’ menus across the U.S., including Los Angeles, and they all hail from North India. Sridhar Sambangi is looking to change this at Banana Leaf, which serves regional specialties from South India. Sambangi spent more than 30 years working in technology startups, which included a cloud-based food ordering service for restaurants. Food has always been his passion, though, and he finally took the leap to start his own restaurant with Banana Leaf.

Lisbon

CB on the Road: Stone Soup in Almeirim

It’s an early example of guilt tripping. The story goes that a monk arrived in a Portuguese village, hungry and clever. He grabbed a rock and carried it door to door, claiming that it was his only ingredient, asking people if they would be kind enough to supplement it so he could make a meal. Tugging on heartstrings in this manner, he was able to accumulate a pot, a potato, some beans, a bit of sausage and some salt-preserved pork and seasonings – a hodgepodge of ingredients that, along with that crucial stone, he united as soup. Thus, goes the story, sopa de pedra, “stone soup,” was born. Hélia Costa, a restaurateur in Almeirim, an hour north of Lisbon, tells a much more practical origin story for the dish’s unique name.

Marseille

Ekume: Panama meets Provence

Écume is French for sea foam. Modifying one letter, Ekume is also the Saint Victor neighborhood’s new restaurant gastronomique that summons (and is summoned by) the Mediterranean every day. Located near the end of Rue Sainte in Marseille, Ekume’s neighborhood includes a promontory with thrilling views of the waters, boats, coastline and the Vieux Port. The restaurant is also one block away from the 5th-century Saint Victor Abbey, with its evocative beauty and occasional evening concerts. At first glance, Ekume, with its staid and comfortable décor in tan, beige, and slate blue, seems to correspond to the many bougie restaurants cropping up in the 7th and 8th arrondissements in recent years. The experience of dining at Ekume, however, offers the opportunity to contemplate how space itself can transform with imaginative cuisine, accents, personality, and hospitality.

New Orleans

Beignets & More: Strip Mall Vietnamese Oasis

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.

Los Angeles

First Stop: Javier Cabral’s L.A.

Editor’s note: In the latest installment of our recurring First Stop feature, we asked Javier Cabral, the Long Beach-based Editor in Chief of L.A. TACO, where his go-to spots are in L.A.’s last-standing working-class beachside community. He is the former restaurant scout for Jonathan Gold, the Associate Producer of the Taco Chronicles series on Netflix, and the author of “Oaxaca: Home Cooking From the Heart of Mexico” and “Asada: The Art of Mexican-Style Grilling.” Javier has been having the time of his life tasting through all of the Cambodian, Laotian, Thai, and Vietnamese noodles in Cambodia Town and Little Saigon in Westminster. Follow him and L.A. TACO on Instagram. Confession time: Moving to Long Beach straight-up reinvigorated my passion for eating out in my home city. Mainly because living in the middle of L.A.’s Cambodia Town and its universe of dank noodles, beef sticks, and mango salads is a hell of a lot more exhilarating than the wave of post-gentrification restaurants that have opened in Highland Park in the last decade.

Palermo

El Bocadillo: Street Food Philosopher

Venture inside the Ballarò market – a lively and historic city market in Palermo’s Albergheria district – and you will find yourself catapulted into a sensory experience: the colors of the fruits and vegetables, the smoke from the grills clouding the alleys, the smell of spices mingling with the smell of survival. And then the voices: they all shout here. Or rather: they “abbannìano.” “Abbanniari” is the ancient custom of Palermo street vendors to sing out their goods to attract customers’ attention. Derived from the times and from a world in which marketing studies and advertising techniques had not yet arrived, in which even noticeable signage was a quantum leap that not all merchants could afford, the abbanniata was the democratic and free tool available to street vendors, because all they needed was their own voice.

Istanbul

Ali Dayı'nın Yeri: Peripheral Chickpeas

Istanbul's western suburb of Küçükçekmece is flanked by a small lake of the same name, the water of which flows from a river in the north and out into the Marmara Sea in the opposite direction. The coastline of the lake is just steps away from a train that stops at the foot of the Cennet neighborhood, where a hillside of ramshackle, single-story houses with gardens look out over the water. At the top of the hill, the neighborhood takes on a more modern character with six-story apartments and a bustling pedestrian avenue packed with cafes and restaurants.

Lisbon

Farewell Senhor António: Remembering a Lifetime of Kindness

Senhor António, the keeper of one of the oldest grocery shops in Lisbon, Mercearia Celta, died two weeks ago. With his passing, Culinary Backstreets Lisbon lost a dear friend and the city lost a living link to what is an increasingly disappearing past. “That’s life.” This phrase would end most of our conversations and visits to his tidy, old grocery shop. António da Fonseca, or Sr. António, as we knew him, was the most beloved inhabitant of the Campo de Ourique neighborhood and his corner shop a true neighborhood institution. He regularly welcomed guests on our Lisbon Awakens tour with never-ending enthusiasm and would be, for most visitors, the highlight of their walk.

Tokyo

Spring Gone Wild: Tokyo Sansai

One of the great joys of spring in Japan is anticipating the appearance of sansai, or mountain vegetables. When cherry blossoms begin to flutter on warming breezes, hikers take to the hills to forage for the first wild edibles. Supermarkets mount special displays of packaged (and unfortunately often hot-house-raised) young sprouted leaves, shoots and tubers. Restaurants proudly offer up special seasonal dishes, providing an opportunity to bring the freshness of the outdoors to the table, even in the inner city. A bounty of deliciousness awaits those fortunate enough to get out of Tokyo and roam the hills. Fukinoto, taranome and warabi form a trifecta of green vegetables gleaned from mountain walks. Cooks wait all year to prepare dishes of these fragrant yasai veggies.

New Orleans

Bunny Young's Crawbabies LLC: Creole, Delivered

Bunny Young, clad in a bright red chef’s coat and matching hat, stands in the galley kitchen of her New Orleans East home slowly stirring a pot of butter beans. She has done this thousands of times, but each time is a prayer offered to her ancestors, the generations of New Orleans 7th Ward Creole women who guided Young in the kitchen. Young is not for the faint of heart. Her bold flavors, bold personality and bold sartorial choices are reminiscent of Leah Chase, another legendary Creole chef. Young has a lot on her mind at all times, and she isn’t afraid to tell you, either. But these days, she lets her food do most of the talking, and it, too, has a lot to say.

Istanbul

Rebuilding, Bite by Bite: Historic Antakya After the Earthquake

In the main hall of Antakya’s bus station terminal, there are deep cracks in the walls, rubble litters the floor and dozens of ceiling panels seem to hang on by a thread, the entire thing threatening to collapse at any moment. Bus companies have set up mobile desks outside of the station, and it is from one of these where I buy my evening ticket back to the city of Adana, about four hours to the west by bus. Even though I've just arrived, I already have to plan my exit because there isn't really anywhere left in Antakya to stay the night. Like most structures in the city, the terminal was damaged in February's massive earthquake, the worst of its kind in modern Turkish history.

Barcelona

La Sosenga: Modern Medieval

“It is a recipe similar to a meat stew that originally was made with game or fish. We do it with beef cheek – a very traditional ingredient now in Catalunya, but which in those days was not so frequently used. It goes with several herbs and spices like parsley, thyme and marjoram, plus cinnamon and clove, all cooked with lard and honey from the Sierra de Cádiz, made by Tania’s family.” This, in words of the chef Marc Pérez, is a Sosenga, a medieval dish and the name of the restaurant he recently opened in the Gótic neighborhood with his partner in life and work, Tania Doblas.

Tbilisi

Spring in Tbilisi: Tarragon, a Love Story

At the cusp of winter’s end, men across Georgia balance on wobbly ladders and trim their grapevines. The clippings will be used later for baking bread in traditional tone ovens and for roasting mtsvadi, skewered chunks of pork, on the embers. Only after the trimming is completed throughout the land is springtime allowed to arrive. And when it comes, it does so in teasing bursts of bold flavors, juicy colors and luscious aromas. The first indication of spring is the arrival of tarkhuna – tarragon – at the central bazaar, where we love to shop for produce.

Marseille

Caterine: The Quaint Canteen

Rue Fontange is a narrow street with small, inspired businesses that seem to complement one another. The vitrine of Vinyl is lavishly covered in white-marker script, through which we can still see wine, records, and meals by Oumalala (now serving here); across the street is Gallery Charivari, which when we visited was featuring Syrian artist Khaled Dawwa’s astonishing sculptures from his Compressés series, different takes on a heavy man slouching into a chair; further along lies the fine book selection of Histoire de l’oeil, with its garden and cabanon out back, a small red shed we can also see if we walk straight through Caterine restaurant next door to its dining patio, which feels like a continuum of the same garden.

Palermo

Bottega Monteleone: Perfect Pairing

Let’s face it, it’s hard to find a calm spot in Palermo’s city center. Some evenings, one simply wants to exchange the honking of cars for the uncorking of wine bottles, hidden away from the splendid excess the city has to offer. Such an escape exists at Bottega Monteleone, located on a small, quaint pedestrian walkway, which bears the same name as the wine bar. In this tiny bottega, you’ll be treated to an abundance of wines and Sicilian specialties, as well as the hospitality of the bar’s owners, Katharina and Angelo. The Bottega pays homage to the different geographical origins of the owners. Its appearance is unmistakably Palermitan but its history is reminiscent of an old factory (in this case actually a garage) turned into a chic bar – typical of the former East Germany, where Katharina grew up and studied.

Los Angeles

The Perfect Spring Day: Los Angeles

Los Angeles winter is typically mild, sunny and dry (notwithstanding this past winter), so here it isn’t the warmer weather we await for every spring. Still, for a multitude of reasons, spring is a season many Angelenos celebrate. For me, spring signals the arrival of wildflowers and the beginning of spot prawn season, two uniquely Californian events that I anticipate each year. As California’s official state flower, the poppy flowers in Antelope Valley are the most popular wildflowers, but the poppy reserve tends to be way too crowded – especially on superbloom years. I like to head to Malibu instead for my wildflowers. The drive north along the ocean on Pacific Coast Highway is one of the most beautiful in L.A. – we could even already see some wildflowers along the way.

Marseille

The Perfect Spring Day: Adventure, Architecture and Apéro in Marseille

Across Marseille, winter’s neon-yellow mimosas have given way to amandiers’ (almond trees’) fragrant white and pink blooms. Here, the French adage, “en avril, ne te découvre pas d'un fil. En mai fais ce qu'il te plaît,” (in April, don't remove a stitch. In May, do as you wish,”) is oft quipped, for our springtime weather can be fickle. Last weekend, I took a dip in the Mediterranean to cool off after a sun-soaked, 70-degree hike; as I write this, the local mistral wind has iced down the air temperature to just above freezing. Despite spring’s yo-yoing thermometer, ‘tis the season for Marseillais to fill up outdoor patios.

Tokyo

The Perfect Spring Day: Food, Flowers and Fun in Tokyo

It snowed in Tokyo on March 22 – a wet, rain-like snow that puddled as soon as it touched the ground, but snow nonetheless. It was un-springlike as the week before was sunny. Early spring is sly and tricky here. One moment the kawazu-zakura have blanketed trees in pink popcorn blooms, the next moment it’s cloudy skies and planning hotpot dinners all over again. But it is glorious when temperatures aren’t whipsawing wildly from hot to freezing, when spring finally deigns to show up in the form of balmy, blue-skied days and flowers blooming everywhere. Spring days like this are beautiful for cycling in Tokyo. Fresh air, warm sun and, best of all, no freezing fingers and ears when you’re on a bike.

Naples

The Perfect Spring Day: Naples

Spring in Naples is the sweetest season. As in many Italian and Mediterranean cities, the sunlight is gentle and temperatures are mild, which makes walking the ups and downs of the hilly city more enjoyable. And, should the blue of the sky be shaded by the clouds, the white-and-blue celebratory flags which anticipate the long-awaited local soccer team’s victory at the national soccer championship – defeating the Neapolitans’ famous superstition – restore the appropriate shade at every corner of the city. If it’s still too early – for most of people, at least – to take a swim in the gulf or cruise it on a kayak, this is the perfect time to explore Naples on foot, discovering its unexpected green soul.

Porto

The Perfect Spring Day: Porto

In the song that became almost an anthem of Porto, the famous songwriter Rui Veloso describes the city where he was born in phrases like “of this beautiful and darkening light” and “seeing you abandoned like that in that brownish timbre.” Certainly, Veloso, one of the best-known artists in Portuguese music, wasn’t thinking about Porto during the springtime. Portugal’s second city is completely transformed when the season of flowers arrives: the weather and the mood gets sunny, lively, and colorful, an invitation for locals and tourists to go outdoors. Flowers bloom in parks, and tables in cafes and bars are crowded with people. It is the prelude of the effervescent life of the city taking shape. The portuenses (as the locals are called) know how to enjoy the city when the temperatures get warmer and the days get longer.

Queens

Sami’s Kabab House: Afghan in Astoria

Almost before we’d sat down, tea and rice pudding had arrived at our table. “This is the way I was raised,” Sami Zaman explained. We’d arranged a time to speak with him at his namesake Afghan restaurant in Astoria, Sami’s Kabab House, and we’d quickly discovered that refreshments were an essential prelude to our conversation. Sami is always “working, working, working,” he tells us, but during our visit he also had a smile and a greeting for everyone who stepped into his kabab house. Between spoonfuls of pudding, we asked about the roots of his hospitality.

Naples

Bop Dumpling: Secret Street Snack

Luca Affatato opens the unmarked single shutter on via Battistello Caracciolo – a charmless street linking the Avvocata and Arenella hill boroughs, at a few steps from the Salvator Rosa Metro Art Station – most days at 7 p.m. If he doesn’t, it’s for two possible reasons: either he’s busy at a popup event at some other Neapolitan venue, or he has run out of his one-and-only dish – Asian-style dumplings – and needs time to make new ones. In any case, he warns his faithful patrons on Bop Dumpling’s Instagram feed, which is pretty much the only way to be updated about opening times, menus, events and a bit of Affatato’s private life, unless you have his mobile number – which many customers do.

Athens

CB Book Club: Carolina Doriti’s “Salt of the Earth”

Editor’s note: Longtime CB contributor Carolina Doriti was born in Athens, where she grew up in a family with a long culinary tradition. Having studied arts management, she pursued a career as a curator but quickly set her museum work aside to follow her true passion: cooking! Since then, along with her work as CB’s Athens bureau chief, Carolina has been working as a chef, restaurant consultant and food stylist. She is also the Culinary Producer of My Greek Table, a TV series on Greek gastronomy, broadcast on PBS across the US. She has appeared on various cooking shows on Greek and Spanish TV and gives cooking classes and workshops in Athens. Salt of the Earth is her first cookbook.

Marseille

L’Après M: Fast Social Food

At a booth bathed in the winter sun, a group of coworkers happily munch burgers and frites. Behind them, a toddler claps with glee as his mom hands him a meal in a colorful box. Two teens bypass the counter to punch in their order at the giant phone-like kiosk. Customers in cars wait in line at the drive-thru. Despite all these trappings of a fast-food joint, and the Golden Arches on the sign outside, this is no McDonald’s. Even if it was born from one. L'Après M is a fast-food restaurant, professional integration project, food bank, and community center, all rolled into one unique spot. Its name (the M stands for “McDonald’s”) refers to its previous tenant.

Oaxaca

Pochote Reforma: Oaxaca Organic

Whether they’re residents of or visitors to Oaxaca City, those who find themselves craving a deep bowl of caldo de res (beef soup), a foamy chocolate atole (a warm, sweetened corn and cacao drink), or simply a bit of chisme – gossip – can find all three at the Pochote Reforma. A weekly organic market uniting growers and vendors that hail from nearby towns such as Macuilxochitl, San Miguel del Valle, and Tanetze de Zaragoza, “el Pochote,” as it’s known locally, is one of Oaxaca’s most down-to-earth markets, offering visitors not only fresh and organically raised fruits and vegetables, but also a sense of community that has kept shoppers coming back after 20 years and five location changes.

Naples

Pastiera: The Neapolitan Easter Legend

Like the Proustian madeleine, sweets can stir up all kinds of feelings in the minds of those who eat them. In Naples, struffoli (small, round doughnuts glazed with honey) and cassata (sponge cake with ricotta and candied fruit) speak of Christmas, while chiacchiere (sugar-dusted fritters) and sanguinaccio (literally “blood pudding,” but actually made of chocolate) bring to mind Carnevale. And then there’s pastiera, whose very scent and taste make us think of Easter and spring. These days, pastiera can be made all year long, not only when the wheat has just sprouted, as was the case for our ancestors. Yet, when Easter approaches, all Neapolitans dream of this tart.

Marseille

Sassoun: Armenian To Go

Marseille is home to the biggest Armenian community in Europe, with cultural centers, churches, and several neighborhoods with a significant Armenian presence. Most fled the Armenian genocide of 1915-1922, joining a smaller and older Armenian community of merchants that settled in Marseille starting in the mid-nineteenth-century. The different waves of Armenian immigrants and refugees, coming to some 80,000 people, maintain ties to Armenia, family, and culinary traditions, and many eventually thrived. Armenian cuisine is rich and varied, and yet what is available in Marseille’s city center in terms of actual restaurants and takeout doesn’t reflect that. Because Armenian cuisine is a home cuisine, it is often in private houses that we enjoy the traditional dishes like kabab karaz, meatballs in sour cherry sauce, or manti, clusters of small, open raviolis of spiced meat.