A customer loads up a tray of traditional Mexican “Pan Dulce” at Pasteleria Ideal, a classic bakery in the heart of Mexico City’s Centro Historico.

We had heard about Kiwi Vegan Café even before a dozen thuggish carnivores raided the little vegan restaurant in 2016, munching grilled meat, smoking cigarettes, throwing sausages and fish at customers and starting a brawl that spilled out onto the street. The incident grabbed international headlines, setting the café as a battleground of Western liberalism versus Georgian nationalist extremism. Indeed, many Georgians fear their identity is threatened by “non-traditional” values, such as homosexuality, non-Orthodox religions and electronic music culture. In a land that boasts of its longstanding virtue of tolerance we are seeing a rise in neo-fascist groups and xenophobia.

The vast country of China has just one time zone, so Shanghai’s East Coast location means darkness comes early and most residents usually eat by nightfall, with restaurants often closing their kitchens around 9 p.m. But for those who keep late hours, there are a few late night supper spots around town. Aggressive government crackdowns on hawker stalls have driven many of the late night street vendors indoors, and our top five list goes beyond these roving vendors to feature a mix of restaurants that stay open late and small family-run gems that cater exclusively to the night-owl crowd.

The story of how Queens transformed into a microcosm of the world’s cuisines is just as fascinating and important as those of the cuisines’ creators. The borough is one of the most diverse places on the planet, with over 120 countries represented and 135 languages officially spoken in the public school system. The cause? The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. From the Colonial period to the early 20th century, immigrants to the U.S. were mainly northern Europeans. Soon after the Immigration Act of 1924 passed, a national origins quota system dictated migration patterns. The Act allowed unlimited northern European entry, limited southern Europeans with quotas and excluded Asians, Africans, Hawaiians, Puerto Ricans and Alaskans.

Spicy rabbit’s head is the ultimate bar snack in Sichuan province. The demand for rabbit’s head is so high in Chengdu that 20 percent are imported from Europe (mostly France and Italy). We crack open rabbit’s head (the cheek and the brain are the best meat) and pair it with a frosty bottle of Snow Pijiu beer on our Shanghai night eats walk.

Cumhuriyet Avenue bridges the central Istanbul districts of Beyoğlu and Şişli, and is flanked on its eastern side by a number of large complexes including the city’s expansive Military Museum, the iconic Hilton and Divan Hotels, a towering officer’s club, and a public theater and convention center. In contrast, its western strip consists of a lengthy row of multistory apartment buildings, mostly modern but with a few gems from the turn of the century, housing tourism agencies and foreign consulates. Behind these lie the Harbiye quarter, home to a collection of smaller, charming historic buildings, most of which have seen much better days. It is a generally safe area if a bit seedy, with a number of questionable nightclubs on basement floors.

Cal Pep is a name you’ll find across Barcelona, but it takes on a different meaning depending on which neighborhood you’re in. In Gràcia, the name Cal Pep is synonymous with an old bar-bodega, dedicated almost entirely to the business of drinking (Carrer de Verdi, 141). The Cal Pep in Born is a famous seafood restaurant in Born (Plaça de les Olles, 8), with lines snaking out the door. In Sants, Cal Pep is affixed to a charismatic bodegueta (small bodega). Narrow, long and dimly lit, this particular Cal Pep has the atmosphere of a wine temple – including wooden casks and a vintage fridge – that has been frozen in time, with most of the original decorations from 1927 still intact.

A fish vendor on our Born on the Bosphorus walk splashes water on his wares to keep them looking fresh. The neighborhoods that line the strait are all connected by the waterway but each is a world unto itself, like this multicultural fishing village.

Surely Plateia Viktorias is one of the last places you’d look if you wanted to find a typical seaside taverna. The square, once a meeting place for Patission Avenue’s haute bourgeoisie in the first half of the 20th century, was filled with refugee tents and sleeping bags just a few years ago. Today it still boasts the city’s largest concentration of refugee help centers, and women with head scarves push prams through it, while Syrian and Afghan lads lounge on its ledges playing with their cell phones. We first noticed the eatery, at the very end of a two-block pedestrianized street called Hope (Elpidos), while on our way to lunch at the Victoria Art Project, an initiative born during last summer’s Documenta 14 art festival to foster creativity in the neighborhood.

Several thousand years ago, or so the story goes in Naples, Lucifer and Jesus had a massive showdown in the rarified kingdom of heaven. After a raging session fueled by sibling rivalries, and which likely included satanic petulance and the occasional errant lightening bolt, God, as any parent of battling children can grasp, had had enough of the celestial brawling. One can almost imagine Jesus yelping, “He started it,” as Lucifer tosses a fireball in his direction. So God cast Lucifer into the depths of hell – consigning him to an eternity of fire, brimstone and heat. (In the original pagan legend, this quarrel was between Bacchus and Pluto; after Christianity swept across the region, Neapolitans changed the names of the main characters, but the story remained the same.)

Japanese cuisine is often the art of quiet subtlety, and to that end, salt is one of its greatest supporters. The freshest of fish can be highlighted with a splash of the correct salt; cold sake drunk from fragrant cedar vessels is well enhanced with salt on the rim; and even tempura is frequently not dunked in sauce but instead sprinkled with salt by serious connoisseurs of fried delicacies. Salt plays a very significant role in Japanese culture and religion. It is a sign of purification. Thus most sushi restaurants mound salt on both sides of the entrance to show the place is clean and pure. Sumo wrestlers will throw salt into the ring before a match. Japanese people frequently throw salt over the entrance to their homes to purify their households. We’ve even seen people with packets of salt in their car.

The diverse bay of the Sado River estuary, with its old port towns, cork oak groves, ancient rice fields, beaches and wildlife, is only around 45 minutes south of Lisbon, but feels a million miles away from the Portuguese capital. The history of this region – which includes the slightly gritty main city of Setúbal – goes back to Roman times, and it has had a strong connection to the ocean ever since. Fish salting has been key to Setúbal’s economy from the first century onwards, with port activities developing in the 15th century and later more industrial development, particularly fish canning, in the 19th century.

Georgia’s winemaking tradition has been making headlines since scientists announced, after 8,000-year-old jars bearing images of grape clusters and a man dancing were excavated in a dig south of Tbilisi, that the country is home to the world’s oldest wine. But long before this discovery was made public, filmmaker Emily Railsback and award-winning sommelier Jeremy Quinn were traversing Georgia to research the rebirth of these ancient winemaking traditions, which were almost lost during the period of Soviet rule. Railsback chronicled their deep dive into the world of family vintners and grape sleuths in the documentary Our Blood Is Wine, an official selection of the 2018 Berlinale International Film Festival.

Naples has a lot of iconic eateries and shops, but one of the lesser-known city icons is the kiosk of the fresh-water-seller. Scattered throughout the city, the banks of the acquafrescai – some of which are very famous – sell various mineral waters and refreshments. These kiosks were born to provide relief in the summer months, and for that reason they are widespread in other southern Italian cities, particularly in the Sicilian cities of Palermo, Catania and Syracuse, where the coolness of a granita, a semi-frozen dessert made from sugar, water and various flavorings, counters the oppressive heat.

On our Tbilisi Market walk we stumbled – literally – upon the biggest catfish we’ve ever seen. The fishmonger said it was caught in Poti, on the Black Sea shore, likely from the Rioni River.