New to the city, migrants turn to making and selling low-overhead-cost street foods. The daily street fare is as diverse as the individuals serving it and varies from season to season.

Set up along Bucareli, just south of Reforma – two of the city center’s core arteries – only after dark, there is a steady huddle that gathers under a yellow tarp around steam and light bulbs.

here’s a lot of talk about revolution in Greece these days. We have a new left-wing government that promises to shake up the establishment both here and abroad, cutting costs by drastically reducing ministerial perks like private guards and official automobiles, reinstating lost jobs and shorn pensions, upping the minimum wage … and seeking alternative ways of handling Greek debt. Our young PM and some of his closest associates are even flouting officialdom’s time-honored dress code by speaking in parliament, Brussels and Bonn without ties and with flapping shirttails.

On one of Shanghai’s busiest shopping streets, amidst the glittering Tiffany & Co, Piaget and Apple stores, Guang Ming Cun is housed in a nondescript four-story building. Glass displays in front offer a glimpse of the braised and dried meats for sale, and around the side you can peek in to watch flaky meat pastries being flipped in a flat wok. But it’s the long lines of middle-aged shoppers patiently waiting outside the building that make Guang Ming Cun unmistakable. During Chinese New Year and Mid-Autumn Festival, these lines can reach up to five hours long.

There’s a funny feeling you get in Mexico City when you come back to a neighborhood you both remember and forget. Food here gets that way, too. “You know that one quesadilla joint, that one time, with the good salsa.”

Turkey has a rich dairying tradition, beginning thousands of years ago with nomadic tribes herding goats through the Anatolian steppes. Although Turkey is full of good cheeses that are breakfast staples, these cheeses do not have the range of flavors and textures that, say, the French have with their cheese cornucopia. Three young sheep farmers and cheese makers near the Aegean coastal town of Edremit are changing that.

Every Tuesday and Friday, Maybachufer Strasse, a pretty, tree-lined street running alongside the Landwehrkanal (Landwehr Canal) in Berlin’s Neukölln neighborhood, comes alive with the hustle and bustle of the city’s biggest Turkish market, the Türkenmarkt.

For Carnival in Rio, new blocos, or free street parties, are born every year when creative friends put their heads together to dream up a theme and a combination of musicians that will tempt partygoers for a magical few hours. New blocos publicize and build momentum via open “rehearsals” in the weeks leading up to Carnival that are parties in and of themselves. If these rehearsals bombar (explode with excellence), word spreads fast, and the bloco comes roaring to life during Carnival and for years to come.

As the moon starts to wane each January, people throughout China frantically snatch up train and bus tickets, eager to start the return journey to their hometown to celebrate the Lunar New Year (春节, chūnjié) with their family. This year, revelers will make an estimated 3.64 billion passenger trips during the festive season, up 200 million from the previous year. One of the major draws for migrant workers heading home is the chance to eat traditional, home-cooked meals.

Editor’s note: We regret to report that Can Manel has closed. We don’t mind winter in Catalonia because it means the return of calçots, our beloved spring onions, and calçotadas, the wonderful celebrations that bring people together to eat them. While tradition usually calls for calçot eating to take place in the countryside, there are plenty of places to enjoy them in Barcelona as well. Since 2012, when Can Manel was reopened by the new owners Joel Balagué and Ana Roig, this homey eatery near the Sants train station has become a point of reference for the urban calçotada.

If stepping foot in Brazil doesn’t make your taste buds start tingling in anticipation of kibes (bulgur wheat croquettes), esfihas (thin meat and cheese pastries), tangy molho arabe and hummus, it’s because you haven’t studied up properly on the rich history of Arab migration to Brazil – and the supremely tasty gastronomical mark it’s left on this country’s snack food culture.

Dunlop is a cook and food writer specializing in Chinese cuisine. She is the author of four books, including, most recently, Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking. She has won many awards for her work, including four James Beard awards, an IACP award, four awards from the British Guild of Food Writers and an award from the Hunan government. Her writing has been published in the Financial Times, The New Yorker, The Observer and The New York Times, and she is also a frequent pundit on Chinese food on BBC radio and television, as well as many other media outlets.

Until a few years ago, breakfast eateries were not very common in Rio. Cariocas would have breakfast at home or at a bakery, while tourists had to make do with the always-boring "Continental breakfast" offered at hotels. But thankfully, everything has changed.

The story begins around 1975, when the bar La Barretina – then a hot spot, now long gone – began serving leche de pantera (“Panther Milk”). This milk-and-liquor concoction, with roots that can be traced to the Spanish Foreign Legion, was so strong that the hordes of students who flocked to this port-area alley along Barcelona’s Carrer de la Mercè would literally spill their guts nearly every night across the wide flagstones that separated the bar from its neighbors.

Shouning Lu is known as Crawfish Street, with street food vendors often stewing, grilling and frying up the same seafood dishes up and down the one-block stretch. But there’s one land-lubbing vendor that has carved out a niche for itself: Ǎizi Xiànbǐng (矮子馅饼), or Dwarf’s Pastries.