In landlocked Mexico City – the nearest coast is 250 miles away – you might think that it would be difficult to find fresh seafood. However, ever since Aztec times, the ocean’s bounty has been brought to the valley daily. Back then, the Aztec emperors got their goods using a system of relay runners that covered those hundreds of miles from sea to city per day. Things require less footwork today: technology and Mexico’s highway system allow daily deliveries of fresh seafood to the capital from the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico coasts. That said, feeding the Mexican capital’s fish craving still requires some hustle.

The era of Portugal’s seafaring might was so long ago, it seems almost like a myth – one still patriotically related by locals today. Gastronomic evidence of the country’s imperial past remains, however, particularly in Lisbon, where Angolan, Brazilian and Goan eateries can be found among the many other restaurants serving non-Portuguese food. Yet, despite Macau being under Portuguese control for around four centuries, passing into Chinese administration only in 1999, Macanese cuisine is still a mystery. Lisbon has yet to see even one Macanese restaurant open. There is a place here, however, to eat food from Macau: a cultural association in between Alvalade and Areeiro on a main road that leads to the airport, far from Lisbon’s center.

The oranges are beckoning shoppers at the farmer's market in Keramikos, central Athens. This market is a featured stop on our downtown Athens tour. Already pleasant and bustling in March at the time of this photo, imagine what it's like in May!

Rubi wanted two things for his 13th birthday: a bicycle, and to see his dad, Ahmed, again. It was the end of November, and it had been three months since his family was whole, since Ahmed left for Germany with Rashed and other colleagues from Salloura. Rubi’s days in Istanbul were a steady grind, all blending together in a dim purgatory: wake up at 6 in the morning, get to work at the shirt factory two bus rides away by 7, iron, sew, take the boss’s orders, go home 12 hours later, eat, sleep, repeat. Before Ahmed left, he had been working at the Salloura factory, learning his father’s trade.

For those interested in visiting Tashkent or Samarkand, an easier trip might involve heading to the Rego Park and Forest Hills neighborhoods of Queens, home to much of the borough’s Central Asian Jewish diaspora. The neighborhoods comprise two main thoroughfares: 63rd Avenue, which changes to 63rd Street, and 108th Street. Both roads have a range of markets, restaurants and bakeries that serve local tastes and evoke places left behind. On one recent afternoon, I walked west on 63rd Avenue, away from Queens Boulevard, passing Public School 139 Rego Park, where parents and grandparents spoke Tajik, Mandarin, Arabic, Uzbek and Russian, crowding the street as they await their children’s dismissal from school.

The triangle of Kurtuluş, Feriköy and Bomonti represents an Istanbul on the verge of fading away. Though still inhabited by significant numbers of Greeks, Jews and Armenians, there are more local churches and synagogues than are used by the remnants of those diminished communities. The numerous schools, houses of worship and cemeteries are relics testifying to the cosmopolitanism that once defined this segment of inner Istanbul. Another nostalgic quality of the area is its small-business culture, still thriving, yet on the verge of a major shift.

Carmen and Eduardo’s story could be an allegory for the rise and uh-oh moment of Brazil’s new middle class – except their tale is a real one, one that ends with a really nice savory fried pastel that’s become a midnight munchie hit with their neighbors in Rio’s iconic City of God (Cidade de Deus) favela. The pair’s life together started early; they met when Carmen, now 30, was just 12 years old; moved in together when she was 14; and both converted to evangelical Christianity and married in a church when she was 18. They came to the City of God, well-known from the book and film of the same name, looking for a more economical housing option.

The biggest döner kebap in town with Asım Usta, building his döner fresh every morning since 1973! If you come for late lunch or dinner, you're too late! Locals start to eat this around 10.30 am. Very popular in our Born on the Bosphorus walk.

How thrilling to know it’s possible to reach far back into Japan’s gastronomic past merely by visiting Azabu Juban’s Sarashina Horii Soba for a bit of “living history” in the form of a pleasantly simple meal. The Sarashina cooking lineage stretches back over 200 years and is always evident in the shimmering, high-quality plates of buckwheat noodles coming from the kitchen. In 1798, Nunoya Tahei, a Mastumoto City textile merchant famous for his soba skills, founded the Sarashina soba lineage when he was encouraged by Hosina, the local feudal lord, to open a shop making a style of soba popular in the Japanese Alps area of Nagano.

It must be one of the world’s oldest cheeses, it’s certainly one of the most famous, and it’s practically never missing from a Greek table, no matter the time of day. A person might grab a chunk of this chalk-white substance for breakfast, crunch through layers of feta-stuffed phyllo for elevenses, put a slab of it on her village salad for lunch, have it for supper along with a vegetable casserole and then pair it with watermelon for a scrumptious dessert. The only other food that a Greek may be even more addicted to is bread. If you were to guess which nation boasted the most cheese eaters on the planet, surely you would say France, home to so many delectable and sophisticated fromages.

Editor’s note: In the latest installment in our Book Club series, we spoke to Alice Feiring, author of For the Love of Wine: My Odyssey through the World’s Most Ancient Wine Culture (Potomac Books, 2016). She is the author of two other books, publishes the newsletter The Feiring Line, has written for numerous publications and has received a James Beard Award for her writing. How did this book come about? Amazingly, the Georgian government asked me for an “Alice kind of book” that they could use promotionally. It was a small, no-strings-attached, rambling essay on Georgian wine. I realized I had written a book proposal, so I developed the idea and took it from there.

Istanbul's Samatya neighborhood is home to one of the city's many sprawling weekly markets, where one can find excellent Ezine, a white cheese from a district of the same name in Çanakkale, at modest prices.

In 1654, Dutch refugees, including 23 Jews, traveling on a French ship from Brazil, arrived in North America. The refugees set foot in Peter Stuyvesant’s New Amsterdam village, now called New York. Stuyvesant did not want to accept Jews, so he imposed trade, property and tax restrictions to stifle their advancement. Most of the Jewish community consequently returned to Amsterdam or left for the Caribbean, where they could live under more hospitable conditions with relatives. When Stuyvesant ultimately ceded control of New Amsterdam to the English, the small Jewish community that had remained swore allegiance to its new rulers and began to grow.

“People know about our peas all over the world!” Marc Bertrán exclaimed as he stood, arms crossed, behind a folding table laden with jars of cooked green peas, stacks of pamphlets and a big crock of silky pea hummus with a bowl of crackers, inviting passersby to enjoy a taste of three generations’ worth of dedication. “In the 1950s,” Bertran told us proudly, “our town’s famous dish, Pèsols ofegats a l’estil de Llavaneres” – Peas stewed in the style of Llavaneres – “was featured on the menu at Maxim’s restaurant in Paris.”

The popular saying that Rio is known more for its bar culture than for its café culture has serious counter-evidence in the old city. Beginning in 1808, when Portuguese emperor Dom João fled Napoleon and relocated his imperial court to Rio, European architects, businessmen and intellectuals followed him and attempted to show that their society could thrive in a tropical land. Many stayed on after the royal family returned to Portugal in 1822, and over the course of the 19th century filled the old city’s cobblestone streets with neoclassical row houses, Baroque revival churches and a Beaux-Arts theater. Into this mix, Frenchman Charles Cavé founded a bakery in 1860 in a pink Victorian building as frosted in white trim as the pastries it purveyed.