Each morning, 82-year-old Giorgos Chatziparaschos’s bicycle pedals clank and echo down the cobblestone streets of the Venetian-era port city Rethymnon, on the island of Crete. For almost 60 years, he’s parked his bike in front of a 17th-century building where a simple hand-painted sign reveals his family name and his family business. By eight o’clock he has donned his apron and hat, and with the steely determination that underlies his work ethic, he begins to roll out the dough. Chatziparaschos is one of the only pastry makers in Greece specializing in handmade kataifi. The traditional phyllo pastry looks like shredded wheat, with strands as thin as vermicelli.

[Editor's note: We're sorry to report that Harbin Dumplings has closed.] Walk along just about any street in Shanghai these days, and you’ll see an ever-encroaching range of Western brands, standardized brand signage and food franchises. As in other rapidly developing countries, the battle for consumer dollars and brand loyalty has meant more chains and mass-produced food. That’s partly what makes stepping into one of the several Liu Family Harbin Dumplings shops a breath of fresh air. Every morning until the lunch rush, the dining room and back rooms are set up with trays and workers dexterously making every dumpling from start to finish. Dumpling wrappers are meticulously hand-rolled, the fillings are mixed in large batches, and the time-consuming process of filling and closing the dumplings marches on until tray upon tray is ready for boiling.

Fonda El Refugio is a name that you will likely come across when looking at guides to Mexico City. The small restaurant in Zona Rosa, a popular tourist destination, has been serving authentic Mexican food for more than 57 years. Politicians, artists, writers and all kinds of celebrities have dined here over all those decades. Renowned writer Octavio Paz chose this restaurant’s food for his banquet with the Mexican president after receiving the Nobel Prize in literature in 1990. However, in recent years the quality of the food took a turn for the worse, and this iconic restaurant’s reputation took a major hit.

At the corner of Psaron and Salaminos streets, in a quiet neighborhood of Piraeus, there’s a place that looks straight out of a 1960s Greek black-and-white movie. Its name, eidikon, means “special,” and it’s the last of its kind: a bakalotaverna, or grocery store and eatery, all in one. The shop opened in 1920, when the three Papakonstantinou brothers from Gardiki, an impoverished village near Trikala in central Greece, came to Athens in search of better prospects. The building was the tallest in the area. It had large windows, and in good weather, one could even see the sea on the horizon.

This man works the pelts at a han in Mahmutpaşa, alongside the route of our culinary walk in the Bazaar area, a hotspot and last refuge for many craftsmen.

“Can you eat spice?” the waitress asked after taking our order. Her hand hovered hesitantly over the cash register. “Yes,” we replied. “But... Can you?” she asked again, looking to the other waitresses for help. “Yes!” we responded emphatically, trying to vocally convey our love of the tongue-tingling, lip-burning action we had come for. “Umm... These are Chongqing noodles. They are really spicy,” she said with her hand still in a no-man’s-land somewhere between our money and the cash register, unsure whether our foreign palate had what it took to slurp down a bowl of noodles from China’s spiciest city.

The 2010 makeover of Tbilisi’s old town broke the hearts of many locals and preservationists, who lamented the destruction of the neighborhood’s original 19th-century buildings and the fabrication of their cinder block replicas. The quarter hadn’t seen destruction on such a scale since the Persian ruler Agha Mohammad Khan razed the city in 1795. Instead of bemoaning the architectural tragedy, one local artist seized the opportunity to inject some positive vibrations into the precipitous hillside district by purchasing a small house underneath the 16th-century walls of the Narikala Fortress and turning it into one of Tbilisi’s coolest cafe-restaurants. Getting there, however, requires a bit of cardiovascular effort.

Despite the 1970s-era sign outside that says Granja (farm) and the red letters spelling “Bar” inside, you can’t really tell what this place is until you open the menu: a temple of “neighborhood haute-cuisine.” The food at Granja Elena sounds simple but tastes rich and complex. The restaurant is a family business, now run by the third generation – Borja, Patricia and Guillermo Sierra Calvo – in the same barrio in which it was founded in 1974, La Marina del Port. This modern neighborhood is part residential and part industrial, a bit far from Barcelona’s center, located near the merchant port behind Montjuic and on the way to the airport.

Urfa's old city is an invigorating array of tones and sounds. Dominated by an intriguing maze of narrow streets, the buildings all share the same sun-baked sandy hue, suggesting that they rose up from the earth on their own centuries ago. Landscape and cityscape blend into one here, and cars are outnumbered by ornately painted motorbikes equipped with sidecars, vehicles perfectly equipped to navigate roads too narrow for vans and sedans. Older men don poşu scarves of varying color combinations, and Arabic is spoken more frequently than Turkish. Believed by locals to be the birthplace of Abraham, Urfa is known as the “City of Prophets.” The municipality proudly advertises this fact.

Urfa's old city is an invigorating array of tones and sounds. Dominated by an intriguing maze of narrow streets, the buildings all share the same sun-baked sandy hue, suggesting that they rose up from the earth on their own centuries ago. Landscape and cityscape blend into one here, and cars are outnumbered by ornately painted motorbikes equipped with sidecars, vehicles perfectly equipped to navigate roads too narrow for vans and sedans. Older men don poşu scarves of varying color combinations, and Arabic is spoken more frequently than Turkish. Believed by locals to be the birthplace of Abraham, Urfa is known as the “City of Prophets.” The municipality proudly advertises this fact.

It's "vermouth hour" in Barcelona, one of our favorites times of day and an integral part of our Bodega: Barcelona Barrio Tradition, in Bulk walk.

There are times when food is just so profoundly, soul-satisfyingly good that we find it difficult to divert our attention enough to do the socializing often required when eating out with company. The folks who devised Ichiran Ramen must have taken that into account when they set up shop. Their concept is to offer complete personal space so that customers can give their undivided attention to the Hakata-style ramen served there. Imagine being encouraged to loudly suck up your ramen in the privacy of your own personal counter “booth.” Nobody really knows or cares who’s there, and whatever slurping happens there stays there.

In summer, there are just a couple of things that lisboetas will queue for: the beach and ice cream. The city is blessed with good places for both, but between the two, we prefer the latter, which in Lisbon tends to be Italian-style gelato, as served in the most long-lived and successful shops in town. Tucked away in a corner of Restauradores, A Veneziana still has the same façade and is run by the same family as when it opened in 1936. The shop is small, with a big esplanada, or terrace, on which customers can sit and enjoy their treats.

Just a block away from Mexico City’s financial district one unlikely food star sets up shop every morning. From Monday to Saturday, at La Abuela, 72-year-old Arnulfo Serafin Hernandéz feeds hungry office workers, commuters, neighbors, school kids, government officials and tourists from all over the world with one of the simplest Mexican dishes: tacos de canasta. He fries a corn tortilla a little in lard or oil, fills it with one of the prepared ingredients, folds it in half and places it carefully inside a canasta, or basket. He wraps the tacos in cloth and covers them with plastic to keep them warm. This also makes them moist and soft when serving, two of the most important characteristics of a good taco de canasta.

As one approaches the port of Ermoupolis (named after Hermes, the god of commerce), the main town of the island of Syros and capital of the Cyclades, one cannot help but marvel at its beauty and grandeur. Imposing public buildings and private mansions, marble-paved streets, a large Italian-style piazza and numerous churches make the city one of the best preserved examples of 19th-century architecture in Greece. This should not come as a surprise: in the aftermath of the 1821 Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire, Syros developed into an important commercial, cultural and industrial center, as refugees from Asia Minor, Chios, Crete and other areas found a safe haven from the war on the small island.