Crete, Greece’s largest island, is among the country’s most beautiful and interesting places to visit. Well known for its amazing beaches and unforgettable cuisine, the island also has a long history of wine making, dating back more than 4,000 years. The ancient Minoan civilization was one of the first to be deeply connected with wine. Viticulture and wine making are depicted on paintings in the Minoan palace of Knossos, while ancient wine presses have been found all over the island, with the world’s oldest in Vathypetro, just a few kilometers outside Heraklion, the capital. The Minoans were the world’s best-known merchants of the time, and amphorae carrying Cretan wine have been found in digs all over the Mediterranean basin.

When you think about lettuce, if you think about it at all, it’s probably as the bland but virtuous base to a salad. But in days past in Turkey, this leafy green was just as often consumed as a snack in itself, as an essential part of a main dish or even as a sweet treat. “Marul [romaine] has been cooked as a vegetable since ancient Greek, Roman, and Byzantine times,” says food writer Aylın Öney Tan. “In many parts of Anatolia, it was a spring tradition to dip marul in pekmez (molasses) or honey, to eat it with something sweet that contrasted with the lettuce’s bitterness.” This wouldn’t really work with supermarket iceberg, of course – to fully enjoy lettuce’s culinary potential requires a fresh, high-quality crop.

Pickles are serious business in this shop, which has been passed down from generation to generation. An unusual, surprisingly delicious selection of pickled fruits and veggies are often encountered on our Istanbul walks.

The northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa is nestled between the western Sierra Madre Mountains and the Gulf of California – putting it between surf and high desert, and the sea doth offer bounty. Be it gigantic squid, run-of-the-mill “fish” or marlin, the sinaloenses fear not the chopping block when it comes to seafood, and the state’s devil-may-care attitude (cooking with lime instead of actual heat) comes full force at Los Sinaloenses, located in trendy Roma Sur. The scrappy refuge lights onto a seafood-based, regional cuisine that manages to stand out in a nation with more than 9 km of coastline. It’s characterized by an array of ceviches, cocktails and other arthropod and piscine specialties.

We had to share this lovely photograph taken by Don Kedgley at Diporto, a basement taverna that has been around since 1887 and ranks among our favorite spots in Athen

On a recent sunny afternoon at the tiny Al Ahdab market, a wedge of light slashed through the front windows illuminating posters for condensed milk in Arabic script and one of an energy drink called Hell. The shop is easy to miss, tucked under the slope of Sarı Musa Sokak, which dips quickly from Millet Caddesi – the arterial avenue home to Istanbul’s Little Syria. By the front door was a rack of Cow Brand ghee, in large tin cans stacked like motor oil at a gas station. Entering the shop we were met with a complex layer of scents. By the drawers along the wall a fragrant cloud of spice hung – cumin, coriander, cinnamon

Lisbon’s tiny Taberna da Rua das Flores is almost always crowded, with barely enough room for staff to explain (and often translate) to hungry clients the dishes chalked up on its only blackboard menu. With around 10 marble-topped tables in a narrow, vintage-style eatery that takes no reservations, its small scale and increasing popularity makes for a challenging place to serve food – and yet, the staff are always smiling. The restaurant’s original, contemporary take on the forgotten tavern fare of the city, as well as its patient service and shared love of local ingredients, make it well worth the waiting time.

At Bar do Momo in Tijuca, there are many things to celebrate, but the two dishes starring jiló are particularly magnificent – and show how this little gastropub punches well above its weight. A green, meaty, slightly bitter cross between an eggplant and a pepper, jiló was brought to Brazil from West Africa during the slave trade. At Bar do Momo, the vegetable is served two ways: One is the jiló recheado, not unlike a chile relleno, stuffed with beef and mozzarella cheese that melts into a savory broth. The other is the only Brazilian guacamole worth your time: made from tangy pickled jiló, red onion, tomato, lime, cilantro, and Brazilian dedo de moça pepper.

Healthy eating and Chinese food are often hard to combine, but Karen Chen has discovered the recipe. After the success of Jianguo 328 (a homestyle Shanghainese restaurant that forgoes MSG and uses filtered water to boil its excellent noodles), the Taiwanese restaurateur decided to look west – where spice is king – for her next venture: Yi Zhang Hong. The friendly Sichuan restaurant is cobbled together with a narrow staircase leading up to cheerful dining rooms over three floors. On each level, bright folk art hangs on white walls above long banquettes and blond wood tables, and the red-tiled bar on the first floor is decorated with bottles of imported wine and beer and canisters of local tea.

Green peas, grape leaves and squash are on offer at the market in the lovely neighborhood of Kuzguncuk, an essential component of our Born on the Bosphorus tour.

Istanbul’s Aksaray district is a difficult place to get to know. It's probably the most diverse district in all of Turkey and with a very high turnover rate. Those Georgian ladies you saw dragging an overstuffed plaid duffel down Buyuk Langa Caddesi yesterday? They might be halfway to Batumi by now. The Syrian family by the bus stop? They may be on their way to meet a man in Izmir about a boat. Who knows? Aksaray’s unknowableness makes some locals uneasy; there's got to be mischief in all that motion, with all of those foreigners. Such is the stigma of Aksaray, den of thieves.

It’s a mid-week spring day in Tbilisi and we have joined Dali Berdzenishvili and her family for a special picnic lunch. There’s a zesty looking spread covering most of a yellow and blue tablecloth: heaps of khachapuri (cheese bread), blinchiki (meat rolls), sliced meats and sulguni cheese, salads, a trademark Georgian dish of pickled greens known as jonjoli, a bowl of strawberries and a few slices of leftover Easter paska cake. For drinks, there are several bottles of semi-sweet red and a bottle of homemade grape juice. Dali says her late husband, Zviad, loved a picnic like this. And it is Zviad who brings them all here – because they are eating next to his grave.

Loquats (nêsperas in Portuguese) are now in season - all over Mercado da Ribeira, the historic market encountered on our Lisbon Awakens tour. We're still waiting for the cherries!

Rego Park and Forest Hills are home to much of Queens’ 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 catering to local tastes. Here are a few notable addresses. Queens Gourmet Bazaar Food Brothers Yusuf and Juda Saz run this long, narrow market that is filled with Persian staples. Mini barrels of nuts, seeds, dried fruits, several Samarkand raisin varieties as well as fruit molasses, barberries, and other provisions in cans and glass jars cover the floor and walls. The brothers make some of the ready-made food in-house.

Before thousands of Syrian and Lebanese immigrants arrived in Rio at the beginning of the 20th century, colonists organized the old city according to geography, chance and Spanish and Portuguese planning conventions. This meant stores in the same category – ironware, shoes, musical instruments – were grouped together, sometimes even allotted their own street. If you needed wholesale fabric, you headed to a different road than if you needed a new kitchen pot. When hard fortunes amidst the breakup of the Ottoman Empire brought residents of the regions surrounding Syria and Lebanon to Rio, many put down roots in an area then called “Little Turkey” on Alfândega Street, near the port