With a main terminal of 1.44 million square meters, the new Istanbul Airport (IST) takes a lesson from its home city, paying homage to the gods of unnecessary sprawl and shopping malls. Rather than waste away under the fluorescent lights paying triple the price on duty free and forcing down disappointingly dry pide, store your bags for a few bucks and head out into the city for some unforgettable meals and sights. When circling into IST or the Asian side of the city’s Sabiha Gökçen Airport (SAW), the unending view of building upon building will tell you immediately: Istanbul is not the city to hop on a bus and see what happens.

We’re in a small café in Lisbon’s Madragoa neighborhood, and all of the disparate dishes loading down the table in front of us – small bread-like balls, a dish that resembles a small crepe, granola studded with flakes of grains, a pudding-like dessert – have one ingredient in common: cassava. “Cassava is known as the Queen of Brazil,” says Laila Ferreira Soares. “Everyone eats it, it’s always present.” Laila, a native of Brazil, along with her partner, Gregory Busson, a Frenchman, are the pair behind Uaipi, a new café/market in Lisbon with a focus on this particular ingredient.

On a mid-June night, one Istanbul kitchen buzzed with Turkish, Arabic and English spoken simultaneously. All women in the kitchen were from Hatay, a province which they – like many other locals – prefer to call Antakya, and which was heavily affected by the earthquakes earlier this year. Delicacies of their hometown filled the pots and pans on the stove, and the fires burning under them increased the already high temperature in the room. Ayda Suadioğlu, a chef from Antakya, was sweating in the hot kitchen, yet she was determined to get everything ready for the night ahead. If anyone doubted whether they needed more butter or olive oil, how fine they should cut the za’atar, or whether the köfte in the oven was ready, Ayda knew the answer.

Alican Akdemir holds a glass up the light to confirm it is spotless before decanting half of a 200-milliliter green bottle of mineral water. Holding the glass against a napkin, he examines the color and notes the rate and amount of the carbonation, which he describes as “aggressive.” Having noted the visual appearance, he brings the glass to his nose, checking for any odors. “It shouldn’t smell of anything, just like it should be clear,” he says. Akdemir takes a sip, gently aspirating. “It’s slightly sour, salty, and high in carbonation,” he says.

Gldani was built on the northern outskirts of Tbilisi during the 1970s and 1980s as a satellite city of well-ordered concrete towers for the working masses. Newer and pricier (though still uninspired) real estate developments are now challenging the Soviet blocks, but Gldani still remains predominantly a working-class district. Located around the last stop of Tbilisi's main metro line, Akhmeteli Theatre, Gldani’s center “is packed with local businesses like exchange kiosks, shopping malls, street vendors, casinos or cafes,” writes Tbilisi architecture biennale founder Tinatin Gurgenidze, before adding: “And the famous Gldani Shaurma is also nearby.”

Italian and Maghreb restaurants are undoubtedly the stars of Marseille’s food scene. In fact, Marseille is so chock-a-block with pizza it’s rumored to have more pizzerias per capita than New York City. Eateries dishing out copious bowls of couscous equally abound. Meanwhile, some of the diverse city’s most prominent immigrant communities – and their cuisine – remain behind the scenes. A perfect example is Marseille’s Comorian community. So many citizens of Comoros, the Indian Ocean nation north of Madagascar, live in Marseille that the city’s been nicknamed the “Fifth island in the archipelago.” One in ten Marseillais are of Comorian descent, and many are employed in restaurant kitchens as dishwashers and line cooks. Yet, you can count the places serving cuisine comorienne on one hand.

We are in Lota da Esquina, in Cascais, staring down a small bowl filled to the brim with a mix of crab meat, chopped eggs, mayonnaise and other seasonings. On the surface, it looks like a straightforwardly decadent dish but according to chef/owner Vítor Sobral, it’s actually a way to boost a product that’s not quite at its peak.

The Galleria Principe di Napoli’s beautiful arcades and art-deco ceiling made of iron and glass – built in the second half of the 19th century at the site of an ancient grain storehouse – stood silent for long time. Once a buzzing commercial and cultural hub in the heart of the city, with two of its three wings connecting the National Archaeological Museum to the Academy of Fine Arts, the Galleria was confiscated during the Fascist era and used to project propaganda films, shutting down its shops and venues. In the eighties, it was used for public offices for a time before it was left abandoned. Recently, though, the space has been brought to life, thanks to a call for bids and a handful of businesses that took on the challenge, such as a bike shop, a B&B and the lovely Lazzarelle Bistrot, among others.

In every corner of Istanbul, enticing traces of Turkish cuisine from throughout the country, as well as the cooking of other neighboring regions, can be tucked away in the city's backstreets. These range from a Bulgarian kebab joint in Bağcılar on the western European side to a Bosnian meyhane in Pendik on the eastern stretches of the Anatolian side and a Georgian restaurant in the heart of Beyoğlu. We can add the suburban Marmara Seaside district of Maltepe to this formidable list, as it is home to Sılaşara, which is perhaps the only Abkhaz restaurant in the world outside of Abkhazia or Georgia. Officially considered a part of Georgia, the region of Abkhazia straddles Georgia's northwest Black Sea coast, and its small population is dwarfed by the number of people with Abkhaz roots who have called Turkey home for well over a century.

One of the joys of Lisbon’s food scene is the access it allows to cuisines from across the Lusophone world. And one of the most represented is the food of Cabo Verde (formerly known as Cape Verde), an archipelago of 10 islands off the western coast of Africa. Its ubiquity is due to immigrants from the islands, but also perhaps because it has so many links with the cuisine of Portugal. “Our ingredients [in Cabo Verde] are almost completely European,” explains Maria Andrade, better known as Milocas, the chef/owner behind By Milocas, a Cabo Verdean restaurant in Lisbon. “Our food has so much to do with Portugal. The way we prepare fish, octopus and seafood is similar to how they’re prepared in Portugal.”

In the center of town on Rue de Lodi, Saskia Porretta-Menne and Jill Cousin were inspired when they learned that a former international bookstore was closing and the space was available. The Librairie Internationale Maurel had been in the same family for three generations and operated since 1952 in a room that felt as if from another era, its walls lined with time-worn wooden shelves and afternoon sunlight streaming in from the large windows. Upon viewing it, the two friends knew immediately that this place was unlike anything else. Unsure about exactly what they would do, they were still certain there was a calling. So in October of 2021, the women opened the doors to Provisions. The word provision, by definition, means “to supply with food, drink, or equipment, especially for a journey.”

It is 6:30 pm – the workday of most of the taco, quesadilla and memela vendors in the city is over, but “The Artist’s” shift has just begun. Every day, as the dusk light bathes the streets, 34-year-old Caleb Santiago sets up his food cart right below the centuries-old clock that overlooks the corner of 5 de Mayo and Murguía. By 7:00 pm, he is ready for another night of juicy hamburgers and hot dogs. Among all the late-night hamburger stalls sprawled across the city, Caleb’s is something else. Initially known as just “Cangreburgers,” this little SpongeBob Squarepants-inspired cart has been feeding Oaxacans for the last 16 years.

In the first book of his Marseille noir trilogy Total Chaos, Jean-Claude Izzo describes his hometown: “Marseille isn't a city for tourists. There's nothing to see. Its beauty can't be photographed. It can only be shared. It's a place where you have to take sides, be passionately for or against. Only then can you see what there is to see.” On a steep hill sandwiched between Cours Julien and Place Jean Jaurés, sits a tiny sandwich shop and a man who embodies Izzo’s quote in its entirety. A friend who shares a love of this city and its hidden treasures told us about this place, which she happened upon one evening. So together we climbed one of Marseille’s many collines to Blé d’Art, a small, but impossible-to-miss, brightly painted storefront.

It’s not yet 11 a.m. on a May morning in Oaxaca City – typically the hottest month in this midsized capital of the southwest Mexican state – and the day is already fixing to be a scorcher. At this moment, we’re padding the streets of Oaxaca’s bustling downtown market district, and we can feel the heat radiating off the cement below our feet. Deciding the morning’s errands will have to be put on pause, we duck into one of the main entrances to the famed Benito Juárez market, where we know we’ll find Valentina and a big, brimming jícara – a hollowed-out gourd used as a no-waste drinking vessel – of tejate. We navigate past little stalls where vendors hawk such varied items as big, knotted balls of the milky, melty cow’s cheese known as quesillo; sweet, yeasty pan dulce sprinkled with colored granulated sugar; and big, round tortillas in two styles: soft and pliable (blandas) and crispy and crunchy (tlayudas).

The walk to Sur le Pouce, a popular Tunisian family restaurant, is a straight shot from Marseille’s central boulevard, La Canébiere. We make our way along rue Longues des Capucins, behind Alcazar, the main public library, pass the Chinese wholesale clothing stores – Joy Lady, Wei Wei, and New 35 – and arrive ten minutes and several wonderous lands later to the corner of rue de la Convalescence. At the door of Sur le Pouce, we find ourselves in the heart of downtown Marseille and the populaire, working class, Belsunce neighborhood, largely inhabited by people of Maghrebi heritage, both French nationals and recent arrivals.