Even though Athens is fairly close to the sea, there are times when we crave a quick island getaway – to taste the best tomato salads of the Cyclades, or one of the many pungent cheeses of Naxos, or real smoked apaki from Crete, but we don’t have the time (or resources) to venture out of the city limits. That’s when we head to To Hohlidaki, an ouzeri experience that feels like a tour of Greece from the comfort of a quaint Athenian neighborhood. We’ve been several times, and each visit gives a new picture of what the country has to offer. This ouzeri is steeped in history, and owner Alexandros Giolma takes every opportunity to mingle the past with the present.

Last summer, when we first saw handmade posters on the street written in English and Georgian announcing the opening of a Japanese bakery, we were both bewildered and excited. On top of many local tone (traditional ovens), Tbilisi had French, German, Turkish and Lithuanian bakeries but Japanese bread and pastries were unheard of. We finally visited the new spot in question, Pancholi-na, around 10:30 a.m. one winter morning. Ayako Matsumoto, one of the owners, had already baked a dozen triangular old-fashioned doughnuts, some plain and some with cacao baked in.

The Japanese philosophy of ikigai follows four key tenets: to find in life what we love, what the world needs, what we are good at, and what we can get paid for. At Miura, chef and owner Hiroki Nara has found his ikigai at this stunning gourmet fish restaurant.   This idyllic little secret is tucked into a quiet backstreet of Shimokitazawa, one of the few neighborhoods in Tokyo devoid of skyscrapers and department stores. This small district lies in the heart of Setagaya, the second largest ward in Tokyo.

In Marseille, OM is not a yogic hum but a deafening roar. Revered like a religion, it refers to Olympique de Marseille, our football club, the symbol of the city. Famous rappers wear the jerseys, guys of all ages sport OM tracksuits, and the most-read stories in the local rag, La Provence, feature OM. The team’s sky blue and white colors mirror the city’s crest. When the renowned former owner Bernard Tapie died, the entire city mourned.

Every time we travel outside of Oaxaca, we get something we call “the tortilla blues.” Even if we move around inside of Mexico, particularly in the biggest cities, we cannot help missing the sweet aroma and feel of a warm tortilla almost melting in our hands. Sure, we might run into decadent tacos filled with perfectly cooked meat, or we can taste amazing enchiladas with lush salsa verde. But none of that matters if the tortillas don’t seem to have been touched by the tortillera’s (tortilla maker’s) gifted hands. Everyone talks about the tortilla but not everyone understands it. Supermarkets sell them packed and ready to heat, office workers eat them carelessly at their desks for lunch and only fancy restaurants seem to offer a more authentic version of them.

It's a busy fall weekday in Istanbul, the weather is perfect and the streets around Istanbul University, the Beyazit Mosque and the iconic Grand Bazaar are buzzing. In the late afternoon, shopkeepers are scrambling to make their last sales while the best restaurants in the area are getting ready to close. Mediocre establishments are open later into the night, with employees brandishing large menus and coaxing tourists through their doors. Avoiding the crowd around one of the bazaar's main entrances, we saunter down a side street where things instantly feel more local. We've come to the specific address of a kebab restaurant recommended by friend and intrepid Istanbul walk leader Benoit Hanquet, but there is no such eatery in sight.

Mozambican, Portuguese and Cantonese – with a fair bit of Indian thrown in. On the surface, it’s an utterly unlikely culinary mashup. But it makes perfect sense at Bula Bula, a restaurant on Lisbon’s northern outskirts. The husband-and-wife owners of Bula Bula, Ana Lee and Fernando Ho, are ethnic Chinese who can trace their ancestry back to China’s Guangdong (formerly Canton) Province and then to Macau, the latter of which was, for more than 500 years, a Portuguese colony.

As we daydream and plan our travels for the year ahead, there is no shortage of “top-ten” lists telling us where to go and what to do there. At Culinary Backstreets, we like to zoom way in – all the way to the individual neighborhoods that make up our favorite cities, and the daily life that takes place in their streets. Sometimes the neighborhoods worth exploring in a city aren’t new, or “up-and-coming.” Oftentimes, a great neigborhood is one that’s been there all along, and deserves a second look. Maybe it’s a district whose residents and business owners are working to make changes, or an area where we’ve stumbled upon a restaurant that we had somehow missed before.

Tbilisi is a city of bread. This staple food has a permanent residency on every kitchen sideboard and a space on every modern table, and has been consumed in Georgia since the beginning of the 6th millennium BC. The demand for fresh bread has produced bakeries throughout the city; multiple in each area and sometimes as many as three along one street. A Tibilsian walking down the street carrying puri (bread) tucked under their arm should really be as emblematic as the baguette-bearing Parisian.

In Italy, “we would call this a bar,” Caterina Pepe tells us. We're chatting inside Cerasella (pronounced “Chair-ah-Sell-ah”), the small pasticceria e caffetteria she owns with her husband, Luca Schiano, not far from their home in Long Island City. In New York, of course, a bar is typically adults-only, and rarely known for its food. Using that name for Cerasella, Caterina adds, would lead New Yorkers astray – but happily so, once they found themselves in front of the pastry case. Caterina and Luca have adopted the term caffeteria instead, to perfectly describe Cerasella: a meeting place for friends and family, suitable for all ages, that serves coffee, breakfast, snacks and sandwiches. Luca, 35, and Caterina, 28, were both born near the Amalfi Coast, in Naples and Montecorvino Rovella, respectively. In Italy, however, their paths never crossed.

Some recipes are so deeply connected with the region from which they originate that they are simply named after that place. Circassian chicken, an appetizer beloved in Turkey and throughout the Caucasus, is such a dish. The recipe itself takes on many different variations across different geographical locations, much like the mosaic of people and cultures that can be found within the large area in which Circassian chicken is enjoyed. There is record of the recipe for Circassian chicken entering Ottoman cuisine as early as the year 1859, by way of immigrants and exiles who came from the Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire.

Our friends were puzzled: back after two years away from our hometown of New Orleans, we were heading to a far-eastern suburb of the city to eat. With so many blessed dishes in the city center, why were we out in Chalmette? The answer was simple: Our destination was Secret Thai, a restaurant well worth the trip. Its location may seem odd at first, but it only adds to the allure of making a pilgrimage past the city’s industrial canal and the Lower Ninth Ward. About five miles east by way of the Mississippi River’s bend from the French Quarter, when the condensed city spills into strip malls, Secret Thai sits along another bend on Judge Perez Drive, St. Bernard Parish’s main commercial artery.

“I'm a big pizza eater,” Francesco “Ciccio” Leone confesses. “But what I like most is being together with friends, conviviality.” The broad-shouldered Palermo native, 50, greets everyone who enters his establishment with a welcoming smile. It was during a dinner party held at his home that he came up with the idea for the name of his pizzeria. “The name came about by chance,” he recalls. “My friends would come to my house to eat, they would say, ‘Ciccio, pass me this; Ciccio, pass me that,’ and so I thought of calling the pizzeria Ciccio Passami l’Olio, which means ‘Ciccio, pass me the oil.’”