At first glance, there’s not much to see in Mealhada, a town in Portugal’s central inland Bairrada region about an hour’s drive south of Porto. If there is a main feature here, it’s probably the EN1, the country’s original north-south highway, which slices the town in half, providing a conduit for a seemingly never-ending parade of large, noisy trucks. Yet the town’s roadside signs reveal something else: “Rei dos Leitões,” “Pedro dos Leitões,” “Virgílio dos Leitões,” “Meta dos Leitões,” “Hilário Leitão.” Mealhada is ground zero in Portugal for leitão, roast suckling pig.

Long before Halloween – nowadays a popular event marked by pumpkins and costumes here in Italy, too – arrived in Naples, we had Carnival. A mix of pagan and religious festivity, celebrated with exuberance and (mainly culinary) excess before Lent, it culminates with Mardi Gras, the Tuesday in February which falls six weeks before Easter. In Naples, Carnival used to imply embarrassing homemade costumes and the desperate effort to escape egg throwing in the streets on the way home from school – as well as much more pleasant rites, including the food-related ones. Which, luckily, still endure. The widespread Italian habit of frying food for Carnival here takes the irregular, indented shape of chiacchiere – thin, crunchy fritters sprinkled with powdered sugar, which are also common in other regions of Italy but with different names – traditionally served with sanguinaccio, a decadent chocolate sauce originally made with pork’s blood, to honor the animal’s sacrifice.

"I always wanted a place where I could go a couple of times a week and have a good plate of pasta," Franco Raicovich tells us. From where we're sitting – across the table from Franco at Fuzi Pasta, which he opened in Fresh Meadows, in eastern Queens, in the summer of 2023 – we might be at any number of casual Italian restaurants. Tables for two, singly or pushed together for larger parties, line a banquette. The walls are hung with charming portraits of diners, most of them attractive women or cute children, wrangling spaghetti. We hear Sinatra in the background, but also 1960s soul and 1970s pop and rock.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that Lisbon’s fresh markets are disappearing. The Greater Lisbon area is home to 28 market spaces, yet only ten of these witness any significant commercial activity. As the city’s shoppers increasingly shift to supermarkets, its traditional markets have had to find new ways to remain relevant. In an effort to do this, some Lisbon markets have opted to transform part of their spaces into food courts – a phenomenon sometimes called the “Time Out effect,” after the high-profile market of the same name. It’s been a decade since the first of these relaunches, so we decided to visit the three Lisbon markets that have adopted it. What we witnessed showed a model that in one case seems to benefit both the traditional market and food court sides alike, while in the other cases, appears more lopsided.

In a city where it can be hard to keep track of trendy new restaurant openings, dining at El Mirador is a timeless tradition. Open since 1904, the beloved cantina stands in a corner across from the city’s iconic Chapultepec Park, hiding more than a century of history behind its green awning. Stepping inside El Mirador immediately calls for a decision: sitting on the restaurant side or in the cantina. Cantinas, which rose in popularity during Porfirio Díaz’s presidency in the early 20th century, are laid-back watering holes where food and drink are usually served with a side of live music and games such as dominoes. While similar in decor – green chairs, white tablecloths, ornate plates hanging on the walls – the restaurant and cantina at El Mirador offer two different ambiances, especially as the week progresses.

For a dish so ubiquitous, one would be forgiven to think there’s little to debate about Georgia’s national dumpling, the khinkali. But just as tastes vary, every Georgian has their own khinkali preferences and opinions. That’s certainly the case for chef Gela Arabuli, who believes khinkali has been gentrified and mass produced to a point where most people have forgotten the dumplings’ origins in the mountains and how they should really taste. “Real khinkali is from the high mountains. And there are no pigs in the mountains,” insists Gela, referring to the most popular and common filling of minced beef and pork in equal parts as kalakuri, or “city style,” khinkali.

“A pie might seem to be just a pie, but it’s not,” Drew Ramsey, the head of the family-run Hubig’s Pies tells us. We’re standing in the company’s new location, where conveyor belts carry a steady stream of freshly baked and glazed hand pies. Ramsey is certainly right about his pies. Odes have been composed, bedtime stories have indoctrinated young ones, and Mardi Gras floats and costumes have been fashioned in Hubig’s Pies’ honor. In the 2010 HBO series Treme, a drama partly set in the neighborhood of the same name in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the ashes of John Goodman’s character are scattered out of a pie bag as a brass band plays “Down by the Riverside.”

Dreamers make the world more beautiful. These extravagant eccentrics fascinate us with their seemingly impossible, utopian ventures, while equally making us wonder how their projects endure. Mario Avallone, 62, is one of these people. Get to know him, and he’ll happily tell you his tale: his travels around the world, his years living in Sicily, his incredible projects and the Mediterranean goods that he sources from A-to-Z. It is this truly extraordinary expertise in gastronomic culture that feeds his Neapolitan pantry – Drugstore Napoli – and the attached tasting room, La Stanza del Gusto, which was created to satisfy the most discerning palates, Neapolitans and travelers alike.

“Bom filho à casa torna,” we like to say in Portuguese, a maxim that translates to “a good son comes home.” Can the saying be applied to a sandwich? In Porto, we would argue, the answer is yes, especially now that A Regaleira, the birthplace of the francesinha – Porto’s signature dish – is open again after being closed for three years. Even former A Regaleira regulars passing by the reopened restaurant might miss the fact that it has moved a few doors down from its original location. We could have sworn that the restaurant was in the same spot since 1934, but the original A Regaleira was forced to close in 2018 when the building housing it was sold.

From the mid-1800s to World War I, Marseille played a prominent role in France’s industrial revolution. Semolina mills, pasta manufacturers, soap factories, and oil and sugar refineries churned out goods to be loaded on giant ships at the Vieux-Port and shipped across the globe. Most of these factories shuttered after World War II, leaving a blight on the Quartiers Nord (Northern neighborhoods) where they were based. Recently, culinary entrepreneurs like Tava Hada Pilpeta’s gourmet harissa and Sarabar’s exceptional spices are aiming to revitalize the area’s food processing past in an artisanal way. Two others who are making their mark on the area are Stéphane Chevet and Georges Temam, who are transforming Marseille’s strong bond to the sea into smoked and cured delicacies.

On a side street just behind the lower edge of the Grand Bazaar lies a small, unsuspecting sign directing one up a flight of stairs to Kardeşler Köftecisi, a no-frills, hole-in-the-wall shop that has been serving grilled meatballs (köfte) for more than half a century. Unlike many nearby restaurants on the touristy strip, no one is trying to pressure you to go inside and there is no English menu, or any menu at all, for that matter. Kardeşler Köftecisi is truly an esnaf (small tradesmen’s) restaurant, as most of their customers work in the massive covered market and in other shops in the vicinity.

It’s an early example of guilt tripping. The story goes that a monk arrived in a Portuguese village, hungry and clever. He grabbed a rock and carried it door to door, claiming that it was his only ingredient, asking people if they would be kind enough to supplement it so he could make a meal. Tugging on heartstrings in this manner, he was able to accumulate a pot, a potato, some beans, a bit of sausage and some salt-preserved pork and seasonings – a hodgepodge of ingredients that, along with that crucial stone, he united as soup. Thus, goes the story, sopa de pedra, “stone soup,” was born. Hélia Costa, a restaurateur in Almeirim, an hour north of Lisbon, tells a much more practical origin story for the dish’s unique name.

Most of Murat Kelle Paça’s clientele stumble in between 1 and 5 o’clock in the morning, after a boisterous night of drinking, concert-going and dancing. Located in the heart of Beyoğlu and surrounded by the best nightlife in Istanbul, if not all of Turkey, Murat attracts one of the most diverse crowds of any restaurant we have seen in Istanbul. During the day, the usual blue- and white-collar crowd – from lawyers to bankers to store attendants – trundles in during their lunch break. But flash-forward to nighttime and the scene becomes much more interesting.

I can’t think of a more comforting dish than soup. It can be as simple or complex as you wish, and as cheap or expensive as you can afford. Just open your fridge or pantry, and you’re sure to find something to turn into a liquid meal – vegetables, herbs, spices, meat, poultry, seafood, grains, legumes… the list goes on. If you’re looking for a restoring bowl of soup in Greece, one of your best bets is a late-night restaurant (many operate round-the-clock) or diner. These spots, some of which are located near or inside central food markets, are perhaps best known for serving patsa (πατσά), tripe soup, a hangover helper as well as fuel for people performing hard labor early in the day – like market workers do.

Caldos de Gallina Luis – which a friend had been raving about to us for months before we finally made it there – is essentially a street food stand that has been trussed up to look more like a sidewalk café. Just a short walk from the Insurgentes metro stop, the venue is located on a side street next to a parking lot and opposite a sex shop, the glowing neon of the shop’s sign casting its pink light over pedestrians walking by.