Editor’s Note: Pizzeria Babylon is moving to a new location, but will be open again soon for business! Check out their Instagram and Facebook for updates from Ishok. Nestled in Turkey's southeastern province of Mardin is the historic region of Tur Abdin, meaning “The Mountain of God's Servants” in the language of the Syriac people (also known as Assyrians). These Orthodox Christians have called the area home for millennia and still speak a Semitic mother tongue that is the most similar living language to the Aramaic spoken by Jesus Christ.

Marseille does not resemble the picture-postcard version of France. The locals here have a saying, "D'abord, on est Marseillais, ensuite on est Français." (First, we’re Marseillais, and then we’re French.) It is a city connected by a rich immigrant population and small neighborhoods, each with their own personality and identity. One of the most vibrant pockets of the city is Cours Julien, or Cours Ju, as it is called here. If the Vieux Port is the heart of the city and Noailles is the stomach, what does Cours Julien represent? On a recent visit to the neighborhood, that question was answered. The tiny streets are crowded with small boutiques, tattoo shops, bars and restaurants, all camouflaged by the work of graffiti artists.

The Borgo Vecchio neighborhood in Palermo is sandwiched between the affluent Politeama-Via Libertà district and the historic fishing community of Castellammare, also known as la Loggia. On one side you have the Via Libertà, an arterial road peppered with theaters and gardens that the legendary composer Richard Wagner once described as the Champs-Élysées of Sicily. On the other, you have the scent of the foamy sea. In 1556, the neighborhood stretched from the San Giorgio gate to the Santa Lucia church. As a result, it adopted the name of this physical boundary and became known as Borgo di Santa Lucia. Lured by the promise of development of a nearby port, the street quickly attracted artisans and merchants from other regions and the district grew in stature.

Beyond the bustle of touristy central Venice is a series of small islands dotting the Venetian lagoon. This is where Venice’s wine is made, vegetables are grown, fish is caught and bread is baked. These islands – Vignole, Sant’Erasmo, Lido, Pellestrina, Mazzorbo and more – make up the Venice that most people never experience, but you can. On this exclusive-to-Milk Street and seasonally changing 8-day trip, you’ll visit seven different islands, meet the artisans who safeguard Venice’s local culinary traditions, and cook with local vegetables, fish, seafood, fruits and wines.

Our journey begins with a walking tour of historic Oaxaca structured around corn, a key pillar of Oaxacan cooking and eating. You’ll track corn’s journey from kernel through processing all the way to a warm tortilla coming off the comal. We’ll spend two days exploring markets, cooking, drinking and eating alongside chef Rodolfo, who will welcome you into his restaurant’s kitchen as well as his country home. We’ll get out of town to visit traditional producers in the village of Etla, famous for its Oaxacan cheese, and get a glimpse – and taste – of a huge collection of rare mezcals. You’ll visit the Tlacolula market, a once-a-week event where you’ll sample everything from hyperlocal chocolate to crunchy chapulines, but not until you’ve had the best barbacoa in the region. And you’ll meet multiple Cocineras Tradicionales, the women keeping Oaxaca’s culinary traditions alive, and appreciate modern interpretations of Oaxacan cooking at spots like Sabina Sabe and Zandunga. 

Follow in Christopher Kimball’s footsteps during a weeklong immersion into the culinary traditions of Mexico City. This trip brings together the best of Milk Street’s and Culinary Backstreet’s networks and offers guests a one-of-a-kind introduction to a vibrant metropolis where pre- and post-colonial foods and culture collide and combine. Our guides will be Paco de Santiago, the head of Culinary Backstreets Mexico team, and Beto Estúa and Jorge Fritz, cooking teachers Milk Street has relied on repeatedly for their depth of knowledge about Mexican cooking and excellent recipes. 

Bridging Europe and Asia and connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, the city of Istanbul has always been a place of intersecting cultures. Over 8 days and 7 nights, you’ll get a local’s access to the blend of history and modernity that defines this metropolis. Your guide is local expert Gonca Karakoç; no one knows Istanbul’s ustas (masters of traditional crafts) like her and you’ll be welcomed into places no other tourist can go. Your resident chef is author and teacher Özlem Warren, a regular guest at the Milk Street Cooking School and on Milk Street radio. 

Greece off-the-beaten-path is the theme of our trip to the Peloponnese. An experience available exclusively to Milk Street guests, this week will focus on the hyperlocal cuisine of the Mani Peninsula in the far south of the country. Your teachers and guides are Greek food expert and chef Carolina Doriti and Maniot chef Stavriani Zervakakou.  We’ll start with a short stop in Athens where we will position the cuisine of Mani within the diversity of Greek cooking. We’ll sample it all—traditional items like spanakopita and real-deal Greek coffee, Maniot cured meats and custard pies, honeys from all regions of Greece, a flight of Greek wines from small producers, and a shot or two of raki. Then, we head south.

Kypseli is exploding. It’s the new “cool” neighborhood, thanks to the influx of creatives who own cutting-edge restaurants, clothing brands, and art galleries. It seems as though every few days, a new cafe, bar, record store or plant shop opens, and increasingly, Athenians young and old are looking to snap up any available apartments even as prices start to rise in tandem with the growing “it” factor. The neighborhood, whose name means “beehive” in Greek, was considered the countryside before 1834, but when Athens became the country’s capital, the area slowly urbanized, especially after the neighborhood’s main pedestrian street, Fokionos Negri, was built over a stream. But after World War II, as Greeks flooded into the city, construction in the area ramped up to accommodate interested buyers, and today, Kypseli remains a densely populated area - supposedly one of the most populated in all of Europe.

Ramen joints are often easily recognizable, either by large windows illuminating slurping customers, a vending machine dispensing meal tickets at the doorway, or the brightly lit signs; usually it’s some combination of the three. When it comes to Ura Sablon, however, one might easily pass it by. The narrow entrance is tucked away between a storage locker and an air conditioning unit; a small notice, illegible unless up close, is attached to a traffic cone; and the paper lantern reading “tsukemen” – a kind of dipping noodles – could easily have ended up there by chance.

It’s a bit of culinary magic. Plain old black-eyed peas are transformed into a fluffy white cloud, before somehow changing once again, this time into a crimson, crispy fritter. This is acarajé, and as a dish with origins in Bahia, the homeland of Afro-Brazilian spirituality, other types of magic can also play a role. In Lisbon, you can witness the results of this transformation at Acarajé da Carol. “There are other people [in Portugal] making acarajé, but they’re not from Bahia!” the eponymous owner – full name Carol Alves de Brito – tells us. Bahia, Carol’s homeland, is the region of Brazil with the strongest links to Africa. Salvador, the state’s capital, was once a major destination in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and today it’s the largest Black city outside of Africa.

Pies, sweet and savory, constitute a massive chapter of traditional Greek cuisine, and are also a timeless popular street food all across the nation. Most classic Greek pie shops tend to open early in the morning, as pies are popular for breakfast, and close in the afternoon, usually after they have sold out for the day. That’s why Ta Stachia, a small shop in Exarchia, stands out – an after-hours pie shop, it runs steadily throughout the night, not only feeding all the pub crawlers and nighthawks, but also staying open until about noon for the early birds who walk their dogs or set off for work or school.

Queens Boulevard, a major thoroughfare that cuts through the heart of the borough, accommodates many lanes of automobiles traveling to and from Manhattan. Some eateries that flank it seem geared for auto traffic, too: One stretch of roadway, in Elmhurst, sports a classic diner, an Argentine steakhouse and a fast-food restaurant marked by golden arches. Driving by, or even walking by, we might easily miss a corner business that looks out on those other eateries. From outside, on a sunny day, the storefront seems more like a mirror than a window; modest signage marks the doors. Opening them, we enter Arya Cafe and leave behind the glare of the sun and the honking hustle and bustle of passing cars, trucks and buses for the murmur of conversation, mostly in Tibetan.

You are motionless, stuck in a traffic jam after a long day at work while your stomach growls. You know the rest of the family will be hungry when you get home and that the fridge is empty and sad. Shopping and cooking is out of the question, so you turn onto a Vera side street, zig-zag through one-way lanes to Tatishvili Street, double park, and run into a tiny gastronomic oasis that has been saving lives like yours for nearly a decade. Its name is Tartan. Located in a step-down ground-floor apartment, takeout cafeterias don’t get homier than this. The front room is taken up with a long counter of refrigerated display cases half filled with enough ready-made dishes to lay down a feast when you get home.

Perusing the menus of most Indian restaurants in Los Angeles, one may forget that India is the seventh-largest country in the world, with over 30 states and union territories. A limited handful of the same recipes – chicken tikka masala, tandoori, naan – repeat themselves time and time again. These are the dishes most commonly found on Indian restaurants’ menus across the U.S., including Los Angeles, and they all hail from North India. Sridhar Sambangi is looking to change this at Banana Leaf, which serves regional specialties from South India. Sambangi spent more than 30 years working in technology startups, which included a cloud-based food ordering service for restaurants. Food has always been his passion, though, and he finally took the leap to start his own restaurant with Banana Leaf.