We’ve been fans of the authentically spicy flavors of La Wei Xian since 2014, when we added the ramshackle restaurant to our Night Eats tour route in the Laoximen neighborhood. The stop was a favorite of our guests for years, but in August 2017, Mr. Liu fell victim to the redevelopment of the Old Town area and was forced to shut down his shop when the local government wouldn’t renew his food and beverage licenses. But Mr. Liu has never been one to give up, and he’s always got his eye on the bottom line. He is the type of guy who will spend hours trying to convince you to go on a four-day road trip with his whole family (totaling six members) back to his hometown of Zigong, Sichuan, in a Winnebago that is meant for two at best, just to split the gas money.

One communal dish in the middle of the table attracting various fingertips and forks – it’s an image common to numerous countries. From tagine in Morocco to wot in Ethiopia, mezes in the Mediterranean and the Middle East to banchan in Korea, sharing plates is a defining feature of many culinary cultures. In Spain, the quintessential shared-plate experience is tapas, with paella a close second. And what’s not to love about eating this way? It brings us together, it’s more indulgent, as it gives everyone the chance to try everything, and it reduces food waste. Furthermore, research has found that eaters who consumed food together from a common plate or bowl are more cooperative and less competitive, making it easier for them to agree on controversial issues.

Amidst the uncertainty and turmoil caused by the coronavirus crisis, it’s easy for the days to blend together. Yet for many Oaxacans, the weekends are still distinct, mainly because of the pleasurable fin de semana (weekend) meals that allow family and friends to gather, reset and reenergize for the coming week. There is nothing more soothing than informal comfort food, which is often on the menu for these meals. “Although such food is not complicated to cook, on a Friday evening or a slow Sunday afternoon all you want is to chill and forget about cooking,” says Miguel Mijangos, head chef and co-owner of Ancestral, a traditional Oaxacan restaurant located in the picturesque neighborhood of Xochimilco.

The officials from the Ministry of Health came late in the evening on a Friday night and entered Tbilisi’s popular gastro-entertainment complexes Fabrika and Ghvinis Karkhana-Wine Factory #1. They knew there would be a lot of people here celebrating life again after two and a half months in lockdown. They also understood that even with tables spaced two meters apart, as required, it is difficult to control social distancing after people have had a few drinks. For authorities looking to tally up some fines, it was like shooting ducks in a wine barrel. A total of 16 establishments were fined 10,000 lari ($3,273) in what restaurant owners have described as “raids” two weekends ago for violating Covid-19 regulations. Among the six places at Ghvinis Karkhana that were penalized was Number 8 BBQ House for not having a list of employee temperatures and violating social distancing rules.

On Travessa do Monte, one of the friendliest streets in Lisbon’s Graça neighborhood, natural wine flows as freely as conversation. We’ve come here, right by the arch and with a narrow view of the city and the river, to have a glass with Giulia Capaccioli and Massimiliano Bartoli, two Italians from Tuscany who met in Venice and now live in Lisbon. The pair’s bar, Vino Vero, which they opened in April 2019, is the spring that feeds this natural wine oasis. To fully understand the origins of this wine bar, we need to go back to Italy. There, in Tuscany, Massimiliano’s brother, Matteo, has a winery producing natural wine – that is, wine to which nothing is added or taken away.

Despite Greece’s small size, the country has many different regional cuisines, with Greek island cuisine – particularly that of the Cyclades, which is rooted in simplicity and seasonality – being one of my favorites. The small, dry islands developed a kind of cucina povera, or “peasant cooking,” that was influenced in part by the Venetians, who governed the islands for over 300 years, and based on the few basic ingredients they could grow without much water, or without water at all: tomatoes, eggplants, watermelons, zucchinis, figs and grapes, all of which tend to be smaller in size but full of flavor.

Screens, social distancing, masks, constant cleaning, diminished room capacity, “Covid-free” stamps… gloves? Are gloves still in the protocol or is hand sanitizer enough? What exactly are the municipality’s formal requirements for opening or expanding a terrace? Why are restaurants across the board forced to operate at 40 percent capacity for indoor seating when the alternative – requiring a certain amount of space between tables – would allow places with larger rooms to do more business? These are the questions that surface in our conversations with Barcelona’s restaurant owners as they try to get back on their feet. Josep María Solé, co-owner of the iconic La Cova Fumada in La Barceloneta, recounts having to ask a client at the door to put on their mask before coming inside – otherwise, they risk a fine from the City Council.

My love affair with the Deserter’s Bazaar began in 2001 when I first wandered into the marketplace like a pie-eyed flower child on his very first acid trip. The air seethed with leaded exhaust, stinky cheese, stale body odor and the incessant honking of jalopies. Streets and sidewalks disappeared under tables and blankets displaying everything from village produce and contraband alcohol to Dostoevsky novels and wooden utensils. Shoulder-to-shoulder, people bumped and shuffled and haggled while sweaty men with cigarettes hanging from their lips parted the mass with iron push carts. I returned to Georgia the next year and, as luck would have it, shacked up with a friend a block away from the market, which became my playground. Six somewhat square blocks selling anything you could put a tag on.

Perched at the northern tip of Marseille, the fishing port of L’Estaque has drawn diverse groups throughout the decades. In the last half of the 19th century, bourgeois Marseillais would tram from the city center to eat bouillabaisse and swim on its shores. When the industrial era launched in 1820, L’Estaque housed workers from the nearby factories where traditional Provençal terra cotta tiles were made. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, the diverse landscape and the incredible light lured painters from the north like Braques and Cézanne, who compared the sloping village to a “playing card” with its “red roofs against a blue sea.” But since the 1930s, people have flocked to L’Estaque for another reason: the fried snacks.

On the heels of his successful Spanish-language series Las Crónicas del Conde (“The Chronicles of Conde”), Francisco de Santiago (“Paco”), our lead guide in Mexico City who goes by Conde Pétatl on Instagram, will be launching a new round of English-language Instagram Live conversations on Monday, June 22. Over the course of 10 talks, he will delve into Mexican culinary culture, history and tradition with a wide range of esteemed guests, including chefs, journalists and experts. Paco is a Mexico City native who has a deep passion for his country’s cuisine. He is also a kind of renaissance man – a former champion chess player, bullfighter and more recently, a professional gastro-guide. These days, Paco focuses on the antojitos, or little culinary cravings of his hometown, which are a hallmark of a culinary tour of the city with him.

The 2nd of June was a warm, bright, sunny day fizzing with the energy of late spring, and things were oddly normal in Istanbul’s Kurtuluş neighborhood. The day before, scores of businesses opened their doors for the first time in over two months as part of an effort by the government to return a sense of normality to the country and breathe life into its struggling economy as Turkey approached three months since its first case of coronavirus was announced. Cafés and restaurants, previously only allowed to offer takeout or delivery, now welcomed dine-in service, providing that tables were spaced apart in accordance with social distancing guidelines and a bottle of hand sanitizer was available atop each one.

Gio Malatsidze kneels down and carefully brushes sand off the plexiglass lid of his kvevri. Five hundred liters of tavkveri wine have been resting for two years in this large clay vessel buried in the ground. Next to it is an open kvevri of healthy chinuri, also two years old. He gently pries the lid off, sealed with silicone putty, cautious not to let any debris fall inside, and frowns. A white film is floating on the surface. Gio dips a wine glass inside, spreading the flotsam away and takes a sip of the dark plum colored wine, washing his mouth with it. It is on the edge but can be rescued, he explains, dipping a carafe to fill our glasses so we can taste what he is talking about. Making natural wine is a risky business.

On this culinary adventure, we’ll be lucky enough to explore Mexico City during the Day of the Dead and immerse ourselves in the complexities of this megacity during one of its most famous and colorful celebrations. The images are iconic: Revellers painted in skeleton-like “Catrinas” makeup, the streets and tables across the city awash with orange and yellow marigolds. Together we’ll celebrate this holiday as the locals do, with parades and celebrations, but also with the soulful, spiritual aspects that make this such a meaningful occasion for locals. Over the next six days, we’ll also explore the breadth of Mexico City’s mouthwatering local gastronomy and experience those rare moments when the city’s eras of history and its different identities are in beautiful harmony and which are even more poignant and powerful during the Day of the Dead holiday.

For many of us in Athens (and beyond), the Covid-19 lockdown has been among the most challenging periods in recent history. The situation bred feelings of insecurity, raised lots of questions, many unanswerable, tried our patience and, perhaps most importantly, taught us that absolutely nothing can be taken for granted. On the flip side, some of us had the chance to rest and reflect, to get to know ourselves in silence and consider how we’ve evolved – things we never had time for in our normally fast-paced life. A number of philosophical questions even came to mind: Are we truly happy? Are we really enjoying every moment to the fullest? Are we grateful for what we have?

We like to think of Oaxaca as the heartland of Mexican cooking. All the foods that seem so classically, elementally, Mexican – corn, chiles, moles, mezcal – can be traced back to the fertile area that surrounds this historic city. This is true not only of the ingredients, but the cooking techniques as well. The use of smoke and fire to flavor food, as well as the practice of cooking on a comal – the large circular griddle that is essential for making tortillas – are all deeply connected with the Oaxaca region and its indigenous people. But Oaxaca is not only a point of origin for these essential items of culinary heritage, it is also a place in which they are lovingly maintained and protected.