Lisbon

Pica-Pau: For the Love of Lisbon

Your friends or family are visiting Lisbon for the first time. Where do you take them to eat? If you’re us, it’s a no-brainer: Pica-Pau. Open for less than a year now, the restaurant, for us at least, has become a go-to introduction to the dishes, ingredients and flavors of Portugal. Or, more accurately, the dishes, ingredients and flavors of Lisbon. “Lisbon is a culinary region, just like Trás-os-Montes or Alentejo,” says Luís Gaspar, referring to Portugal’s far north and south, both regions with distinct, recognizable culinary legacies. He’s the chef behind Pica-Pau, and collaborated with the restaurant group Plateform to create a venue that centers around the sometimes-neglected cuisine of Lisbon.

Marseille

La Santita: Marseille’s Latin American Lunch Counter

We all have our favorite watering hole – that place close to home where you can have a bite to eat, sip on your preferred drink, have a chat with neighbors, friends, strangers. A place where you feel welcome and frequent often. La Santita, a tiny Latin American restaurant located on the tree-lined Boulevard Eugène Pierre, embodies this description. A sister restaurant to the popular El Santo Cachón, La Santita opened just a little over a year ago, and has rapidly become a neighborhood favorite. Here, owners and Marseille transplants, Chilean-born Cristobal Urizar and his French wife, Mathilde Gineste, serve up traditional Latin American favorites with French verve. After meeting in Honduras while on holiday, the pair moved to Marseille and have called it home for 15 years.

Athens

Fall Recipes: Greek Butternut Squash Fritters with Olives and Herbs

It’s fall and the wonderful farmers markets of Athens are filled with the season’s harvest; fresh walnuts and chestnuts, persimmons, pomegranates, quince and, of course, the two queens of the season: pumpkin and butternut squash. I love using butternut squash or pumpkin in a variety of recipes and these traditional fritters are one of my favorite ways to enjoy this nutritious vegetable. This is a recipe that I include in my cookbook Salt of the Earth (Quadrille, 2023), and it is inspired by the traditional version from the region of Messenia in southern Peloponnese. In my take on this dish, I add some chopped green olives as I like variety in textures and flavors and the olives, along with crumbled feta, add a beautiful layer of umami to the fritters.

New Orleans

Fall Recipes: Jambalaya, a Staple of the (Football) Season

Jambalaya, the rice dish that stands at the crossroads of culture and cuisine, is a staple of celebration, mourning and everything in between in Louisiana. From tailgates to Mardi Gras to repasts and backyard cookouts, it is a ubiquitous food that can be a main or a side dish. The roots of the dish can be traced to West African jollof rice, as well as Spanish paella. At its essence, jambalaya is an odds-and-ends dish that feeds a multitude, a humble rice dish with some meat and/or seafood cooked into it by way of a flavorful broth. As for the origins of the name jambalaya, there are as many theories as the grains of rice contained within. Some believe it to come from the Provençal word jambalaia, which means a mishmash.

Los Angeles

Mirak: The GOAT of Goat Stew

It’s no secret that Los Angeles has an amazing Korean food scene. L.A.’s Koreatown is the largest in the United States, with over 500 restaurants, so Angelenos are lucky enough to find restaurants that specialize in less common dishes, beyond the popular Korean barbecue or bibimbap. One such dish is yeomso tang (also spelled yumso tang), a stew traditionally made with Korean black goat meat, which we tracked down at Mirak. Black goats get their name, naturally, from the black hair that covers their body. They are native to Korea, where eating black goat is believed to have numerous health benefits. Not only is it a leaner meat, it’s also believed to be very nutritious.

Lisbon

Juliana Penteado Pastry: Baking Lisbon a Better Place

It’s been a long journey – literally – for pastry chef Juliana Penteado, culminating in her small-but-beautiful bakery in Lisbon’s São Bento neighborhood, and another shop soon to come. The Brazilian chef first enrolled in a cooking school in São Paulo at age 12 where, she would spend six years studying. As a young girl, she went back and forth between cooking and baking, but the latter would eventually win. “I also like cooking but baking has a more delicate and feminine side which make my eyes sparkle,” she tells us. It’s that inspiration which shines through in the elegant, lovingly made pastries that have become her calling card.

Mexico City

Holy Mole: Celebrating Mexico’s Iconic Sauce

If you like mole – and we still haven’t met anyone who doesn’t – then a visit to pueblo of San Pedro Atocpan in Mexico City’s Milpa Alta district and its National Mole Fair, which this year celebrates its 46th anniversary, is a must. That the pueblo should host a mole fair makes perfect sense. San Pedro, located about two hours directly south of downtown Mexico City, is known (perhaps unofficially) as the Mole Capital of Mexico (other pueblos also stake their claim to this title). There are only about 9,000 residents and it’s believed that ninety percent of the are involved in some way in the production or sale of mole.