Marseille

Pachamama Sud: Latin America on Wheels

As the nearby church bells toll the noon hour, customers start to congregate around the Pachamama Sud food truck. Two men sip Argentinian beers at the counter, munching on chips and guacamole offered by the owner, Nanou. Another customer bellies up to the colorful truck, only to look confused by the menu. Nanou explains the difference between a taco and a tortilla, handing him a taste of her famous sweet potato fries as an amuse-bouche. Pachamama Sud is turning the city, one Marseillais at a time, onto the flavors of Latin America, a foreign land for so many in spite of Marseille’s rich multiculturalism. From Argentinian empanadas to Peruvian manioc balls and Mexican smoked chicken tacos, the menu invites customers to “travel with their taste buds,” explains Nanou. “With no passport required.”

Athens

Cookos: New Tricks for an Old Taverna

Much as we may love the kitchen, and while the lockdown has given us plenty of time to experiment with old and new recipes, there does come a moment when the cook needs a meal off. Whether it’s because you have neglected to shop, have run out of inspiration or simply hanker for a dish prepared by someone else, being able to order from a place that has something more exciting than pizza, souvlaki, hamburgers and crepes is a very welcome treat. Some tavernas have come to the rescue, offering takeout from their regular menus, but the owners of a landmark Kifissia taverna have taken that option one step further and opened a special shop catering to takeout and deliveries. Cookos – the name is a play on the words “cook” and “kos,” the abbreviation for Kyrios or Mister – opened on December 15, 2020.

Queens

Boishakhi: A Journey to Bangladesh, Via Ozone Park

Opening a restaurant during the pandemic was a “big risk,” Khaled Khan tells us. With his business partner and longtime friend, Tozammel Tanzil, we’re sitting in the back of Boishakhi, which they introduced last autumn in Ozone Park, a neighborhood in southern Queens not far from JFK Airport. “People don’t want to take chances on food they don’t know,” Tozammel adds. Boishakhi, a new sibling to an Astoria restaurant of the same name, serves the food of Bangladesh. Born in the 1947 partition of British India and previously known as East Pakistan, Bangladesh is a densely populated country on the Bay of Bengal that shares a small border with Myanmar. Its only other immediate neighbor is modern-day India, which envelopes Bangladesh to the east, north and west.

Tbilisi

Mama Terra: Detox, With a Mexican Twist

Anthony Bourdain liked to say the body is a playground, a sentiment we couldn’t agree with more, especially when digging into the cholesterol-laden acharuli khachapuri or wiping a ketsi clean of its spicy pool of kupati – Georgian sausage – grease with a piece of bread. Shots of chacha and glasses of wine make us swing, bounce, teeter-totter and sometimes fall, and in the morning when the fog and pain clears, we may remember that the body is also a fragile temple requiring more ministration than a sacrificial bowl of tripe soup can provide. In Tbilisi’s Mtatsminda district there is a sanctuary providing both solace to devotees of healthy eating and penance to gluttonous sinners like us. No ordinary hummus bar, this affectionate “eating apartment” is called Mama Terra – Veggie Corner.

Athens

CB Book Club: Marianna Leivaditaki’s “Aegean”

We recently spoke to Marianna Leivaditaki about her cookbook, “Aegean: Recipes from the Mountains to the Sea” (Kyle Books, September 2020), which delves into the cuisine of Crete, the largest island in Greece and one of its most distinct. Marianna grew up on Crete, where her father was a fisherman and her mother ran the family’s restaurant, before later settling in the UK – she’s now the head chef at Morito Hackney Road in London. A skilled storyteller, she weaves an enveloping portrait of life on the island, which is simple but simultaneously rich, and presents its cuisine through a personal lens. The end result is a transporting love letter to Crete, an island with so much to give.

Marseille

La Sicile Authentique: An Italian Hideaway

Located at the eastern edge of Marseille, Saint-Julien is a far cry from the bustling city center. Here, congested boulevards stretch into narrow streets, and birdsong, not the honking of scooters, fills the air. The residential neighborhood has mostly standalone houses, from 17th-century bourgeois bastides (farmhouses) to 20th-century homes built by immigrant families searching for a small-town vibe. One of them feels like it’s set in an Italian village, thanks to an enterprising Sicilian. Liliane Casteldaccia runs Sicile Authentique, an épicerie, restaurant and small catering company, out of the ground floor of the house in which she grew up. At the foot of the driveway, the wood-paneled dining area is peppered with maps and Italian memorabilia.

Marseille

U Mio Paese: The Corsican Pantry

Editor’s note: To further explore how the pandemic has affected the areas featured in our 2020 “Neighborhoods to Visit” guide and what recovery may look like, we will be publishing dispatches from restaurants, markets and food shops in these districts all week long. The close links between Marseille and the French island of Corsica are, in some ways, clearly marked in the city. Like the red-and-white Corsica Linea ferries docked in Marseille’s port that make daily crossings across the Mediterranean. Or the prevalence of Corsican canistrelli at Marseille’s boulangeries and biscuiteries.