Mall dining in Asia is nothing like its American counterpart, thanks mostly to the humid climates of Singapore and Hong Kong. These two islands have tunnels and bridges connecting malls throughout the cities, making them easy to traverse while staying inside the air-conditioned environment. When temperatures spike – as they do on most days – crowds flock to the malls; the restaurants have followed suit. You can eat everything from excellent snack food to Michelin-starred meals in malls in Hong Kong and Singapore. But what does all that have to do with Shanghai?

Winding between the teenage fashion havens of Harajuku and Shinjuku is the ultra-hip Cat Street, lined with countless second-hand clothing stores and embellished with a single origin coffee shop. Just a stone’s throw to its south lies a nondescript concrete building. Unassuming from the outside, for the past 15 months its second floor hid a sake bar. The interior was a stylish and modern take on Japanese design – a sleek counter in the center, tatami mats and sliding doors splitting the space into three. Here, a young crowd gathered, sampling the latest sake and regional dishes – from Miyagi beef tongue meatballs and Iwate squid sashimi to Akita smoked pickled daikon topped with cream cheese. Given its relatively short residency, one might be forgiven for thinking the bar was a trend or a poorly conceived dream. But Mysh, (pronounced “my shu” meaning “my sake”) didn’t go out of business, nor were any of its members of staff full time. Their lease having expired, the founders decided to take some time out before finding a new home – time to review their goal of creating something more than a dining establishment, of creating a community space. Currently, the bar only exists as a monthly pop-up event, but its founding story and model are indicative of Tokyo’s broader culinary culture - one that is simultaneously steeped in tradition while constantly reinventing itself under the city’s bright neon lights.

When Nikos Thomas was desperately looking for work in 2005, he was forced to switch gears from music and take on a particularly unglamorous gig: working at the Hooters in Athens Mall as a grill cook, the best-paying job he could find. Little did this rocker know he would be sacrificing his life-long passion of music for a new and tastier one – cooking. Two years out from his Hooters gig, Nikos found himself enrolled at a chefs’ school, eventually moving on to work in restaurants, then hired on as chef at a hotel on the island of Zakynthos. And as Nikos opened himself up to new passions, more found its way into his life.

When the other butcher shops in Naples are closing for lunch and at the end of the day, activity at D'Ausilio Macelleria is just picking up. The cooktops are lit, sandwiches are being made and this Italian butcher shop becomes a quality burgeria. “I come from Vomero (the hill district) to buy Raffaele’s hamburgers. My children love them,” says customer Rosaria Esposito at 8 p.m., when the macelleria is an hour into its transformation as a burgeria. But this is no trendy burger bar; the menu is steeped in local heritage. Rosaria leaves the burgers to the kids, choosing for herself the delicious home-style dishes created at D’Ausilio. Parmigiana alla Genovese stands out among those on display. Here are two sacred words of Neapolitan cuisine – Parmigiana and Genovese, a simple yet miraculous sauce made of meat (veal, beef or pork) and a heap of onions (red or white) – cornerstones in the history of local cooking.

On the walls at Haritna Restaurant are homages to simple sights: a large gate, ancient Damascene windows – it’s a scene that hopes to inspire the very particular feeling of sitting in the middle of a Damascus square, down a well-trodden, old lane. For in Arabic, haritna means “our lane.” Also a colloquial term for neighborhood, Haritna evokes a sense of home for those now living far away. In fact, owner Loay Bakdash, originally from Damascus himself, had dreamed of opening such a restaurant while working as a civil engineer in Saudi Arabia. But he didn’t want it to be a place where people would just come and eat. “I wanted the customers to feel that they are in one of Damascus’ neighborhoods, among their acquaintances in a family-friendly atmosphere,” he says.

Nowhere in Mexico City does one feel the collective weight of the largest population in North America more than on Avenida Lazaro Cardenas, the traffic artery that gushes a surfeit of humans and cars up the heart of the city’s downtown. The gutters stink of rotting fruit. Dirt and littered garbage encrust the sidewalks. And, at rush hour, walking a block means suffering a gauntlet of elbows and hands pushing at you and past you. For the most part, the businesses that line this street offer little comfort. Goods lie in heaps on carpets or hang two feet deep upon the walls of stores seemingly designed to be fire hazards, cramming too many people onto too little floor space.

The first few blocks of Baruthane are lined with a smattering of restaurants, barbers, television repair shops and dry cleaners, though in recent years a flurry of third-wave coffee shops and bars has arrived on the street. While this is a positive development for the young adults that patronize these establishments, there is the inevitable concern that their proliferation will cause a spike in rents and tarnish the quaint character of this beloved neighborhood. It is for this reason that we were thrilled to see a new establishment open up on Baruthane that reflects the classic small-business character that makes this area so special. Köy Börek is run by Abdullah Kral, a cheerful 53-year-old teddy bear of a man who makes some of the most delicious börek we’ve ever had – and we’ve had a lot. (Kral means king in Turkish, and we are prepared to crown Abdullah bey the king of börek.)

Speed down the National Road till you’re in sight of Rendis Market, then follow the trucks off the highway and into a vast depot of concrete sheds. Though the trucks are there to pick up and deliver fruits and veg from all over Greece to supermarkets, grocers’ and farmers’ markets, we pulled over and started shop-hopping. Rendis, an industrial district of small factories, warehouses and train yards on the west side of Athens, has never been an area one would go for pleasure.

A gloppy, meaty, cheesy brick served in a pool of sauce and with a mountain of fries: please meet the francesinha, the culinary pride and joy of the city of Porto. Today, restaurant billboards proclaim in many languages that they serve the best version in the world, revealing the genuine power of this artery-clogging combination that, incredibly, was originally conceived as a snack. We have to say it though: eating a francesinha is worth every last calorie. This dense sandwich, which is impossible to eat just with your hands, is often considered the lusophone version of the croque monsieur.

West Georgia's climate is ideal for tea, and Georgia has been producing high quality tea since 1847. On our Old Market & Beyond culinary walk in Tbilisi, we get a chance to see, smell and taste fine samples of tea and other delicacies in the Dezerter's Bazaar - the Georgian capital’s largest and oldest open-air marketplace.

We’ve been fascinated by dry pot (ma la xiang guo) since discovering it in Flushing last year, probably a decade after it had risen to match the popularity of hot pot in Beijing. This streamlined hot pot is a wok stir-fry of all your favorite hot pot ingredients, served in a large, half-empty bowl, as if the soup had evaporated. Although originally dry pots were also presented on a tableside cooktop, many places, especially those in Flushing’s mall food courts, just serve your meal in a big wooden or metal bowl, expecting that you will eat it quickly and move on.

Has mezcal gone the way of avocado toast, an item that’s become shorthand for cliched hipster trendiness? If you think yes, a visit to Mis Mezcales in Mexico City’s Colonia Roma may be in order. There, you will find Omar Trejo sitting behind his unassuming makeshift bar, parceling out sips to the uninitiated and reminding everyone who stops by his small liquor store devoted to small-batch Mexican distillates that before it became a “buzzy” spirit, mezcal was an elixir heavily-rooted in the soils and stories of Mexico. As Omar makes clear to those who come in, every bottle of mezcal tastes different, even from the same brand, the same agave variety and same year. It’s one of the drink’s greatest strengths and probably one of the greatest frustrations for drinkers who expect the standardization of tequila.

Stop into one of Spain’s best marisquerías (seafood restaurants) and on the menu you will find a dazzling display of the ocean’s bounty: big meaty clams of different shapes and colors, cockles, scallops, oysters, goose barnacles, spider crabs and lobsters. All will have their own with delectable consistency and texture and their own evocative flavors – from intense, sweet or floral to metallic or rich with umami. And most will likely have come from the waters off the craggy coast of northwest Spain’s untamed Galicia region, harvested by generations of artisan mariscadoras (seafood catchers), Galician women whose lives – and livelihoods – are intimately connected to the sea.

CB has teamed up with the creators of “Native Dish: United Flavors of NYC,” NYC Media’s new food TV series, to offer a behind-the-scenes look at some of the New Yorkers featured in these short videos. The series, which aims to celebrate New York City immigrants from all over the world, focuses on one individual and one dish at a time as a means through which to explore the myriad cuisines represented in the city and the people who make them. This month we are spotlighting Jamyang “Jimmy” Gurung, a Nepalese immigrant from the Himalayas, who manages the Himalayan Yak, a Nepalese/Tibetan restaurant, and Raksha Thapa, a waitress and former teacher from Kathmandu Valley. The Himalayan Yak team delve into their still-deep connection to Nepal and their love in sharing their cuisine and yak momos with New York.

We recently spoke with travel writer Caroline Eden about her culinary travelogue, Black Sea: Dispatches and Recipes, Through Darkness and Light (Hardie Grant; May 2019). Eden has written for the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Financial Times, among other publications, and has filed stories from Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan for BBC Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent. Eden is also co-author of Samarkand: Recipes & Stories from Central Asia & the Caucasus (Kyle Books; July 2016), a Guardian book of the year in 2016 and winner of the Guild of Food Writers Award for best food and travel book in 2017.