Like most Syrians who fled their war-ravaged country and made their way to Turkey, Fatma Jabal, a 19-year-old from Aleppo now living in Istanbul, had to get creative in order to make a living. With a baby boy to take care of and her husband struggling to provide for their family while working as a carpenter, Fatma tapped into something she’s been doing since she was a child: baking cakes and cookies. Making desserts had been something Fatma has loved from early on growing up in Aleppo, which she left in 2014 in the midst of the worsening conflict there. For her, each treat she bakes is a work of art that just happens to be edible. “The first thing I did in the kitchen was sweets,” she says. But Fatma realized she needed to develop her budding baking prowess to start charging customers.

Addy has cornered the Astoria market in Kenyan cuisine. Even so, large portions of his menu are devoted to dishes familiar all around the world, and popular with all ages. They include a dozen or so flavors of chicken wings and a fistful of burgers, some basic, some overloaded. (Lean forward over the plate, is our advice, when biting into a Juicy Lucy.) To our surprise, the American South stakes a claim at Addy's after all: The country-fried steak, served atop mashed potatoes and accompanied by a brimming cup of gravy, is one of the best we've ever had. Because mishkaki is new, at first, to most of Addy's clientele, he's simplified the presentation rather than risk confusing his customers. Typically, at a Kenyan roadside stall, mishkaki is served with flatbread, the meat arrives on the skewer, and the customer adds sauces and other accompaniments to his or her liking. In Astoria, mishkaki is served with rice and a salad, and the chunks of meat, sans skewers, are already seasoned, à la Addy. We can practically taste the sizzle.

At any time of day you’ll see crowds of people at the ancient, welcoming restaurant. At lunchtime, many regulars come daily not for the pizza, but for Maria’s home cooked dishes. “Here we serve traditional Neapolitan dishes,” says the 74-year-old. “Pasta and potatoes, pasta and beans, pasta sorrentine style or bolognese. The menu changes every day, and the bread is made every morning, here, directly in the pizza oven … with my hands.” There’s something about the pizzeria that transmits a sense of history, particularly its inner room, the walls of which are covered in declarations of love for the restaurant and drawings made on paper napkins by loyal customers over the decades. “It is as if customers wanted to leave something of themselves,” Attilio tells us proudly. “They wanted to return some of the goodness they just tasted with something that would last.”

Think of Ramadan, which just began in many parts of the world, as a kind of monthlong biathlon that consists of an all-day race to beat back the hunger and thirst of fasting, followed by an all-night marathon of eating and drinking in order to fortify the body for the next day’s fast. In recent years in Turkey, iftar, the traditional break fast meal that used to mostly consist of some dates and a freshly baked round of Ramadan pide, has started to become an increasingly trendy affair, with ministers, businessmen and regular people trying to make an impression by hosting ever more lavish meals.

The recent loss of the world’s first baijiu-themed bar, Beijing’s Capital Spirits, to hutong landlord issues has refocused the spirit’s lens on Shanghai, where bars are incorporating the grain alcohol into their drinks program. Baijiu may be the most-consumed spirit in the world – thanks mostly to China’s massive population – but its name has only recently started to make waves outside the country. This growing recognition is in part thanks to the trend of mixing baijiu into cocktails. At Healer Bar, this blending of Eastern flavors with Western drinking culture is a deliberate choice that is meant to educate as well as inebriate. Before owner Phoebe Han opened her bar, the Xi’an-native mixed cocktails with some of the city’s best bartenders at Kee Club, The Nest and The Apartment, but she wanted to change the way people perceived Chinese spirits.

“We want to show people what Greek cuisine is really like. It’s not just souvlaki, gyros and moussaka. So in July and August when we’re closed, we travel all over the country looking for recipes, and because we love Greek wines too, we find recipes that go with them,” Xenophon says. We took a long time studying the menu – nibbling on their own olive bread – because even the dishes that sound familiar are not always what they appear to be. Take, for example, spanakopita (spinach pie). Here, it’s actually a salad. Moreover, their cheese dip, myttotos, made of three white cheeses plus black garlic, “goes back to the time of Hippocrates,” and the liver with apples, a combination we’ve never heard of, is a recipe from Karditsa in the northern Greek region of Thessaly.

Naples is a city strewn with street vendors. Bread, thin pizzas meant to be eaten folded, fried pizzas, octopus broth, roasted artichokes, cones full of fried goodies, donuts, panzerotti and rice balls – there’s little you can’t find one of Naples’ vendors selling. Together, these numerous street sellers and their small stands play an important economic and cultural role in the city. In the midst of all these vendors there’s one that somehow manages to stand out. Some know him simply as Carmine. Others call him Carmine the Wizard because of his enchanting roasted chestnuts, which warm the hands and the stomachs of Neapolitans in winter. Whatever you call him, he’s an icon of Naples street food.

The red storefront and Cyrillic lettering made it clear this was not just another kebab shop. Hesitant at first, we scouted around the outside – the restaurant is tucked into a side street, flanked by a shipping office and a construction site, and does not appear to exist on Google Maps. The menu, written in dry erase marker on a board hanging from the wall, was entirely in Mongolian. Nevertheless, armed with the names of a few traditional Mongolian dishes – khuushuur (a sort of meat-filled empanada), mantuun buuz (dumplings) and tsuivan (noodle stew) – gained from some cursory YouTube research, we sheepishly approached the counter. As we attempted to order, our host smiled. “I’ll make you something, don’t worry,” she assured us, and ran into the kitchen.

At Culinary Backstreets, we tend to opt for tradition over trendy, street over chic. We delve into a city’s blind spots when it comes to local favorites. Taking that approach makes it too easy to dismiss new spots out of hand. So, if it weren’t for our friend Liz hounding us for months about a newish “falafel place” near her house, we almost certainly would not have thought about visiting it. But that’s the great thing about friends – they take us out of our routine and generally bring us to unexpected places, as was the case with Kebab Nation.

Where the A train dead-ends at Lefferts Boulevard, Liberty Avenue stretches on into the heart of the enclave known as Little Guyana, part of the larger Richmond Hill neighborhood. To most Americans, and even New Yorkers, this population remains obscure. “People don’t know who we are,” says Lakshmee Singh, a talk show host and community leader in Queens, Richmond Hill, once a predominantly German and Italian neighborhood, has seen a steady stream of Guyanese immigrants since the 1970s. Today, it’s home to the largest Guyanese community outside of Guyana itself, with Guyanese immigrants representing the second largest foreign-born community in Queens.

Next to some wooden shelves overloaded with spirits, a photograph of Natália Correia hangs on the wall. The photo’s placement makes it appear as if Correia, cigarette in hand, is surveying the small room, which is crowded with semi-broken tables. The late poet and upstart co-founded this tiny bar/café a few decades ago, and her presence is still felt here and in the neighborhood more generally: A nearby street, with a spectacular view of the city, is also named after her. Botequím is one of Graça’s oldest bars, located on the ground floor of Vila Sousa, one of the worker apartment complexes built at the end of the 19th century.

Chef, food writer, and MasterChef champion Tim Anderson shares his love of Tokyo and Japanese food culture in his new book, “Tokyo Stories: A Japanese Cookbook” (Hardie Grant, 2019). After moving to London, Anderson, who is originally from Wisconsin, won MasterChef in 2011, a title that catapulted him into a position as one of the UK’s most prominent voices on Japanese food and led to the opening of his own izakaya, Nanban, in Brixton at the end of 2015. We recently spoke to Anderson about his love for Tokyo’s food culture and how he translated this eclectic and wide-ranging culinary scene into a cookbook.

Christos Mplantis, a 37-year-old farmer based in Marathon, a region in northeastern Attica, has farming in his blood. His father, Alexandros, was a farmer too, and starting at the age of ten, Christos began joining his father at farmer’s markets, or laiki (λαϊκή), around Athens any time he was off school, particularly during the summers. Although working the land and selling at markets became second nature to him, Christos didn’t immediately think to follow in his father’s steps. He went to technical school to become certified as a plumber but couldn’t find a decent job after graduating. So, around 17 years ago, he found himself in a familiar spot: working next to his father.

We were strolling through the Dezerter’s Bazaar building when a little woman, about 5 feet tall, interrupted a pair of our German guests with “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” Instantly charmed by her bright expression and linguistic dexterity, they stopped and chatted away in German. That’s how Tina Nugzarashvili became a must-stop on our Tbilisi market walk. Tina occupies stall number 10 in a building that used to be the epicenter of Tbilisi’s main farmer’s market, two blocks from the central train station. The old structure, built in the 1960s, was an enormous space under a tin dome crammed with mountains of corn and wheat flour, wheels of cheese stacked a meter high, plastic buckets of spices, pyramids of corn-fed chickens, and piles of fruits and vegetables, some neon red, others green and orange.

“I missed the traditional foods I grew up with in Cádiz,” said Natalia García, a young woman with dark hair, bright red lipstick and a smattering of tattoos across her upper arm. “I was actually born in Germany, and my mother was a professional cook, so I was always around food,” she tells us. Despite the German heritage, García’s strong accent and open, friendly demeanor are pure Andalusia. “Whenever I told people [in Barcelona] I was from Cádiz, they would get excited. Everyone loves Cádiz, especially the food.” After living in Barcelona for just one year, García decided to open La Chana, a bar that reminded her of home, in the heart of the non-touristy neighborhood of Poble Sec.