We recently spoke with the wine writer Miquel Hudin about his new Vinologue guidebook, Georgia: A Guide to the Cradle of Wine. Hudin was the 2016 recipient of the Geoffrey Roberts Award, an international wine prize, and was named the Best Drink Writer of 2017 by Fortnum & Mason Awards. He has also published a number of guidebooks on other wine regions. Your most extensive previous wine coverage has been about Spain. How come you decided to write a book about Georgia and its wine? Georgia has simply been a point of fascination for years. But it was frustrating to see the same handful of wines pop up time and again so I made the trip over and dived in deep, aided a great deal by winning the Geoffrey Roberts Award.

The tiny Öz Develi Etli Pide Salonu is nestled in a narrow backstreet in Istanbul’s Tarlabaşı neighborhood, a place that is much more synonymous with crime, gentrification and crass urban development (in that order) than it is with regional culinary specialties. But Öz Develi’s speciality, the cıvıklı pide, is so enticing that it attracts diners from all over the city to this unfairly maligned neighborhood, which is neither without its problems nor lacking in treasures. The master behind the cıvıklı is Hacı Ahmet Beşparmark, who hails from the district of Develi, south of Mount Erciyes in the Central Anatolian province of Kayseri.

Rod is at his seat at the end of the bar, his booming Scottish voice subdued by the spirited dim of a couple dozen Friday night regulars speaking mostly English in a variety of accents. We make our way to the steam table in the corner of the room to find it empty. Looks like there may have been chicken wings in there. If you want to munch free food at the weekly happy hour at Betsy’s Hotel bar, you have to get here at 6 p.m., when it starts.

In Mexican cuisine, sweets are for the most part simple treats that are enjoyed at the park, market or beach, such as caramelized fruits and vegetables, blocks of nuts or amaranth seeds held together with honey, or small rice paper cakes filled with honey. The common denominator of most of these sweets is their simplicity. When it comes to ice cream and other frozen delights, however, the country truly shines, with an astounding variety of cold treats to please sweet tooths of every persuasion. The range of frozen desserts found in Mexico City includes everything from raspados – ice shavings served in plastic bags or cups to which a flavor of choice is added – to Italian gelato served in some of the most sophisticated restaurants in town.

Here's a flashback to our special event in the countryside of eastern Georgia, where we learned about the process of making chacha, the ubiquitous moonshine culled from the remnants of winemaking. The day culminated in this epic feast. Stay tuned for the announcement of future dates!

This funky restaurant’s name was inspired by its address, on one of the main streets in the Athens district known as Neos Kosmos, or New World. It could just as well be called Terra Incognita, so distant is it from the usual areas frequented by locals and foreigners alike for entertainment and good food. And yet, geographically, it’s just a short walk from a new institution that has already claimed its rightful place among the “must sees” of the Big Olive: the National Museum of Contemporary Art.

The Spanish Civil War may have ended five years earlier, but in 1944 Barcelona was still recovering from the conflict. Franco’s budding dictatorship had put in place a complicated social and economic situation, while the city’s port – home to a humming underground black market – was rebuilding its fishing fleet, as fascist bombs had destroyed most of the boats during the war. Amidst all this action and uncertainty, the Galician Millán family opened a restaurant named Carballeira on Reina Cristina Street, in the Pas de Sota Muralla neighborhood of Port Vell (Old Port). Fisherman and port workers flocked to the restaurant, where over fish soup, grilled sardines, prawns or a bowl of hearty Galician Caldo Gallego – and almost certainly a glass of wine – they talked about the situation.

La pizzaiola, played by Sophia Loren, peddles pizza from a counter on the doorstep of her street level apartment. She kneads dough while crying out for custom in a thick dialect and as clouds of flour fall to the cobbled Neapolitan street. This scene comes from one of the great cinematic homages to a city: Di Sica’s L’Oro di Napoli (“The Gold of Naples”), a 1954 a film that grapples with the bittersweet tastes of comedy, tragedy, hustling and the art of making do. There’s nowhere better to see Naples in all its “golden” glory than in the very neighborhood in which the film’s star, the inimitable Totó, grew up and where parts of the film are set: La Sanità.

From Western China all the way to Istanbul, Turkic people roll out dough, fold it into small pouches, boil it and call it mantı. When it comes to dumplings, Turkish tradition dictates that the tortellini-like mantı be no larger than peanut-sized. With its unusually large (and sometimes fried) dumplings, Bodrum Mantı & Café has taken traditional Turkish mantı to soaring new heights, of which we strongly approve.

The kids were playing in the park, and Dad needed a cup of coffee for the caffeine boost to keep up with his daughter. Luckily there was a café nearby – where you would least expect one. The park is a modest little playground patch in a residential neighborhood across from the funicular that hauls people up and down Mtatsminda Mountain to the amusement park and restaurant above the city. The café is on the ground floor of a Communist-era apartment block, just a couple dozen paces away. It was everything a little coffeehouse should be: warm, cozy, quiet and wheelchair accessible.

It is not hubris to say you have the best tortas (Mexican sandwich) in town when you have been serving them for more than 80 years. Take Tortas La Texcocana, which has been serving the delicious sandwiches in Mexico City since the early 1930s – their longevity suggests an unsurpassable skill for sandwich-making. The business was founded by León Sánchez, a Texcoco native, in downtown Mexico City. He started selling sardine tortas to newspaper workers on the street. In 1936, he established a small shop that sold various items, his famous tortas among them. Tortas La Texcocana is in the same venue where Sánchez set up his shop many decades ago.

In Greece, where the land is mostly rocky and steep and the climate hot and arid, the olive tree thrives, and for millennia, olive oil has been as essential to Greek cooking as the gnarled, silver-leaved trees have been to its landscape. Greece is the third largest producer of olive oil in the world after Spain and Italy and the greatest in consumption per capita. Used liberally as a cooking fat for all manner of ingredients and preparations, as well as in its raw state to dress or flavor dishes, olive oil also plays an influential role in Greek baking, such as in koulourakia, twisted or coiled cookies, and paximadia, the twice-baked rusks that come savory or sweet.

One of the things we love about Japanese food is that it celebrates specialists. A good sushi chef makes only sushi, and only after years of study to learn the art of making the perfect rice. Likewise, only a master of the dynamics of hot oil can craft perfect tempura. So it’s no surprise that at Japanese chicken restaurants one can find a true dedication to specific methods of preparing fowl.

Lisbon is a city that knows how to keep a secret. In the early days of World War II, German, American and British spies overran the capital – Portugal was officially neutral during the war – and many of the city’s bars and casinos were hotbeds of international (in)discretion. Later, just before the Carnation Revolution in 1974, many central cafés were meeting points for covert leftist associations. Today, the hidden bars in Lisbon are decidedly less cloak-and-dagger. Yet there is still a real sense of intrigue when you ring the bells of exclusive clubs, private cultural associations and former brothels, and step inside for a hush-hush drink.

When we talk about the “suburbs” in Brazil, some may imagine the affluent outer boroughs of London, New York or Singapore. But in Rio de Janeiro, they’re nothing like that. Far from its beautiful beaches, Christ the Redeemer and Sugarloaf Mountain, the city’s suburbs are the opposite of tony – they’re where Rio’s working-class people live. Yet the suburbs are where you can find the most authentic carioca soul. They are home to the biggest favelas, the most important samba schools, Afro-Brazilian religious temples, the majority of football fields and, of course, the best botequins, or local bars.