Up in the high streets of the Horta-Guinardó hills, not far from the old historic building of L’Hospital de La Santa Creu i Sant Pau, there is a restaurant with a big concentration of culinary talent but just eight tables. To make things worse, they are only available during two hours for lunch. Fortunately for those who can’t snag one of those precious tables, La Cuina del Guinardó (“Guinardo’s Kitchen”), a Catalan traditional market-cuisine restaurant, is also a store selling cooked food to take away from morning to evening and a great wine shop, with a tasting area in the upper level.

A particularly eye-catching landmark in Lisbon’s Alfama district is the Casa dos Bicos (“House of the Spikes”), a 16th-century palace – once home to the Portuguese viceroy of India, and now housing the José Saramago Foundation – that has a bizarre façade of spiked stones and eclectic doors and windows. Just next to it is Reviravolta, a modest neighborhood tasca that serves up a dish with similarly iconic status: cozido a Portuguesa. One of the most traditional Portuguese meals, cozido has humble origins; first invented in the interior Beira region, it was a dish to use up all the week’s lunch leftovers. It consists of a mixture of several kinds of meat, including chicken, pork ribs, pork belly, pig’s ear, beef shank and assorted offal, complemented by different smoked sausages: chouriço, fat and sweet paprika, blood sausage and farinheira – the latter a Jewish invention of wheat flour, paprika and pepper, nowadays mixed with pork fat. Cozido is accompanied by boiled vegetables such as beans, potatoes, cabbage, turnip greens and rice. All of that, on just one plate.

Watching residents of Paquetá Island between the turnstiles and gate to get their ferryboat home from Rio’s central Praça XV port is like watching horses chomp at the bit before their stable doors are opened. The 5,000 proud homebodies of Rio’s little car-less island in the center of Guanabara Bay are anxious to get back to it, often pulling tall shopping carts stacked with beer and snacks. There’s only one small grocery store on the island and what gets here, gets here by boat and human hands. The ferry is a destination as much as a journey for those who want to appreciate one of Rio’s most unique little corners. You’ll question the quiet here and remember that this city of 14-lane highways is set to a constant soundtrack of engines and “PORRA!” (Pronounced POU-hah, this is a ubiquitous carioca curse you’ll hear when someone’s mildly upset or surprised, a much saltier version of “damn it!”)

Although, thanks to its once flourishing silver and gold mines, the north-central Mexican state of Zacatecas was an economic powerhouse during the colonial period and the early years of the Mexican republic, its cuisine is not as well known in Mexico City as that of states such as Oaxaca and Michoacán. But when we headed this past New Year’s to the state’s eponymous capital city, we were blown away by its food, as well as its history and beautiful colonial architecture. Zacatecas played a significant role in Mexico’s economy during the colonial period: When the Spanish conquistadors learned about the region’s rich mineral deposits in the mid-16th century, they started mining operations immediately. In 1585, the city that had grown from the mining settlement was recognized by the Spanish crown and called the “Muy Noble y Leal Ciudad de Nuestra Señora de Zacatecas.”

Settled by Greek refugees from Turkey after 1923, Nea Erythraia is a northern suburb of Athens that started off very low-key and has now evolved into a buzzing shopping and nightlife area, full of cafés, bars, restaurants and gelaterias. Despite the recent boom, many places that have been local favorites for over a decade now are still popular. One such venue, a small, unassuming restaurant with the welcoming name of “Kali Parea” (meaning “good company” in English), is hidden in a quiet street off the main road. Its faithful clientele come here to savor seasonal fish (mainly small fry) and seafood (calamari, octopus and shrimp), prepared either fried or grilled.

Bāozi (包子), or steamed buns, are a basic, on-the-go meal. It’s rare to come across a shop selling these buns for more than 1.5 RMB (US$0.25), and yet, the past five years have seen a dramatic rise in the stature of this humble dish – thanks mostly to celebrity chef David Chang, whose Momofuku pork bun has become world-famous. They even got a domestic boost in 2013, when President Xi Jinping visited a local 60-year-old baozi shop in Beijing. (Now, thanks to an hours-long queue to try the “President Special,” that chain is looking to go public.) Legend has it that baozi date back to the Three Kingdoms period (A.D. 220-280) and are credited to Zhuge Liang, a renowned military strategist who was also an eccentric foodie. He invented both this steamed bun and our favorite breakfast treat: the jianbing

Though Brazil is rich in mother earth’s most colorful produce – like passion fruit, guava, papaya, collard greens and sweet abóbora pumpkins – residents of Rio nonetheless have a steady love affair with hot dogs, which are pronounced “HOH-tchee DOH-geey,” or literally translated into Portuguese as cachorro quente. Vendors across the city pile the bunned favorite with a set of toppings as elaborate as they are consistent from one cart to the next: hard-boiled quail eggs, green peas, corn, potato straws, stewed onions and Parmesan cheese. “Tia” was a young mother of three with a husband whose blue-collar salary as a cop meant life was a hustle in their working-class neighborhood of Freguesia. “I had to take them all to school, prepare breakfast, the school uniforms,” she said. “I got no rest.” Her hot dog vendor days began in 1982, when her daughter was a newborn, and she had what she now says were two decades of busting her chops before the cachorro quente da Tia would become one of the most in-demand snacks in this periphery neighborhood of Rio. “Thank God,” she says of her success in her hot dog business, which now encompasses both a quiosque and a store, with 16 employees in total.

Metin Akdemir is a filmmaker based in Istanbul. In 2011 he made a short film about street vendors in the city. The film, “Ben Geldim Gidiyorum” (“I’ve Come and I’m Gone”), won several awards in Turkish and international film festivals, and we think it’s a very valuable piece of work that captures a side of Istanbul’s culture that is slowly disappearing.

Portuguese regional food can be found easily in Lisbon, but at Grupo Excursionista e Recreativo Os Amigos do Minho, it is one of its raisons d’êtres. This warren of rooms that occupy a 19th-century tile-clad building not only works as a restaurant; the small cultural association has been a point of encounter for internal migrants moving from the northernmost Portuguese region of Minho since the 1950s. For all that time, this humble spot has kept the Minho culture alive in the capital, as well as renting out the space to young music promoters and cultural producers. Here you can experience rowdy parties with northern-style dances, live performances of the “concertina” (a typical accordion from the region) and, most importantly, group dinners with local, traditional food.

Lisbon, one of the world’s oldest cities, has a grand and turbulent past. Due to its position on the Atlantic Ocean, the Portuguese capital has been an important international trading post for centuries, flooded by a wide range of cultural influences and culinary tastes. The Romans, Arabs and Phoenicians all left their mark here, particularly with that lasting and classic trilogy: bread, wine and oil. The trade route opened by explorer Vasco da Gama in the 15th century also brought in spices and herbs little seen elsewhere in Europe at the time, and spices such as saffron, pepper, cinnamon and nutmeg are still integral to Lisboetas’ kitchens today.

As the towers of Tokyo’s Nihonbashi financial district began to proliferate and grow taller, developers took special care to preserve and in many cases not displace the area’s mainstream department stores, art galleries and varied restaurants, and so traditional establishments were often incorporated into the new buildings. The Mitsui real estate group, which opened the two Coredo Towers in 2014, made sure to include time-honored restaurants in the new setting, including an amazingly good, classic Edo-mae sushi bar lured from an outdated setting, an outpost of a Kyoto home-cooking restaurant and a dazzling array of famous sweets shops. The developers were also clever enough to include a classic izakaya, or pub-style establishment, enticed away from the Tsukiji market. Every evening, office workers pour out of local mega-buildings and pack into Nihonbashi Suminoe to enjoy the collegial atmosphere and flavorful charcoal-cooked fish. Sakaya means a location in which to purchase sake, and “i” means to stay in a place and feel at ease. Thus, i-sakaya becomes “izakaya” when pronounced correctly, and it’s the perfect way to describe Nihonbashi Suminoe.

The rustic family favorite Can Pineda has been holding down this corner of Barcelona’s El Clot neighborhood since 1904. It was not a restaurant originally, but a typical wine shop and canteen, where plenty of life could be found amongst the wooden barrels that now slumber peacefully on their perch up above the dining room. At that time, the place was frequented by local factory workers, who would come for a glass of wine to go with a simple meal or to drink while warming up their lunch boxes. The then-owners would put a pine branch on the door to signal the arrival of the vi novell, or new wine of the year, and from the pine, pi in Catalan, came the name Can Pineda, which translates roughly to “The Pine House.” Today, El Clot is part of the new high-tech 22@ district, which is focused on innovation and research but maintains in its oldest streets the spirit of the village (Sant Martí de Provençals) that once flourished here, with its own market (dating back to 1889) and walls that remain from Barcelona’s first Industrial Age. Can Pineda sits right in the middle, a small but welcoming eatery with just 30 seats, decorated with the characteristic blue azulejos tiles, those wooden barrels and a few excellent hams hanging behind the bar.

The manousheh (plural manaeesh) is one of the defining staples of Lebanese food. In a country known for its divisions, the universally loved manousheh might be the breakfast food that unites all Lebanese. A manousheh is a round flatbread cooked in a big oven or on top of a saj (a domed oven prevalent in the Levant), traditionally topped with zaater (a mix of thyme, olive oil, sesame seeds and sumac) or salty white akawi cheese. Manaeesh can be sliced or folded and, much like pizza, they can be thin or thick. In modern times, toppings have come to include a whole range of different ingredients, and there are even now dessert manaeesh that are topped with Nutella. Manaeesh are so popular that there is not one neighborhood, town or even remote village where they are not made.

You get to Bar do Alto by taking a zippy mototaxi up the snaking streets of the Babilônia favela and then walking 10 minutes up jagged staircases that eventually bear right. On the route, you’ll pass by slices of life that make favelas a museum of Rio, where the city’s symbols and icons are on display in the bare and human way that’s made possible by close quarters of self-made dwellings. There are the evangelicals raising their voices in weeknight prayers. Shirtless men with leathered skin that speaks to long day jobs, now tipping back tall evening bottles of beer. Children playing soccer as overheated cops in bulletproof vests slump on nearby benches.

When we picked up a cab from Meşhur Unkapanı İMÇ Pilavcısı recently, it turned out the driver had just been there for a refuel himself. Sensing a captive yet interested audience, he held forth all the way to Beyoğlu about where to eat well and cheaply – without stomachaches ensuing – in Istanbul. We’re always happy to discuss the finer points of kuru fasulye (stewed beans), but this driver seemed to have a particularly deep interest in the subject. After debating the merits of various canned brands (“Yurt” brand or nothing, in case you were interested), he dived into the subject of soup.