Ilha do Governador (“Governor's Island”), the biggest island in Guanabara Bay, was a popular weekend destination for many Rio inhabitants decades ago. In the 1980s, with the construction of the Rio International Airport on the island, the introduction of oil industry-related activities in the surrounding area and the beginning of a sad cycle of pollution and overpopulation, the place lost a good part of its grace and charm – but not all of it.

As with so many of the world’s great cuisines, Mexican cooking makes the most of every part of the animal, and for many of us culinary adventurers, beef cabeza, or head, is the source of some of the tastiest meat you can find in a tortilla. We’d been on the lookout for the best tacos de cabeza in the city, and we think we’ve finally found them.

Coca is a word used in Catalonia and neighboring regions for many kinds of baked doughs and pastries, both sweet and savory. The Catalan and Occitan word has the same root as “cake” and comes from the Dutch word kok, which entered the local lexicon during the reign of the Carolingians in Catalonia (759-809)

You don’t need the excuse of a ferry departure to head for the port of Rafina, on Attica’s east coast. Its long, open beach is a favorite among windsurfers, its fish stalls carry the catch from most of the central Aegean and, most important, it offers a handful of excellent eateries. But how can you separate the standouts from the run-of-the-mill?

In Delhi the heat has enveloped everything. And refreshing drinks, made from short- and long-lived seasonal fruits, have arrived on the streets.

Editor’s note: We regret to report that El Kaiku has closed. “We have paper tablecloths and napkins on the tables for two reasons: to not forget our roots as a workers’ canteen and because we prefer to spend the money on good product for our customers.” That was how Rafa Alberdi explained to us one of the keys to his restaurant, El Kaiku. Located in Barceloneta in front of what was once shipyards, the working man’s bar was transformed into an excellent neighborhood restaurant, where diners can enjoy cooking with traditional roots and modern leanings made from locally harvested seafood and other ingredients. The lovely terrace, one of our favorites in this city, is a boon as the weather warms up.

Update: This spot is sadly no longer open. True to its name, Mexico City’s Centro Histórico is full of history everywhere you look. Walking its cobblestone streets guarded by historic buildings, some 500 years old, is always a great learning experience for us. On one of our recent walks through this amazing part of the city, we stumbled upon one building that caught our attention. First of all, there was a sign at the entrance that said that José Martí, Cuban poet, writer, philosopher and revolutionary leader, lived in the building at the end of the 19th century.

Last week we had a hankering for baked brains, and in Tbilisi that used to mean only one thing – a visit to Alani, the Ossetian restaurant near the sulfur baths in Old Tbilisi. The venue is named after the ancient North Caucasus kingdom of the Alans, ancestors of the modern-day Ossetians; one might think this unpopular in a country that lost a war against Ossetian separatists (and Russians) in 2008, but the fact that it is highly regarded is testament to Georgia’s paradoxically tolerant nature. Of course, it helps to have consistently quality cooking too.

From 6 a.m., Tuesdays through Sundays, over 500 customers – from housewives to Michelin-starred restaurateurs – stream into a two-story, tile-front fish market in working-class Ponta d’Areia, a neighborhood in Niteroi, across Guanabara Bay from Rio de Janeiro. Since 2 a.m., stall owners have been out greeting fishing boats at docks across the city, where captains return from four- to 10-day trips along Brazil’s southeast coast, up to the Lake Region (Região dos Lagos, which includes the cities of Maricá, Saquarema and Cabo Frio, still in Rio de Janeiro state) and south to the state coastlines of São Paulo, Paraná and Santa Catarina.

As we’ve written here before, if you do a little rooting around, the Grand Bazaar can be as much about the food as it is about the shopping. Case in point: Aynen Dürüm, a microscopic kebab shack at the edge of the sprawling bazaar that serves exceptionally good wraps (or, as they’re called in Turkish, dürüm).

Den is either a really cool sake bar that serves amazing oden, or an oden-ya that has a fabulous sake list. Either way, it’s a great place to taste the best sake from around Japan and devour perfect oden that’s made to order in the little kitchen behind the noren curtain.

Update: Poncelet Cheese Bar is sadly no longer open.  In the first part of our series on Catalan cheeses, we wrote about very old traditions – going as far back as the Middle Ages and perhaps even further – including the practice of transhumance by shepherds in the Pyrenees. As cheese expert Eva Vila explained to us, up until the 1980s, many artisanal cheeses were hard to come by; they could only be found in the small, often remote villages or farms where they were made.

Chalkida, the small peninsula on central Evia (Euboea) just an hour’s drive from Athens, is an ideal day-trip destination for urbanites. It’s famous for an unusual phenomenon, in which the tide in the Strait of Evripos changes direction several times a day, and it’s also known among tourists for its fresh and delicious fish and seafood. When Chalkideans want fresh seafood, however, they head to the less touristed town of Nea Artaki, just north of Evia’s main city. In the tiny port, there’s a classic promenade lined with taverns, and the penultimate, Teskos, is our favorite destination. On a recent visit, the weather was beautiful, sunny and cool enough for us to sit on the sidewalk adjacent to the sea.

Planning dim sum with friends at Jade Garden might require “Save the Date” cards: The flagship restaurant of Hong Kong’s Maxim’s group is the hottest table in town and – at the time of printing – the next available reservation is six months away. For yum cha aficionados who aren’t deterred by hours-long queues, the Jade Garden does save some tables, but it’s less of a walk-in and more of a mass sit-in.

Melanito Biyouha's restaurant in São Paulo’s gritty Centro is a social sort of place. The salmon-pink dining room opens to the street, inviting passers-by to stop, bate-papo, talk football and grab a cold drink from the fridge. Others sit at tables and fill out immigration forms or apply for jobs. Everyone stays for the food, prepared in the tiny open kitchen.