Some recipes are so deeply connected with the region from which they originate that they are simply named after that place. Circassian chicken, an appetizer beloved in Turkey and throughout the Caucasus, is such a dish. The recipe itself takes on many different variations across different geographical locations, much like the mosaic of people and cultures that can be found within the large area in which Circassian chicken is enjoyed. There is record of the recipe for Circassian chicken entering Ottoman cuisine as early as the year 1859, by way of immigrants and exiles who came from the Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire.

Our friends were puzzled: back after two years away from our hometown of New Orleans, we were heading to a far-eastern suburb of the city to eat. With so many blessed dishes in the city center, why were we out in Chalmette? The answer was simple: Our destination was Secret Thai, a restaurant well worth the trip. Its location may seem odd at first, but it only adds to the allure of making a pilgrimage past the city’s industrial canal and the Lower Ninth Ward. About five miles east by way of the Mississippi River’s bend from the French Quarter, when the condensed city spills into strip malls, Secret Thai sits along another bend on Judge Perez Drive, St. Bernard Parish’s main commercial artery.

On this culinary tour of central Naples, we’ll go off the beaten path by visiting two wildly contrasting neighborhoods, Vomero and the Spanish Quarter. In both we’ll stop into the places – from artisanal producers to street food vendors and more – that locals go to for the quintessential taste of the city, one that was developed over millennia and, on this walk, distilled into a single day of eating and exploring.

“I'm a big pizza eater,” Francesco “Ciccio” Leone confesses. “But what I like most is being together with friends, conviviality.” The broad-shouldered Palermo native, 50, greets everyone who enters his establishment with a welcoming smile. It was during a dinner party held at his home that he came up with the idea for the name of his pizzeria. “The name came about by chance,” he recalls. “My friends would come to my house to eat, they would say, ‘Ciccio, pass me this; Ciccio, pass me that,’ and so I thought of calling the pizzeria Ciccio Passami l’Olio, which means ‘Ciccio, pass me the oil.’”

In the spring of 2017, the Bywater Bakery opened its doors and became something of an “instant institution.” Part casual restaurant and part impromptu community center, the cafe space hummed with perpetual activity. Deadline-racked freelancers posted up with their laptops, soon to be covered in butter-rich pastry flakes. Neighborhood regulars would crowd tables for a lingering lunch visit over salads or sandwiches. On many busy mornings, New Orleans jazz luminaries (the late-Henry Butler, Tom McDermott, John Boutte, Jon Cleary) might wander in to make use of the dining room’s upright piano, filing the space with impromptu performance and the occasional singalong.

“Five years ago, I started to write a cookbook about tripe,” Chef Gareth Storey tells us. “But I realized that I knew nothing about it other than how it was served in France and Italy. I needed to explore more about tripe in different parts of the world.” It could be said that he’s conducting his research in Portugal. Gareth is originally from Ireland, but is currently the head chef of Antiga Camponesa, in Lisbon. The restaurant is overseen by André Magalhães, of Taberna da Rua das Flores fame.

Situated on a pleasant corner in the heart of Kurtuluş is an unlikely yet warmly welcomed addition to this beloved neighborhood's excellent food scene: Horo Burger, which only features Sloppy Joes on its menu. While the name of this American classic conjures pleasant memories of family dinner for some and horrifying flashbacks from the school cafeteria for others, Horo's take on the Sloppy Joe is faithful yet elevated, just as put-together as it is messy.

There’s a pocket of Tokyo, strolling distance from the stock exchange and the former commercial center, which feels like a step back in time. Ningyocho is filled with stores specializing in traditional crafts, some more than 100 years old. Here you can buy rice crackers or traditional Japanese sweets or head for a kimono, before watching kabuki (traditional Japanese theater) at Meijiza. On Ningyocho’s main street, just a few minutes from Suitengu Shrine which couples visit to pray to conceive a child or for safe childbirth, is a window. The window isn’t very wide, but a flurry of movement draws the attention of passersby. There, a broad-faced Kazuyuki Tani is making udon, bouncing – no, dancing – as he works.

At first glance, there’s not much to see in Mealhada, a town in Portugal’s central inland Bairrada region about an hour’s drive south of Porto. If there is a main feature here, it’s probably the EN1, the country’s original north-south highway, which slices the town in half, providing a conduit for a seemingly never-ending parade of large, noisy trucks. Yet the town’s roadside signs reveal something else: “Rei dos Leitões,” “Pedro dos Leitões,” “Virgílio dos Leitões,” “Meta dos Leitões,” “Hilário Leitão.” Mealhada is ground zero in Portugal for leitão, roast suckling pig.

Long before Halloween – nowadays a popular event marked by pumpkins and costumes here in Italy, too – arrived in Naples, we had Carnival. A mix of pagan and religious festivity, celebrated with exuberance and (mainly culinary) excess before Lent, it culminates with Mardi Gras, the Tuesday in February which falls six weeks before Easter. In Naples, Carnival used to imply embarrassing homemade costumes and the desperate effort to escape egg throwing in the streets on the way home from school – as well as much more pleasant rites, including the food-related ones. Which, luckily, still endure. The widespread Italian habit of frying food for Carnival here takes the irregular, indented shape of chiacchiere – thin, crunchy fritters sprinkled with powdered sugar, which are also common in other regions of Italy but with different names – traditionally served with sanguinaccio, a decadent chocolate sauce originally made with pork’s blood, to honor the animal’s sacrifice.

"I always wanted a place where I could go a couple of times a week and have a good plate of pasta," Franco Raicovich tells us. From where we're sitting – across the table from Franco at Fuzi Pasta, which he opened in Fresh Meadows, in eastern Queens, in the summer of 2023 – we might be at any number of casual Italian restaurants. Tables for two, singly or pushed together for larger parties, line a banquette. The walls are hung with charming portraits of diners, most of them attractive women or cute children, wrangling spaghetti. We hear Sinatra in the background, but also 1960s soul and 1970s pop and rock.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that Lisbon’s fresh markets are disappearing. The Greater Lisbon area is home to 28 market spaces, yet only ten of these witness any significant commercial activity. As the city’s shoppers increasingly shift to supermarkets, its traditional markets have had to find new ways to remain relevant. In an effort to do this, some Lisbon markets have opted to transform part of their spaces into food courts – a phenomenon sometimes called the “Time Out effect,” after the high-profile market of the same name. It’s been a decade since the first of these relaunches, so we decided to visit the three Lisbon markets that have adopted it. What we witnessed showed a model that in one case seems to benefit both the traditional market and food court sides alike, while in the other cases, appears more lopsided.

In a city where it can be hard to keep track of trendy new restaurant openings, dining at El Mirador is a timeless tradition. Open since 1904, the beloved cantina stands in a corner across from the city’s iconic Chapultepec Park, hiding more than a century of history behind its green awning. Stepping inside El Mirador immediately calls for a decision: sitting on the restaurant side or in the cantina. Cantinas, which rose in popularity during Porfirio Díaz’s presidency in the early 20th century, are laid-back watering holes where food and drink are usually served with a side of live music and games such as dominoes. While similar in decor – green chairs, white tablecloths, ornate plates hanging on the walls – the restaurant and cantina at El Mirador offer two different ambiances, especially as the week progresses.

For a dish so ubiquitous, one would be forgiven to think there’s little to debate about Georgia’s national dumpling, the khinkali. But just as tastes vary, every Georgian has their own khinkali preferences and opinions. That’s certainly the case for chef Gela Arabuli, who believes khinkali has been gentrified and mass produced to a point where most people have forgotten the dumplings’ origins in the mountains and how they should really taste. “Real khinkali is from the high mountains. And there are no pigs in the mountains,” insists Gela, referring to the most popular and common filling of minced beef and pork in equal parts as kalakuri, or “city style,” khinkali.

“A pie might seem to be just a pie, but it’s not,” Drew Ramsey, the head of the family-run Hubig’s Pies tells us. We’re standing in the company’s new location, where conveyor belts carry a steady stream of freshly baked and glazed hand pies. Ramsey is certainly right about his pies. Odes have been composed, bedtime stories have indoctrinated young ones, and Mardi Gras floats and costumes have been fashioned in Hubig’s Pies’ honor. In the 2010 HBO series Treme, a drama partly set in the neighborhood of the same name in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the ashes of John Goodman’s character are scattered out of a pie bag as a brass band plays “Down by the Riverside.”