Beer is one of the last things that comes to mind when thinking about the Istanbul suburb of Başakşehir, a large district known as one of the city’s conservative heartlands. Tellingly, it’s also home to Başakşehirspor, the unofficial football team of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Yet tucked in a sprawling industrial complex of Başakşehir is the headquarters of Istanbul’s best microbrewery, 3 Kafadar, which translates to “three buddies.” The name is rooted in the longtime friendship of the three owners, Hakan Özkan, Harun Aydın and Tarık Apak. Their interest in brewing was sparked by a trip to Oktoberfest in 2013. It was Özkan and Aydın’s first time, and the place was so packed that they had a hard time securing a place to sit and drink.

Some of my most powerful memories from 2020 are of the post-lockdown reunions with the owners of my favorite bodegas and grocery shops in Barcelona. After such a long period of confinement, it felt dizzying to move beyond the borders of my neighborhood and visit bars and restaurants again, which had newly reopened for takeaway. It was hard not to hug my friends – you know, we hug a lot in Spain. On one particularly ridiculous day in May, I remember sneaking a glass of vermut in a paper coffee cup at one of my local bodegas. The coffee cup was a disguise – any police patrolling the streets would think that I was just buying a takeaway coffee (permitted) and not having a drink inside a bar (forbidden).

Lemongrass kölsch, jalapeño rye, blackberry pomegranate sour, sweet potato farmhouse. Beers at Big aLICe Brewing, in Long Island City, can be eye-catchingly colorful, but they also embody deeper stories, with local color not apparent at first sight. Big aLICe is a New York State farm brewery. That status, which mandates certain levels of collaboration with local growers and other producers, also dovetails nicely with the predisposition of co-founder Kyle Hurst toward wildly varied styles and flavors of beer. The brewery’s “two longest-standing relationships,” Kyle says, are with Native Coffee Roasters and Wilk Apiary; coffee and honey each figure in the regular rotation of Big aLICe beers.

Though France shares a border with Belgium and sits across the English Channel from the UK, the country doesn’t have as big a beer culture as its neighbors. The French consume less than half of the European average of seventy liters per person. The trends have been shifting over the past few years, however, spurned by the deluge of microbrews in the United States and elsewhere. From 246 microbrasseries in 2016, France now has a whopping 1653 since the start of 2020. Marseille’s first microbrasserie, La Plaine, set sail in 2013 (the industrial La Cagole – whose bottles sport the city’s clichéd bimbo – doesn’t count). La Minotte followed in 2015. Then, in April 2018, we got our first bona fide brewpub: Zoumaï.

In the midst of lockdown, it sometimes felt as if we would never eat in a restaurant again. While we dreamed of visiting our favorite spots, greeting the owners warmly and sitting down for a long, satisfying meal, we never let ourselves imagine a future in which new restaurants opened, especially bold and exciting places like Kafeneion SI TI SI. Yet chef Alexandros (Alex) Tsiotinis let himself dream – the idea for this modern kafeneio (a traditional kafeneio being an all-day venue serving coffee, booze and mezes) was, in fact, born during lockdown. The owners of Senios, a meze restaurant located downtown, came to him with a proposal to join forces. Alex accepted and quickly began crafting a menu featuring his own takes on typical kafeneio mezes.

With its temperate climate, extensive coastline and friendly character, Marseille has all the ingredients for prime picnicking. The sun shines over 300 days a year. Winter temperatures hover in the 50s and 60s while summer’s late sunsets let daylight linger until 10 p.m. Marseille’s 26 miles of coastline are peppered with rocky coves, sandy beaches and hidden nooks where you can spread out your picnic blanket alongside the turquoise Mediterranean. Some of the city’s best picnicking spots are beside monuments that serve up sweeping views – like the grassy knoll at the Palais du Pharo or the craggy garden at the Bonne Mère.

Chefs have long touted – and scientific research has confirmed – that we “eat with our eyes.” Hence the swishes and swirls of plating. Yet the importance of visual stimulation extends beyond food to include restaurant design, a point that is not lost on the all-day café Monsieur Madame. The eye-catching space is so full of ‘60s and ‘70s knick-knacks that you might mistake it for a vintage shop. Vinyl records are used as placemats on the brightly colored Formica tables. Shelves overflow with old cameras and plastic figurines. From wooden crosses to mounted fish heads, the walls offer a visual feast – so chock-a-block with mementos the vivid print wallpaper is somehow mellowed.

When Japan’s last shogun ceded control of the country in 1868 and a centuries-old closed-door policy was reversed, foreign influences on the country grew from a trickle to a steady stream. Foreign residents were confined to restricted living areas, one of the largest one being in Yokohama, just south of Tokyo. Capitalizing on their fellow expatriates’ homesickness, some enterprising Westerners began importing or even brewing beer. In fact, the brewery that would become Kirin, one of Japan’s most ubiquitous tipples, was founded by a Norwegian by way of America in 1869 or 1870.

Down the street from Istanbul’s upmarket Etiler neighborhood and above the even-glitzier shoreside quarter of Bebek lies Hisarüstü, a ragtag maze of unplanned urban growth that happens to be adjacent to the newer campus of Bogaziçi University, Turkey’s most prestigious college. Once upon a time the area was home to a pig farm, but Hisarüstü became quickly built up as Anatolian migrants rapidly settled in Istanbul, not shying away from the area despite its location on an impossibly steep hill. Though Etiler and Bebek are among the city’s most prestigious areas, Hisarüstü doesn’t get much attention from outside visitors – if you don’t live in the neighborhood or attend Boğaziçi, you likely have no reason to go there.