Right after our Mexico City Trip, immerse yourself on this add-on trip in the complex cultural identity of Oaxaca, where pre-Hispanic, colonial, and contemporary influences collide.

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.

Though half of France’s population is officially Catholic, only 5 percent of the country regularly attends mass. Yet, les français still remain faithful to their Christian holidays. After Christmas, Easter is the second-most popular fête – perhaps because it falls on a Sunday, when lunch en famille is a French tradition that is as revered as a religion. Like many nations, chocolate is France’s essential Easter ingredient. Not surprisingly, the French exception – the country’s belief that they are unique – extends to the shape of their holiday confections. Here, a cloche (bell), not a rabbit, delivers Easter’s chocolate-y treats. How did an inanimate object become the bearer of sweets?

If you happen to wander around a Greek supermarket or visit a Greek bakery, you will notice that there is always a section dedicated to paximadia (paximadi in the singular) of various shapes and sizes piled high or wrapped in cellophane bags. At first glance, they look like nothing more than slices of stale bread. So it can be surprising to learn that paximadia (or rusks), once a peasant food found in the poor areas of Greece, are greatly loved all over the country, with many different types available for purchase: from large rustic looking thick slices to small bite-sized “croutons.”

Some of Marseille’s most majestic buildings surround the Estrangin métro stop: the American consulate, the ornately sculpted Caisse d’Epargne bank, and the Napoleon-style Préfecture. Between them sits an equally iconic institution, Café de la Banque. Yet while its high-profile neighbors deal in banking and bureaucracy, this spot serves something more essential: a dependable place for delicious food and drink. Named for the surrounding banks, this non-stop café is a neighborhood fixture that hums all day. Regulars fill the old-timey interior and one of Marseille’s best patios for a morning café, the perpetually packed lunch service, and post-work beverages. In a city whose Mediterranean identity often sets it apart from the rest of France, Café de la Banque serves up a comforting slice of classic French café culture.

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.

It’s almost 2020, and Mexico City continues to be one of the best eating cities in the world. So maybe you won’t find world cuisine the likes of New York or London, but instead you will be bowled over by a deep culinary tradition, genius chefs who were self-taught and a delicious meal waiting on every corner (and we mean every). No “best of” list will ever cover all the deliciousness awaiting you in Latin America’s foodie megalopolis, but here are a few places that we fell in love with in 2019.

When ordering a café in Marseille, keep your eye out for sugar packets and espresso cups lined in yellow and white. These diagonal stripes are the sign of Café Luciani, a logo inspired by the red and white panels on truck tailgates. Yet while those stripes implore you to be careful and hang back, Luciani encourages the opposite – they want you to dive head first into your cup of coffee The father-and-son coffee company began in 1863 as the Phocéenne de Torréfaction (the Phocaean Coffee Roaster), named after the lineage of the sailor who founded Marseille. Pascal Escudier’s locally roasted coffee was reputed for its “exquisite aromas” in an era when the petit noir was more about consumption than the quality of its composition.

What do shakshuka, kibbeh, nachos, hummus, crepes and a turkey club sandwich have in common? They are all on the menu of The Spot, a charming comfort-food/tapas bar with a global pedigree that opened in October not far from the pedestrianized road that circles the Acropolis. And they are there because they are all personal favorites of the owners, Turkish-born Aysegul Ozden Trifyllis and her Greek husband Yiannis Trifyllis. “We don’t want to fit into a niche,” Aysegul told us when we visited one balmy day in early November. “That’s why we didn’t make our food just Turkish or Greek.”

A visit to Varsos, a culinary landmark in Athens that looks much the same as it did 60 years ago, is like traveling back in time to one of the city’s grand patisseries of the 1950s. The venue, which is still in the hands of the Varsos family who originally opened it, is one of the most famous of Athens’ old-style coffeehouses and is the only one that has kept its traditional charm over the last several decades. Varsos was established in 1892 in central Athens, but it is the wonderfully old-fashioned Kifisia location, to which the patisserie moved in 1932, that has made the venue famous. At the beginning of the 20th century, Kifisia was a holiday destination for rich Athenians, and their stately summer mansions still dot this beautiful yet ever-expanding northern suburb, which is now popular with professionals, families and expats.

When we set out to create a foodie “holiday” this past April for jianbing, one of China’s most-loved street snacks, we didn’t know quite what to expect. Our aim with World Jianbing Day, which included giveaways and a social media campaign encouraging people to add their favorite jianbing spots in China and abroad to a crowd-sourced map, was to build awareness outside the typical jianbing consumer base. Locals who grew up with and already love the snack don’t need much reminding about the virtues of the perfectly balanced crepe from northern China. But everyone else? They need to know about the sweet, crunchy, pickled, spicy and salty elements all wrapped up in one convenient burrito-crepe-style to-go snack.

The typical Neapolitan breakfast is fast, often consumed standing at the espresso bar. A croissant and a quick coffee – and, boom, the day begins. Many people in the English-speaking world, however, will use coffee bars and cafès as a place to relax or work. They bring computers, connect to the Wi-Fi and, ordering just one coffee, may even sit for hours. Three years ago, a group of entrepreneurs decided it was time Naples had a bar where people could indulge in a lazy morning breakfast, a slow midday meal or a long afternoon tea – a place where the chairs are comfortable, the tables are an inviting wood and you are encouraged to stay and make your phone calls, write your papers and chat with friends.

Nowhere in Mexico City does one feel the collective weight of the largest population in North America more than on Avenida Lazaro Cardenas, the traffic artery that gushes a surfeit of humans and cars up the heart of the city’s downtown. The gutters stink of rotting fruit. Dirt and littered garbage encrust the sidewalks. And, at rush hour, walking a block means suffering a gauntlet of elbows and hands pushing at you and past you. For the most part, the businesses that line this street offer little comfort. Goods lie in heaps on carpets or hang two feet deep upon the walls of stores seemingly designed to be fire hazards, cramming too many people onto too little floor space.

Like most Syrians who fled their war-ravaged country and made their way to Turkey, Fatma Jabal, a 19-year-old from Aleppo now living in Istanbul, had to get creative in order to make a living. With a baby boy to take care of and her husband struggling to provide for their family while working as a carpenter, Fatma tapped into something she’s been doing since she was a child: baking cakes and cookies. Making desserts had been something Fatma has loved from early on growing up in Aleppo, which she left in 2014 in the midst of the worsening conflict there. For her, each treat she bakes is a work of art that just happens to be edible. “The first thing I did in the kitchen was sweets,” she says. But Fatma realized she needed to develop her budding baking prowess to start charging customers.

Retsina has a bad rap. Many locals and foreigners associate this Greek classic with cheap “house wine” served at tavernas – you know, the stuff that is bright yellow in color, has an intensely resinous flavor and practically guarantees a headache the next morning. But we think retsina is just misunderstood. Increased demand in the 1960s for this resin-infused wine led to a plunge in quality, sullying its good name. Yet a new generation of Greek winemakers and sommeliers has worked tirelessly over the last decade and a half to restore retsina’s standing in the international world of wine, experimenting with different grape varietals and methods of fermentation in the process.