Sardine season is a wild ride in Lisbon and it is finally coming to a close but we still have the cuttlefish, grilled in ink, at the dockside classic on our "Song of Sea" culinary walk in Lisbon.

Any journey on the Shinkansen – Japan’s bullet train – is the perfect opportunity to enjoy an ekiben, the iconic bento filled with an assortment of delicacies tucked into a container and eaten in bite-size pieces. The term comes from the Japanese words for train (eki) combined with ben for bento (or “lunchbox”). These little jewel boxes are sold at concessions in train stations across the country and occasionally via pushcarts on trains. Different regions of Japan offer up varieties of local ingredients or specialties, making the ekiben a cornucopia of Japanese cuisine. Before airplanes became inexpensive and frequent in Japan, rail travel was the only mass transportation for long distances.

There is a Portuguese word famous for allegedly being untranslatable in any language. That word is saudade, an emotional state caused by missing someone or desiring something that does not exist anymore. For years, children have been told that only lusophones are able to feel saudade, since others cannot express that feeling. It’s a compelling story, but, unfortunately, it’s also far from true: saudade means virtually the same thing as añorar or echar de menos in Spanish, nostalgic longing in English, or sehnsucht in German. If one is looking for a truly untranslatable word in Portuguese, he or she should look no further than right around the corner, to that cheap no-frills restaurant serving large portions of traditional food piled onto large aluminum platters.

This is a piece that celebrates the odd, the misshapen and the sometimes grotesque – in other words, what to look for to find a really tasty tomato. Just to be clear, we are talking about tomatoes from Sakartvelo here. Sakartvelo? You might know it better as Georgia, but Sakartvelo – literally, the dwelling place of the Kartvelian, or Georgian, people – is what natives call their country. And some Georgians say Sakartvelo should be the official name for everyone else too, to avoid confusion with a certain U.S. state that wasn’t even a colonialist’s dream when Georgia the country was already 1,200 years old, but which now irritatingly hogs all the Google limelight.

All around Messinia lie endless fields of olive trees, their silvery leaves shining everywhere you look. This region in the southwestern part of the Peloponnese has been known for its fertile land since ancient times. Some of the best olive oil in the world comes from here. The capital, largest city and central port of Messinia is Kalamata, known around the globe, of course, for its famous namesake olives. It lies at the top of the Messinian Gulf, with a view of the water’s blue expanse. Above it towers the imposing Mount Taygetos. Together, the mountains, sea and land have created a gastronomic paradise.

Our eyes take a moment to adjust to the dim light upon walking into Ladrio. The room is like a vault, its brick walls and floor emitting a scent familiar to anyone who’s ever been in a cave or stone cellar. This mustiness is comforting, however, and the cool air a welcome reprieve from the furnace of the Tokyo summer outside. Soon we can make out several low tables extending back into the narrow space. People sit alone or in pairs sipping coffee or puffing cigarettes. Some converse in hushed tones as Edith Piaf is piped quietly from an unseen stereo. A few heads swivel in our direction but gazes never linger here.

For those of us who like a long, boozy lunch unimpeded by thoughts of going back to work – at least once in a while – there is no better place for it than a Mexico City cantina. Although they are mostly no-frills establishments lit by fluorescent bulbs, cantinas have as much personality as London pubs, Paris cafés or New York bars.In a far from egalitarian city, they are the most democratic institutions. Anyone who can afford the price of a drink (which limits the population drastically) is welcome. Cantinas draw their biggest crowds in the traditional Mexican lunch hour, anywhere between 2 and 5 p.m., and a meal in one is usually a drawn-out affair.

Urfa's old city is an invigorating array of tones and sounds. Dominated by an intriguing maze of narrow streets, the buildings all share the same sun-baked sandy hue, suggesting that they rose up from the earth on their own centuries ago. Landscape and cityscape blend into one here, and cars are outnumbered by ornately painted motorbikes equipped with sidecars, vehicles perfectly equipped to navigate roads too narrow for vans and sedans. Older men don poşu scarves of varying color combinations, and Arabic is spoken more frequently than Turkish. Believed by locals to be the birthplace of Abraham, Urfa is known as the “City of Prophets.” The municipality proudly advertises this fact.

As one approaches the port of Ermoupolis (named after Hermes, the god of commerce), the main town of the island of Syros and capital of the Cyclades, one cannot help but marvel at its beauty and grandeur. Imposing public buildings and private mansions, marble-paved streets, a large Italian-style piazza and numerous churches make the city one of the best preserved examples of 19th-century architecture in Greece. This should not come as a surprise: in the aftermath of the 1821 Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire, Syros developed into an important commercial, cultural and industrial center, as refugees from Asia Minor, Chios, Crete and other areas found a safe haven from the war on the small island.

You sit down for a meal with family or friends, and no one can decide what to order. Well, some can, some can’t, and it goes on for ages. The waiter stiffens when you ask one more time for her to come back. But go to the basement restaurant of Shavi Lomi in Old Tbilisi, and you have the answer for dithering relatives and pals: the gobi, or “Friends’ Bowl,” filled with a colorful selection of classic Georgian dishes. The word shares the same root as the Georgian word for “friend” – megobari – and so, of course, a gobi bowl is for sharing. It’s a big wooden bowl, filled with a mix of different dishes and as many spoons as you need.

Queens these days is New York’s street cart central. According to the Street Vendor Project, which advocates for vendor rights in the five boroughs, the largest concentration of street vendors with licenses lives in that borough. This concentration of streetside sellers is easy enough to see on six-mile-long Roosevelt Avenue, which runs through six of Queens’ most ethnically diverse neighborhoods with a dizzying assortment of vendors catering to almost every taste and nationality, depending on the time of day. It’s not always easy work. At a recent monthly meeting of street vendors in Corona, Queens, the air was thick with grievances about the conditions they have to work under.

Athletes, spectators and everyone else gathered in Rio for the Summer Olympics will have no shortage of good eating options – and not just in the usual touristed areas. We’ve rounded up some of our favorite spots around town. CADEG The 100,000-square-meter market is divided into three warehouse-style floors, with a pavilion just for flower sales at the rear of the second floor. (The building sits on an incline, so you can enter from the street either on the ground floor or from behind the second.) The market is open 24 hours. Early mornings on Thursday and Saturday are the top time for flower shopping. Saturday afternoon is Cantinho das Consertinas’s Festa Portuguesa, with up to 1,000 attendees queuing for a host of salt cod dishes on the second floor.

Take the plunge into the high-volume hubbub of Tbilisi’s famous Deserter’s Bazaar and you’ll come under a three-senses assault. The piquant aroma from the spice stalls, a butchers’ shouting war and stalls swinging with burgundy-brown, candle-shaped churchkhela sweets. But on one side of the market building, there’s a small slice of calm – in the long corridor where the cheese sellers work. Selling homemade cheeses from across the country, delivered fresh every day, is a more relaxed and deliberate business. You’ve heard of the Slow Food movement. Perhaps it’s time we were more specific and talked about “slow cheese.” Here, the cheese sellers prefer to wait for the customers to come to them.

Abílio Coelho is a generous man, offering a smile to every customer while serving each of them the most traditional drink in Lisbon: ginjinha. He has spent 44 of his 63 years behind a counter serving the libation. Ginja Sem Rival, the bar he serves it in, like the best places, is a hole-in-the-wall, and the drink is made in-house. Ginja is the actual name of the liqueur, which is made from a sour cherry of the same name. The fruit might not be so sweet but is fortunately well suited to being turned into this smooth drink, which is enjoyed both as an aperitif and digestif.

When Edu, owner of the Barcelona wine bar Celler Cal Marino, was growing up in the 1980s in the neighborhood of Sant Antoni, he would confuse Rafel Jordana with the iconic German soccer player and coach Bern Schuster (“Schuster is in the bar, daddy!”). Jordana, owner of the bodega that bears his name, is not so famous internationally, but he is undoubtedly one of the icons of Sant Antoni and of the old-school bodega-bar culture in Barcelona. La Bodega d’en Rafel has served as a location for a number of films and television series (such as “Cites,” the Catalan version of “Dates”), a subject of many articles and profiles and an important touchstone for a larger community that connects Barcelona locals with their identity.