Barcelona’s food shops and colmados offer culinary treasures all year long, but the holidays are a particularly exciting time for browsing their wares. The festive window displays show magnificent gift baskets overflowing with tasty treats – with many Spanish and Catalan specialties among them. Perhaps the most desirable items in holiday gift baskets here are the seasonal sweets, which previous generations would amass in quantities that would serve as “emergency” treats for unexpected guests the rest of the new year. (Thankfully, one can now find these year-round, so there’s no need to hoard them.) We’ve written previously about artisanal turrón, which continues to be handmade by a few family-run companies.

One of our most exciting discoveries this year was Yılmaz Tandır Evi in Istanbul's Feriköy neighborhood, where many people from the eastern Anatolian province of Erzincan have settled over the years. Yılmaz İngeç, a native of Erzincan's İliç district, serves only the finest ingredients from his hometown, including fresh honey, kavurma and tulum peynir, a salty, crumbly cheese aged in goatskin. A simple serving of fried eggs topped with tulum was a match made in heaven, perhaps our favorite breakfast this year. We were thrilled to stumble upon a secluded slice of the Black Sea province of Trabzon right here on the Asian side of Istanbul earlier this fall.

With shops closing, pensions and salaries shrinking, and more and more Greeks feeling the pinch, it never ceases to amaze us that good food in the capital and elsewhere is still appreciated and faithful customers still abound. The restaurants below are just a few among the many wonderful, lively places that are managing to keep their standards despite enormous financial pressures. Their prices are affordable, their quality outstanding. Sea Satin Nino, Korthi Bay, Andros This is one of those restaurants that a Michelin Guide would rate not merely as “worth the trip” but “worth the detour.” Although it may take an hour’s drive from the port and half an hour from Hora, any meal at Sea Satin Nino is cause for celebration.

Rio’s bar culture is crazy for chicken. It’s common to see at bars dozens of the cooked birds laying within heated glass cases, awaiting hungry customers. The more popular the botequim, the more parts of the chicken are available. In the fancy bars of Ipanema and Leblon you can only find voluptuous breasts and legs, accompanied by salads and risottos. But in more humble botequins in the North Zone or further out in the suburbs, you’ll find gizzards, feet, beaks, and even rear ends. Yes, cu de galinha is a rare delicacy in Rio... Not only is every part of the chicken appreciated, but also all ages of the bird.

Behind a discreet entrance on one of Lisbon’s principal avenues, a sophisticated environment with a minimal interior houses a loyal Luanda-Lisboa jetset crowd who is here for the great food – and great music. Poemas do Semba, its walls decorated with black-and-white photographs, is an unlikely find in this neighborhood. Santos is the former stomping ground of the Portuguese nobility; today some of their former palaces have been turned into embassies or luxury hotels. Students and a design-y crowd have taken over as well, thanks to the nearby college. This exclusive African restaurant was opened in 2014 by the famous Angolan singer Paulo Flores, a semba exemplar who has numerous albums to his name.

Despite the 1970s-era sign outside that says Granja (farm) and the red letters spelling “Bar” inside, you can’t really tell what this place is until you open the menu: a temple of “neighborhood haute-cuisine.” The food at Granja Elena sounds simple but tastes rich and complex. The restaurant is a family business, now run by the third generation – Borja, Patricia and Guillermo Sierra Calvo – in the same barrio in which it was founded in 1974, La Marina del Port. This modern neighborhood is part residential and part industrial, a bit far from Barcelona’s center, located near the merchant port behind Montjuic and on the way to the airport.

Hidden within Mouraria’s maze of narrow streets is a tiny eatery offering usually hard-to-find fare in Lisbon: Goan cuisine. Situated a couple of minutes away from Martim Moniz – a revamped square that some years ago was named the multicultural core of the capital – this haven of flavors is a veteran of food diversity in the neighborhood. Tentações de Goa (“Temptations of Goa”) opened 20 years ago, when the multi-ethnic character of the area was more marginalized and not considered cosmopolitan, and when international restaurants were not as numerous and crowded as they are today. In the 1990s Maria, the now-busy owner of the small restaurant, was just a regular customer here, an avid fan of the elderly Goan woman who originally ran the place.

Carioca summer culture is dictated by the heat. It’s courteous to ask guests if they’d like to take a quick shower upon arriving at your home (because everyone takes multiple showers a day in the summer). Beer at parties must be estupidamente gelado. Movie theaters sell out even for so-so films because the air conditioning inside is delícia. This year, the Rio city government took the bold step of legalizing the use of knee-length shorts for city employees and bus drivers during the summer. Four other critical ways that locals chill out are: sorvete (traditional ice cream), picolé (popsicles), gelato and sacolé (anything frozen in a plastic sack).

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.

In landlocked Mexico City – the nearest coast is 250 miles away – you might think that it would be difficult to find fresh seafood. However, ever since Aztec times, the ocean’s bounty has been brought to the valley daily. Back then, the Aztec emperors got their goods using a system of relay runners that covered those hundreds of miles from sea to city per day. Things require less footwork today: technology and Mexico’s highway system allow daily deliveries of fresh seafood to the capital from the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico coasts. That said, feeding the Mexican capital’s fish craving still requires some hustle.

Carmen and Eduardo’s story could be an allegory for the rise and uh-oh moment of Brazil’s new middle class – except their tale is a real one, one that ends with a really nice savory fried pastel that’s become a midnight munchie hit with their neighbors in Rio’s iconic City of God (Cidade de Deus) favela. The pair’s life together started early; they met when Carmen, now 30, was just 12 years old; moved in together when she was 14; and both converted to evangelical Christianity and married in a church when she was 18. They came to the City of God, well-known from the book and film of the same name, looking for a more economical housing option.

“People know about our peas all over the world!” Marc Bertrán exclaimed as he stood, arms crossed, behind a folding table laden with jars of cooked green peas, stacks of pamphlets and a big crock of silky pea hummus with a bowl of crackers, inviting passersby to enjoy a taste of three generations’ worth of dedication. “In the 1950s,” Bertran told us proudly, “our town’s famous dish, Pèsols ofegats a l’estil de Llavaneres” – Peas stewed in the style of Llavaneres – “was featured on the menu at Maxim’s restaurant in Paris.”

A bodega can be a corner store or a corner bar, or sometimes even a wine cellar with a small kitchen serving refined riffs on traditional Spanish foods. In Barcelona, a bodega is all of these, but most of all it is the beating heart of the neighborhood.

Our “Culinary Secrets of the Old City” walk goes beyond the major monuments and into the backstreets where all of the serious eating is done. We’ll set off through the atmospheric, lesser-explored market streets around the Egyptian Spice Market and then go deeper into the untouristed Fatih neighborhood.

Settled by Greek refugees from Turkey after 1923, Nea Erythraia is a northern suburb of Athens that started off very low-key and has now evolved into a buzzing shopping and nightlife area, full of cafés, bars, restaurants and gelaterias. Despite the recent boom, many places that have been local favorites for over a decade now are still popular. One such venue, a small, unassuming restaurant with the welcoming name of “Kali Parea” (meaning “good company” in English), is hidden in a quiet street off the main road. Its faithful clientele come here to savor seasonal fish (mainly small fry) and seafood (calamari, octopus and shrimp), prepared either fried or grilled.