With a simple façade, the unassuming Fonda Margarita sits next to a carwash and wouldn’t attract much attention if it weren’t for the line out the door and around the block by the time it opens at 5:30 a.m. Construction workers come at the crack of dawn, office workers arrive in shifts and sleepy teenagers meander in just before they close at 11 a.m. “We’re traditional,” says owner Richard Castillo when we ask him why his restaurant, which only serves breakfast, is so popular, “and there aren’t many traditional places left in Mexico City. We still cook using clay pots and 100 percent coal-fired grills.”

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.

In Oaxaca, having a proper, hearty breakfast and also being on the go are not necessarily contradictory things. Memelas de San Agustín, an easy-going spot that has been feeding hungry Oaxacans for at least 15 years, is living proof. This small stall doesn’t have an official name – people just started referring to it this way since it’s located right behind the Iglesia de San Agustín on Fiallo Street. But it’s become a beloved destination for delicious versions of its namesake dish – essentially thick corn tortillas that are pinched around the edges and in the middle, making the texture slightly uneven so that their toppings (and their juices) stay in place.

We’ve raved about the Shanghai-style soup dumplings at Fu Chun for years now, but let us let you in on a secret: There’s more to this tiny hole-in-the-wall than its xiaolongbao. Since 1959, the restaurant has been serving up benbang dishes, but little has changed on the menu or in the kitchen. A Huaiyang snack shop, Fu Chun admittedly skews Shanghainese in its regional flavor profile, which means extra sugar and a lot of pork. Try the traditional deep-fried pork cutlet (炸猪排, zhà zhūpái). Pounded thin before hitting the deep fryer, these fatty flanks are served sliced with a side of black rice vinegar – a dip helps cut the grease.

Ènek poured a rosy-colored splash of wine into our glasses, avidly explaining how this particular Aladasturi grape vine was meticulously cultivated in its native west Georgia. In a tasting ritual uncommon in Georgia, we swirled it, sniffed it and savored the flavor as it caressed our tongues. Here in the “cradle of wine,” the land where viticulture is believed to have originated 8,000 years ago, wine is customarily poured into a water glass and “tasted” in one long drag, until drained. But in this cozy cellar in the heart of Tbilisi’s historic Sololaki neighborhood, seven winemakers have come together to offer an alternative convention to winemaking and consumption. They call it Vino Underground, but we call it wine heaven.

At a typical pâtisserie orientale, the front window is often stacked with towers of sweets – honey-soaked visual merchandising to entice passersby to pop inside. Some pastry shops line their walls with colorful geometric tiles and Moorish arches, the icing on the Maghreb cake. Pâtisserie Orientale Journo goes for a decidedly more subtle approach. Though located a block from Marseille’s main drag, the Canèbiere, this unassuming shop is somewhat lost in the shuffle of the pedestrian Rue de Pavillon. The few tables scattered out front suggest that there’s food to be found inside but the open storefront is bare – save for a giant five-gallon water jug propped on a stool, with a hand-scrawled sign “citronnade – 2 euros” beside it. That’s all the advertising needed for a pastry shop that has survived by word of mouth for 60 years.

The typical Neapolitan trattoria is a place where you go to eat like you would at home: the cook buys everything fresh in the morning, just like at home, and then spends the rest of the day in the kitchen, which he rules like a maestro. For the quintessential trattoria experience, we head to Fuorigrotta, a working-class district on the west side of Naples. There, close to the border with the seaside suburb of Bagnoli and not far from the Cavalleggeri Aosta metro stop, stands Cucina da Vittorio, a small trattoria with a few tables and a steady rotation of regular customers.

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.

Georgia is a small country with a huge appetite for life. This passion is evident in all aspects of the country’s extraordinary culture, from its ancient polyphonic songs and breathtaking national dances to its rich culinary heritage and winemaking tradition that goes back eight millennia. To become better acquainted with this unique region, we have organized a seven-day trip in partnership with Atlas Obscura – “In the Cradle of Wine: A Georgian Culinary Adventure” – that focuses on all the senses, with special emphasis on taste. It is a mouthwatering, belt-popping, intimate dive into the heart of Georgia.

Search online for Shanghai’s best fried dumplings, and you’ll come up with hundreds of results extolling Yang’s Fried Dumplings. Though it was once just a humble shop sandwiched between the Bund and People’s Square, the online renown and ensuing crowds have propelled the brand into chain-store ubiquity, populating new malls and shopping streets with fervor. In essence, they’ve become the Starbucks of dumplings; you’re going to get a relatively consistent product, but come on, you can do so much better! Enter Yang Yang’s.

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.

Visiting establishments with a lot of history always warms the cockles of our heart – even more so when that establishment is the oldest surviving cantina in the city. El Dux de Venecia didn’t start out as a cantina, but it became a drinking establishment in Azcapotzalco – a farming community that became part of Mexico City in the 1940s – during the Mexican revolution and has remained an important part of the neighborhood ever since. The story goes that an Italian traveler decided to open a grocery store at the end of the 19th century. He named it El Dux de Venecia (The Doges of Venice) because he was originally from that Italian city. He offered all kinds of imported products from Europe as well as local ones, including deli meats, bread and alcohol. Because some customers consumed these items in the shop, the owner installed chairs and tables for their comfort.

Seating around only 20 people, Taberna dos Mercadores is a microcosmic reflection of contemporary Porto: a mixture of high-concept design and traditional food. From a design perspective, the focal point of the small yet comfortable dining room is the ceiling, where white metal supports create the outline of a false dome. Although sculptural in nature, the distinctive design is not merely ornamental but also practical: it doubles as a wine rack, cradling neatly stacked rows of bottles. Wine buffs will be satiated at the diverse but humble selection on offer here, which mainly originate from the Douro valley, the sumptuous growing region that extends from Porto along the Douro River all the way to the eastern border with Spain.

At any time of day you’ll see crowds of people at the ancient, welcoming restaurant. At lunchtime, many regulars come daily not for the pizza, but for Maria’s home cooked dishes. “Here we serve traditional Neapolitan dishes,” says the 74-year-old. “Pasta and potatoes, pasta and beans, pasta sorrentine style or bolognese. The menu changes every day, and the bread is made every morning, here, directly in the pizza oven … with my hands.” There’s something about the pizzeria that transmits a sense of history, particularly its inner room, the walls of which are covered in declarations of love for the restaurant and drawings made on paper napkins by loyal customers over the decades. “It is as if customers wanted to leave something of themselves,” Attilio tells us proudly. “They wanted to return some of the goodness they just tasted with something that would last.”

Where the A train dead-ends at Lefferts Boulevard, Liberty Avenue stretches on into the heart of the enclave known as Little Guyana, part of the larger Richmond Hill neighborhood. To most Americans, and even New Yorkers, this population remains obscure. “People don’t know who we are,” says Lakshmee Singh, a talk show host and community leader in Queens, Richmond Hill, once a predominantly German and Italian neighborhood, has seen a steady stream of Guyanese immigrants since the 1970s. Today, it’s home to the largest Guyanese community outside of Guyana itself, with Guyanese immigrants representing the second largest foreign-born community in Queens.