CB has teamed up with the creators of “Native Dish: United Flavors of NYC,” NYC Media’s new food TV series, to offer a behind-the-scenes look at some of the New Yorkers featured in these short videos. The series, which aims to celebrate New York City immigrants from all over the world, focuses on one individual and one dish at a time as a means through which to explore the myriad cuisines represented in the city and the people who make them. While each episode features a general overview of the participant’s life story, particularly as it relates to food, we are expanding that narrative by providing the full interview transcript, albeit condensed and lightly edited. It’s their story, in their own words. To kick things off, we are spotlighting Esneider Arevalo, our Queens walks leader, and his family recipe for traditional golden arepas.

In a town that runs on tacos, tacos de guisado may be the most ubiquitous version of the iconic dish in Mexico City. They can be found almost anywhere in the city, from specialty restaurants to markets, tianguis and street vendors selling them at stalls or even out of the trunk of a car. It may be an obvious point, but what distinguishes some tacos de guisado from others is how well prepared the guisados (home-style cooked meats or vegetables typically displayed and kept warm in earthenware dishes called cazuelas) are – and sometimes those coming out of the back of a car top ones from more “established” places. With so many places to choose from, how to determine who makes the best tacos de guisado in town? One contender we had long heard about is Beatricita, a brick-and-mortar taquería in the Zona Rosa that has quietly been using the same recipes to great acclaim for almost 110 years – certainly strong evidence that its guisados could be some of the best in the city.

The largest of New York’s five boroughs, Queens is the home of over two million people, half of them born outside the United States, speaking more than 150 different languages. It’s also home to countless immigrant stories of the most classic kind: a newcomer arrives and sets up shop – or, more frequently, cart – selling the food of his or her homeland as the first step towards making it in America. As a result, for the culinary explorer, Queens is truly the promised land. With so much available in this land of plenty, it can be difficult to choose favorites. But our Queens correspondents were up to the task. Here they are reminiscing about their best bites of 2018.

The little stall run by Raquel Ángeles and her sister Evi on Balderas Avenue in Mexico City looks like any other of the tens of thousands of stands across the capital that serve millions of people every day. And yet, having eaten at hundreds of these places over the last two decades, we can safely say that the unassuming Antojitos Mexicanos Raquel sits right at the top of our list of go-to spots for a shot of “Vitamina T.” Most Mexicans have to count every peso, and a single hearty meal often has to serve in place of three squares a day, so, borne of necessity, you get “Vitamina T,” a catchall phrase stemming from the preponderance of “T”-named foods.

Important holidays have long been associated with large feasts and for centuries have functioned as an excuse to treat family and guests to something special. Christmas in Greece is no exception: there are many culinary traditions associated with the Christmas season, known as Dodekaimero (twelve days), which officially begins on December 24 and ends on January 6. Nowadays many Greeks associate the Christmas table with a roast stuffed turkey, a tradition that arrived in Europe from North America, particularly Mexico, around the 1820s. It gradually became fashionable in Greek cities and over time turned into a Christmas staple, with a traditional stuffing prepared mainly with chestnuts, chopped turkey liver, minced meat, pine nuts and raisins.

Turkish wine is something of a paradox. Despite being one of the oldest winemaking countries on earth, Turkey is by no means a big wine-drinking country. Go to any bar or meyhane in Istanbul and you’re more likely to see people guzzling large pints of frothy beer or swirling delicate glasses containing cloudy rakı. Yet there are over a hundred wineries operating across the country, roughly half of which are small producers making less than 250,000 bottles a year. Many of these wineries, big and small, are producing award-winning vino. The struggle lies in finding these high-quality wines out in the wilds of Istanbul.

This autumn Nepali Bhanchha Ghar (Bahn-sah Gar) became the first two-time winner of New York City’s annual Momo Crawl. Early one afternoon, more than a thousand event goers fanned out from the block-long, pedestrian-only Diversity Plaza, at the western edge of Jackson Heights, and called on dozens of nearby restaurants, cafés, trucks and carts. Each dished out at least one style of momo, a filled dumpling best-known from Tibet and Nepal. Several hours later, after momo-crawlers had returned to the plaza and the popular vote had been tallied, Yamuna Shrestha, the owner of Nepali Bhanchha Ghar, once again proudly raised the Momo Belt high. The decorated yak-hide belt returned to its glass case, mounted on the back wall of the upstairs dining area, where it overlooks an open kitchen and a handful of tables.

Home to countless immigrant stories, Queens is the most diverse borough in New York City, with over two million people, half of whom were born outside the United States. So it’s no surprise that the area’s markets – some sprawling, many more pocket-sized – are equally as diverse, serving immigrant communities both old and new. We recently sent out New York-based photographer Melanie Einzig to document fall’s bounty at five of the borough’s diverse marketplaces. Her visual harvest can be found below.

In the early 18th century, before there was the Spinning Jenny, the Cotton Gin and the steam engine, a new machine was making waves in Gragnano, the grain capital of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies. It was the torchio, the pasta extruder. And it would radically and permanently change the diet of Italy. Just beyond Naples, the ancient Roman town of Gragnano, whose very name indicates an abundance of grain, was tentatively beginning to mechanize the production of dried pasta, theretofore a luxurious oddity throughout the Italian peninsula. Local entrepreneurs gradually capitalized on what their forbearers had known for several millennia – not only was Gragnano ideally situated due to its storied cultivation of durum wheat and semolina, but it also offered access to thirty water mills. Perhaps even more curiously Gragnano offered something very rare at the time: the perfect air for drying pasta.

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.”

Around 30 people crowd into a small bar in a quiet neighborhood in Lisbon for a film screening. It’s a Wednesday night, but the place, called Valsa, is full, despite the fact that it’s in a peripheral residential zone. “Valsa” is the Brazilian translation of “waltz”; the Mittel-European folk dance that arrived to Brazil via Portugal in 1808. Danced in the elite salões of Rio de Janeiro, the term is now back on this side of the Atlantic, thanks to this tiny Brazilian-run association with one of the busiest cultural programs in the city.

We counted ourselves among the cogniscenti on our first visit to Mangal Kebab, a decade ago, when we passed up pizza in favor of pide (Pea-day). Sharing the same section of the menu and baked in the same oven, but elongated rather than round, the Turkish flatbread suggested a well-laden canoe, until it was sliced for portage from the kitchen, with a chewy crust that curled around seasoned ground lamb. Over the years we’d also become acquainted with the kebabs, and the mangal – the grill, just behind the counter, that gave the restaurant its name. Mangal Kebab is a come-as-you-are neighborhood restaurant that seems easy to get to know, even though we don’t know the language.

Lisbon’s communities from Portugal’s former colonies provide the strongest link to the country’s past, when it was the hub of a trading empire that connected Macau in the east to Rio de Janeiro in the west. Though integral elements of Lisbon life, these communities can sometimes be an invisible presence in their adopted land, pushed out to the periphery of the city. With our “Postcolonial Lisbon” series, CB hopes to bring these communities back into the center, looking at their cuisine, history and cultural life. In this fifth installment of the series, we look at Lisbon’s Goan community.

Vasco de Gama’s voyage to India in the late 15th century laid the groundwork for the Portuguese empire, in which Goa, a small region on the southwestern coast of the Indian subcontinent with ample natural harbors and wide rivers, would come to play an important role. In the early 16th century, Goa was made the capital of the Portuguese State of India and remained as such until 1961, when the Indian army captured it. Over four centuries of colonial rule, Goan intellectuals most often migrated to Portugal in search of education, especially in the 20th century. Yet following the annexation of Goa by India, many Goans, particularly those working in government and the military, accepted the state’s offer of Portuguese citizenship and made their way to Europe.

It’s always tempting to try and take on all three major museums in Tokyo’s Art Triangle in one day. It would be easy to be overwhelmed by the delicious treasures of the National Art Center Tokyo, the Suntory Museum of Art and the Mori Art Museum, so we usually opt for just one and head to Naniwa afterwards for a pot of tea and their delicious taiyaki, a popular form of Japanese sweets (wagashi). The classic version of taiyaki is a fish-shaped pastry with a waffle-like exterior and a filling of red bean (adzuki) paste, though there are plenty of variations encasing chocolate, cream, custard or some other luscious filling. The finished delicacy is best eaten freshly baked, although many people enjoy it at home reheated. Taiyaki resembles a red snapper (tai or madai), which is considered an auspicious fish in Asia.