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.

Bios in Athens’ Keramikos neighborhood officially opened in 2003, but it all began two years earlier, when the Bios Cultural Organization was first founded as an audiovisual, electronic music festival held in various warehouses near central Athens. Following his instincts, Vassilis Charalambidis, the founder of Bios, decided to refurbish a beautiful Bauhaus-style building right on the corner of Pireos and Salaminos streets to give the festival and organization a permanent home. This innovative project had an immense impact on Athens, and very soon Bios became a kind of landmark and meeting point for creative young Athenians with an inquiring mind and a special love for their city. Its main goal over the past 25-odd years has been to promote contemporary arts, new technologies and creative, free thinking.

This story starts with a hamburger, a juicy, perfectly grilled patty between a pair of fresh, no-frill homemade buns and the standard trimmings. As burgers become part of the culinary landscape in Tbilisi, we find that many cooks have a tendency to get too slick with a dish that loathes pretension. But this place, Burger House, nailed the balance between originality and straightforwardness. While sopping the drippings up with finger-thick fries we saw a hamburger story in the making and filed the idea away in our bucket list of food tales. A year or so later, walking down Machebeli Street in Sololaki, we saw a little basement joint named Salobie Bia with a Gault & Millau (a French restaurant guide) sign above the door and decided to investigate further. Several lip-smacking meals later, we learned that the chef and co-owner of this place is the same guy who was responsible for those impressive burgers.

It’s just shy of noon when we step into the new location of Ozzie’s Kokoreç in Istanbul’s Asmalımescit neighborhood. Proprietor and usta Oğuzhan Sayı and his wife Gizem are preparing for another busy day in their compact, sharply-designed new restaurant. As we begin to chat, Oğuzhan gets a call that he has to take. It’s from the Hilton, which has requested a large order of Oğuzhan’s specialty. And while kokoreç – rolled lamb intestines roasted over a spit before being chopped up, grilled and doused with a layer of herbs and spices – is primarily known as a humble street food staple, one that’s most popular among those who have had a few, we aren’t surprised at the loftiness of this order.

Walking around the busy Çarşamba Market in Fatih on a Wednesday, we spot a line of people waiting patiently in front of a butcher shop. Not wholly unsurprising, since it is a market day, but we notice that some of them are enjoying particularly tasty-looking döner sandwiches. The tempting smell coming from the little shop, an innocuous place named Seçkin Et ve Tavuk, convinces us to join the crowd – a mixture of families, groups of old ladies and men taking a break from work – and grab a portion of döner accompanied by fresh tomatoes, pickles and fries, and washed down by the ever-present ayran.

Ramen may have seen a worldwide boom in recent years, but when it comes to soba – Japanese buckwheat noodles – fans might say they’ve been unfairly neglected. “Soba have a history of at least 400 years, as long as sushi. Yet they’re almost completely unknown abroad,” chef Yoshinobu Saito says, pondering the concept behind his first ever restaurant. “I guess I don’t have a specific concept for the store. But I do want to promote soba worldwide.”

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.”

The sensation of entering A Cozinha do Manel (“Manel’s Kitchen”) in Porto is so similar to entering grandma’s house on Sunday that it almost confuses us. There is no one to greet you at the door, no cloth napkins folded over employees’ arms. We walk confidently, as we would at home, with the sense of comfort that only intimacy is capable of inspiring. From the wall, among the many clocks, vintage plates and drawings made on cloth napkins by customers with an artistic bent, dozens of familiar faces look back at us. They are actors, musicians, politicians and soccer stars all standing next to Zé António, the owner and manager – a confirmation of the restaurant’s popularity.

Take a small space in a strategic location, add two young and idealistic owners, and finish with traditional Neapolitan dishes made with the finest raw ingredients – this is Taverna a Santa Chiara’s recipe for success. Everything began with the passion of two young Neapolitans, Nives Monda and Potito Izzo, for specialty artisanal food products from the Campania region. These types of products are not necessarily hard to find – Campania is home to many excellent small producers. Yet high quality often comes at a high cost, especially when compared to mass industrial products sold through large distribution chains.

In the center of Exarchia, a hub of activism often referred to as the “anarchist” neighborhood of Athens, a small minimalist eatery with just a few tables outside opened last April and was an instant success by breaking all the rules. At first glance it looks like a regular souvlaki shop, with sauces and condiments lined up at the front, pita breads being grilled and potatoes being fried. It even smells familiar, but if you look closely, you will notice that there is no meat in sight or, to be exact, no animal products. Welcome to Cookoomela Grill, Greece’s first vegan souvlaki spot.

On a side street in Istanbul’s Fatih district, a neighborhood now brimming with Syrians, a small restaurant makes many passers-by do a double take – the 1960s-style façade looks like something straight out of Damascus. Upon closer inspection, they would see a man inside standing in front of a flame-kissed tandoor, the same one used to bake Damascene bread. When they read the name of the restaurant – Bouz Al-Jidi, the same name to crown a famous Damascene restaurant – it cements their hunch that they have found a gateway to old Damascus. The interior of the restaurant is decked out in traditional Damascene style, with a turquoise and dark green color palette and small wooden tables surrounded by wooden handmade chairs made of bamboo and straw.

The innovative chef Filipe Rodrigues, known for marrying Asian inspiration with Portuguese flavors, has finally opened his long-awaited restaurant, A Taberna do Mar (Sea Tavern), on a corner in the Graça neighborhood. Considering that 41-year-old Rodrigues has already ascended to a position of prominence thanks to his sardine nigiri, still one of the most iconic and innovative dishes in contemporary Lisbon, it’s no surprise that his new restaurant, the first that he will own outright, is focused on the fruits of the sea (as the name would suggest).

With almost 6,000 kilometers of coast (5,978 to be exact), Spain is the world’s second largest consumer of fish and seafood per resident (the first being, no surprise, Japan). Bathed by the cold Atlantic on one side and the warmer Mediterranean on the other, the country harbors a wide variety of habitats that have made it easy to source many different species of marisco (seafood) and fish. While these fruits of the sea are available at all kinds of Spanish restaurants and bars, the best way to guarantee a magnificent seafood feast is to go to a proper marisquería. A perfect example is La Barca del Pescador.

Way south of the pure, unadulterated hustle and bustle of the historic center, east of refined and residential San Ángel, and northwest of Xochimilco and its colorful canals lies Coyoacán, a neighborhood unlike any other in the megalopolis that is Mexico City. Once an artsy hangout for the movers and shakers of the day, like Frida Kahlo and her husband Diego Rivera, as well as a refuge for exiled Communists like Leon Trotsky (all three have house museums dedicated to their honor in the barrio), Coyoacán is now a popular tourist hangout. However, you don’t have to scratch far beneath the surface to find remnants of Coyoacán’s traditional, if somewhat romanticized, past.

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.