For a city whose natural beauty is what often sweeps visitors off their feet, Rio’s historical gems often look a little like urban ugly ducklings next to the bikini crowds and chic bars on sandy Ipanema beach. That’s a shame, because Rio Antigo has a great story to tell. Old Rio runs along the Guanabara Bay rather than the open Atlantic, and it was the former that gave the city its name – River of January – when Portuguese explorers came upon it in the first month of 1502.

The eyes of Tacacá do Norte’s harried staff widen as yet another customer arrives during the lunchtime rush. The bedroom-sized snack bar can barely hold one line of chairs around its bar but they have somehow managed to squeeze in two. Impatient regulars shake hands and whistle “psst” to the young men staffing the establishment, who gingerly hand steaming pots of shrimp soup and freshly puréed juices over the packed bar.

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.

After the Vietnamese War, many of the refugees bound for France landed in Paris. A minority spread out to other French cities like Toulouse, Lyon and Marseille, the latter being a ville refuge (refuge city) due to its bustling port. The small community in Marseille used to be concentrated near Joliette, before its building boom. But now they’re scattered across the city, taking their cuisine with them. No matter, for we know exactly where to go whenever we’ve got a hankering for Vietnamese: We join the line of people waiting for a bowl of pho outside Nguyen-Hoang.

We’ve written previously about flautas, one of our favorite street foods. Those crisp, finger-friendly “flutes” with their deeply savory, spiced chicken, pork, beef or potato filling are all about the gratifying crunch of the golden, deep-fried rolled tortilla (and the sour cream and grated cheese don’t hurt either). It’s hard to imagine how that winning combination can be improved upon, but at El Rey de las Ahogadas in Colonia Del Valle, we’ve found a delicious alternative. Although El Rey offers quesadillas, tacos and other Mexican delicias, as the big banner above the open storefront advertises, people come here mostly for the flautas ahogadas. These “drowned” flautas sit in a bowl filled with a soupy salsa verde so that they soften.

On a drizzly, gray December afternoon, everything appeared to be business as usual at Istanbul’s Şahin Lokantası, a tradesmen’s restaurant in the heart of Beyoğlu that has been open for just over half a century. It was 4 p.m. and well after the lunch rush, but all the tables on the first floor of the small restaurant were occupied. We asked a lone diner if we could sit across from them, and they warmly obliged. Saying no would have been out of the question, this is just how things are at a place like Şahin Lokantası, an institution of lovingly-cooked classic Turkish dishes that have attracted a crowd of loyal customers over the decades that aren’t afraid to share tables with strangers.

On a drizzly, gray December afternoon, everything appeared to be business as usual at Istanbul’s Şahin Lokantası, a tradesmen’s restaurant in the heart of Beyoğlu that has been open for just over half a century. It was 4 p.m. and well after the lunch rush, but all the tables on the first floor of the small restaurant were occupied. We asked a lone diner if we could sit across from them, and they warmly obliged. Saying no would have been out of the question, this is just how things are at a place like Şahin Lokantası, an institution of lovingly-cooked classic Turkish dishes that have attracted a crowd of loyal customers over the decades that aren’t afraid to share tables with strangers.

When the couple Juan Pérez Figueras and Mercè Roselló bought in 1991 what is now Restaurante Agullers, it was an old run-down bar in the inner streets of Born, a neighborhood near the Port Vell area. “When I got the place it was totally ruined,” Juan explains. They decided to keep open only a long and narrow front section, creating a small bar-restaurant that specialized in fresh fish. All food was made in front of the clients, on a tiny grill behind the bar. This miniscule spot offering grilled fresh fish really struck a chord, and by the end of its first decade in business, people were lining up at the door.

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.

Khan al-Wazir is a remnant of Aleppo’s Ottoman past: In the late 17th century, the Ottoman governor of Aleppo commissioned the construction of this large caravanserai (in fact, its name means “caravanserai of the minister”), a building that housed both merchants and travelers. In 21st-century Istanbul, the former capital of the Ottoman Empire, a new Khan al-Wazir has cropped up, this one providing a different type of comfort: Aleppian cuisine. “I wanted to give my restaurant this special name, which refers to the ancient link between Aleppo and Istanbul,” said Hasan Douba, when asked why he chose Vezir Han, the Turkish rendering of Khan al-Wazir, as the name for his restaurant in the Fatih neighborhood.

On the streets of Chongqing, no menus are needed. From that southwestern Chinese city near Sichuan province, a beribboned snapshot – which hangs beside the table where we speak with Tingting Li, the chef and a partner of 200 Gram Noodles, in Flushing, Queens – helps tell the story. The snapshot depicts an outdoor noodle stall, where customers at short plastic tables are perched upon even shorter and surely precarious plastic stools. Knees bend toward chins. In this setting, customers simply call to the noodle-maker from their seats; a standard order is “200 grams.”

At exactly the right moment, and not a minute sooner, lunch will be ready at La Cocina de Q.B.D.O. Generally, the magic hour of comida corrida – affordable, multi-course midday meals offered on weekdays and often Saturdays – is between 2-4 p.m., the typical lunch hour for Mexican workers. The comida corrida, also known as menú del día, is a fixture across Mexico and especially common in Mexico City. These dining options run the gamut from humble to gourmet, often depending on the neighborhood you find yourself in. But there is never a doubt that it will be satisfying – and quick (comida corrida can be roughly translated as “food on the run”).

When the late 19th-century Portuguese artist and cartoonist Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro wanted to create a vehicle through which to mock and criticize the country’s powerful elite, he settled upon the character Zé Povinho, an unsophisticated country laborer who served as a stand-in for the average citizen. While some Portuguese people took umbrage with their country’s everyman being depicted as a simple peasant, time has softened this criticism, and Zé Povinho has become something of a national icon. “Little by little, we started to see him with a certain tenderness, as a symbol of the Portuguese identity, a reminder of where we came from,” says Andrea Salomé, a restaurant owner in Porto.

Each year in late summer, some of the best athletes on the planet converge on Flushing Meadows Corona Park to compete in the United States Open Tennis Championships. In 2019, the U.S. Open begins with practice sessions and qualifier matches on Monday, August 19, and concludes with the men’s singles final, scheduled for Sunday, September 8. The tournament site does provide hungry fans with several cafés and casual bar-restaurants as well as a pair of “food villages.” But when in Queens – where some of the best food in the city is so close at hand – why would we confine ourselves to the boundaries of the tennis center? To energize ourselves beforehand or wind down afterward, here are a few of our favorite nearby dining destinations.

Carla Santos is a busy woman. On the day we go to meet her, it is pouring rain in Porto and Adega Vila Meã, the restaurant she runs, is full. Carla doesn’t stop for a second: “One of those pork firecrackers with potatoes?” she asks a customer as she swings through the dining room. She’s not alone in this mad dash. Carla works the tables with her youngest daughter, while the oldest, who learned how to cook from her mother, mans the kitchen. Even Carla’s 7-year-old granddaughter helps out, clearing tables. “It costs nothing to start learning right now,” says grandma Carla, already certain that “we are moving Adega from one generation to the next.”