It wasn’t very long ago that finding a vegan restaurant in Mexico City was like finding a friend on the city’s overcrowded metro during rush hour (read: impossible). In fact, until this decade there were no exclusively vegan eateries in Mexico’s bustling capital. This is not to suggest that vegan options weren’t available, but exploring the city as a vegan could be a tricky business, and veganism was a little-understood concept. So unusual an idea it was, that journalist-cum-chef Mariana Blanco was often called a loser or perdedora by friends who found her animal-free and plant-rich lifestyle to be at odds with what they knew. So when she opened the first vegan restaurant in the city, and indeed the first in Latin America, she called it Los Loosers.

We bit into the khinkali, its handmade dough indelicate and sticky, as we like it. Steam poured out the newly made hole, and we blew lightly before slurping up the rich stock and gobbling the dumpling down, even the puckered knob. The ground pork and beef was packed with fresh cilantro, the juices absorbed into the jacket. It was a perfect khinkali. A home wrecker. This seducer of a dumpling is molded by the knowing hands of Manana Osapashvili, born in Gudamakhari, a mountain village in Pasanauri, the heartland of khinkali. A professional cook for 29 years, Manana has been making khinkali since she was 10 years old. Today, she is running the kitchen at Sioni 13, located at the Tbilisi Theological Seminary in Old Town. It is a part of the city known for its tourists and hookah bars, and the mediocre "traditionnel" Georgian restaurants that cater to them.

Agapi Stavrakaki was born in Anogia, a mountain village on the island of Crete famous for producing fine produce and excellent musicians. Decades before she would open Raeti, a delightful restaurant in Athens’ Ambelokoipi neighborhood which pays homage to her island home, a 10-year-old Agapi worked by her grandmother’s side at her family’s vineyard in Anogia, cooking for the workers harvesting grapes and making wine. She and the other women would prepare huge quantities of food in enormous kettles. Despite being cooked in bulk, the food was always traditional, fresh and tasty – Cretans have high standards! Before continuing with Agapi’s story, a few things about Cretan cooking: One of the most legendary of Greece’s regional cuisines, it makes use of all the simple ingredients that are offered by nature with an open hand.

For a century and a half, the building housing Guixot has taken on many personalities – though one thing has remained the same: It’s always housed some type of bar that also served food. Now a tapas bar celebrated for its sandwiches, brothers, partners and cheery owners Francisco and José Gutiérrez Murillo have been running the iconic eatery in the Raval neighborhood since 1986. Here we can find some of the more interesting sandwiches of the Old City, along with good tapas and a lunch menu of daily specials. Exuding a relaxed, familiar and friendly atmosphere, the space still keeps an old school look with its marble tables and thin iron columns from the past century dotting the interior. It makes good use of its walls, exhibiting paintings that seem to recall its previous life – and it’s had many.

We are in the Vasto district, a difficult to navigate maze of narrow streets that criss and cross, a market area squashed between Naples’ central station and Centro Direzionale, the business district. The district’s Via Nazionale, a street adjacent to the station, is a shrine to local gastronomic treasures, and we consider it a true paradise for lovers of good food. It’s a jewelry box of flavors, ideas, and unique and original products. The daily street market on Via Ferrara, another local artery, is one of the city’s most colorful and fascinating – mentioned several times in renowned author Elena Ferrante’s “My Brilliant Rriend.” It was here, in 2016, that Dario Troise brought to life a project 15 years, if not centuries, in the making: a panini bar that serves only cuzzetiello (which roughly translates to bread bowl sandwiches).

Addy has cornered the Astoria market in Kenyan cuisine. Even so, large portions of his menu are devoted to dishes familiar all around the world, and popular with all ages. They include a dozen or so flavors of chicken wings and a fistful of burgers, some basic, some overloaded. (Lean forward over the plate, is our advice, when biting into a Juicy Lucy.) To our surprise, the American South stakes a claim at Addy's after all: The country-fried steak, served atop mashed potatoes and accompanied by a brimming cup of gravy, is one of the best we've ever had. Because mishkaki is new, at first, to most of Addy's clientele, he's simplified the presentation rather than risk confusing his customers. Typically, at a Kenyan roadside stall, mishkaki is served with flatbread, the meat arrives on the skewer, and the customer adds sauces and other accompaniments to his or her liking. In Astoria, mishkaki is served with rice and a salad, and the chunks of meat, sans skewers, are already seasoned, à la Addy. We can practically taste the sizzle.

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.”

The red storefront and Cyrillic lettering made it clear this was not just another kebab shop. Hesitant at first, we scouted around the outside – the restaurant is tucked into a side street, flanked by a shipping office and a construction site, and does not appear to exist on Google Maps. The menu, written in dry erase marker on a board hanging from the wall, was entirely in Mongolian. Nevertheless, armed with the names of a few traditional Mongolian dishes – khuushuur (a sort of meat-filled empanada), mantuun buuz (dumplings) and tsuivan (noodle stew) – gained from some cursory YouTube research, we sheepishly approached the counter. As we attempted to order, our host smiled. “I’ll make you something, don’t worry,” she assured us, and ran into the kitchen.

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.

Next to some wooden shelves overloaded with spirits, a photograph of Natália Correia hangs on the wall. The photo’s placement makes it appear as if Correia, cigarette in hand, is surveying the small room, which is crowded with semi-broken tables. The late poet and upstart co-founded this tiny bar/café a few decades ago, and her presence is still felt here and in the neighborhood more generally: A nearby street, with a spectacular view of the city, is also named after her. Botequím is one of Graça’s oldest bars, located on the ground floor of Vila Sousa, one of the worker apartment complexes built at the end of the 19th century.

Alex Montes and his business partner, Askari Mateos, have spent years fussing over their recipes for tlayudas: large, thin corn tortillas topped with various ingredients. So what is the secret to a great tlayuda? Montes thinks for a moment. “The asiento [the unrefined pork lard that covers the tortilla],” he finally says, “and the beans, always with avocado leaf.” “The great thing about a restaurant,” he continues, “[is that] you make the same dish over and over so you have endless chances to perfect it.” We’d say that Montes and Mateos have done just that – the Oaxacan food at Las Tlayudas, the duo’s restaurant in Colonia del Valle, is pretty much perfect.

There’s something so soothing about taking refuge in a simple restaurant in the middle of a tough work day. These temples of comfort food dot Barcelona streets, with their daily specials written on a flimsy piece of paper or a blackboard. Come midday, laborers of all kinds – from blue-collar workers to executives in suits and freelancers in jeans – stream in, relaxing their minds in front of a good homey dish, one that’s free of ornamentation. In Spain, lunch is usually the main meal of the day, and most companies break for this midday meal between 2 and 4 p.m. This pause allows for a moment of spontaneous team building or a small escape; most people return to their workplace with a renewed vigor.

Rua Catalana is a very ancient road, a corner of Naples where time seems to stand still. Located next to the financial district and now squeezed by 19th-century buildings, it is curiously the only road in the city that, instead of the Italian “Via,” uses “Rua,” a distortion of the French “Rue.” In the mid-14th century, Queen Joanna I of Naples welcomed merchants from all over Europe to the city as part of her efforts to promote trade. She donated this area to the Catalans, and tinsmiths and junk dealers settled here. Even though 700 years have passed, a smattering of small copper and tin artisans continue to practice their craft on this street, now making artistic copper and tin objects for the increasing number of tourists roaming the city.

José Saudade e Silva always knew, deep down, that he wasn’t cut out for tedious office life. So one day in 2014, after studying marketing and working a 9-to-5 job in that same field, he bought a one-way ticket to Oslo, where he had some friends. He didn’t exactly know how he would make a living there, but one of those friends quickly got him a job working in the kitchen of a new fine-dining restaurant, even though José didn’t have any sort of professional cooking background. His only experience in the kitchen was being around his father, an excellent cook. “My father instilled in me a love for food from a young age. He does a great bacalhau à Brás [salt cod with potatoes and eggs], among other dishes,” says the 27-year-old.