New York’s street food vendors usually ply their trade where potential customers congregate. On side streets in midtown Manhattan, they set up four and five abreast for the weekday lunch rush. During warm-weather weekends, they feed footballers and their fans outside ball fields in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Red Hook and East New York. In Queens, they do business beside a miles-long stretch of Roosevelt Avenue where it passes through Woodside, Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, and Corona; they cluster thickly near station stops of the elevated 7 train. The setting of the D’Angelos Italian Sausage truck presents a dramatic contrast. Monday through Saturday, the truck parks in a long-established spot on Woodhaven Boulevard, on the border between two largely residential neighborhoods, Middle Village and Rego Park, beside the green expanse of St. John Cemetery.

We’d passed Noisette many times in the (not quite) year that it had been open. But whenever we’d walked down those sometimes clamorous blocks of 30th Avenue in Astoria, Queens – not far from a bagel shop, a pizzeria, a comfort-food hotspot and a New Orleans-themed bar-restaurant, whose windows open wide toward the street during happy hour – we’d given little notice to the quiet bakery-café with the French name. That changed during one recent stroll, not long before dark, when a hand-drawn signboard beside the door wished us “Ramadan Kareem” and beckoned us to come inside.

From the start, I knew that I wouldn’t find what I was looking for: my great uncle’s baklava shop. A large office building rises where his shop used to be, right around the corner from the dome of St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church in Astoria, Queens. But I still couldn’t help looking up the address. My great uncle, Michael Eliades, owned two pastry shops in Astoria, one being the Kismet near St. Demetrios, which employed my grandfather when he first arrived in the United States. When my family sought to leave Istanbul, Turkey, it was my great uncle who got my grandfather a visa as an “Oriental pastry chef.”

Flowers may be a visual treat, but they are also a regular ingredient in the cooking of numerous cultures. It’s not uncommon to find roses, violets, orchids, chrysanthemums or any number of flowers – more than 200 in the world are catalogued as edible – adding a pop of color or a surprising flavor to a dish. Flowers have particularly deep roots in Spanish cuisine. They featured most prominently in the food of Al-Andalus, the territory of southern Spain governed by Muslims during the medieval period. Influenced by the Arabs, Andalusian cooks used rose and azahar (orange blossom) to aromatize water and make syrups, jams and pastries.

Despite the somewhat rundown, seedy feel of Omonia today, for all of the 19th century and a good part of the 20th the neighborhood was the real center of downtown Athens. “No one lives in Athens if he does not spend at least one hour a day in the Hafteia,” wrote the famous writer and playwright Gregorios Xenopoulos in 1913, referring to the blocks around the intersection of Aiolou and Stadiou Streets, so named allegedly after a 19th-century café in the area owned by a Mr. Haftas. The area was a commercial hub, filled with stores, coffee and sweet shops and hotels. It was a place where people would come to shop and while away the day or the evening. Given its popularity, it’s no surprise that Athens’ first large department stores, like Lambropoulos and Katrantzos Sport, opened here in the early 20th century.

When it first began five years ago, Põe na Quentinha was an informal get-together for people who were equally passionate about food, beer and samba; they spent the day eating, drinking and dancing in preparation for Carnival. Fast-forward to 2017, when what had now developed into a proper street parade drew in over 5,000 people over three different days during the Carnival Season. This year, the food-focused event, the only one of its kind in Rio, is even larger, hosting a full month-long schedule of parades that started in mid-January.

In a market as diverse as Lisbon’s Mercado de Arroios, where people from all over the world shop, Mezze doesn’t seem out of the ordinary. But the small restaurant deserves a closer look: it’s not only one of Lisbon’s few Middle Eastern restaurants, but, more importantly, its staff is almost entirely made up of recently arrived Syrian refugees. For them Mezze represents both a link back to the country they left behind and a crucial aid for putting down roots in their new home. The idea behind Mezze is one that’s being tried out in other countries. Refugees, particularly those fleeing the war in Syria, are given the chance to earn a living and get established by sharing their culinary heritage, either by opening or working at a restaurant or catering business.

These days, a good Portuguese-style savory pie is hard to find – even in Portugal. In a country with so many great examples, namely in Alentejo, Beiras or Trás-os-Montes, where pies (or empadas in Portuguese) are beautifully made, it’s disheartening that in Lisbon you’ll find mostly dull and dry versions or disappointing fillings within good pastry. Belmiro de Jesus, a native of Trás-os-Montes, one of the most remote and unspoiled regions of Portugal, always loved the empadas his grandmother would cook for special occasions or festive times of year, like Easter or the August village festival. So when he decided to open an empada-themed restaurant, he used hers as an inspiration but changed the format and developed a thinner pastry.

Tucked away from the constant hustle and bustle of Queens Boulevard, Anna and George Artunian’s Sunnyside bakery, Arsi’s Pateseria, is a pleasant surprise. As we walk down 47th Avenue towards the gauzy Midtown Manhattan skyline, the smell of freshly baked burekas greets us long before we get to the bakery’s wide window. Inside, in metal trays behind the counter, four different types of burekas, savory sesame ring cookies and even baklava gleam in different shades of gold. Also behind the counter is 60-year-old Anna Artunian, one-half of the husband-and-wife team running the establishment and chatting with the customers, most of whom are regulars.

Quintal Gourmet is the story of a doting son, one who's also delighted to be able to spend more time in his home, the City of God. Yes, the one from the movie. Carlos Vinícius, 29, a man as towering as he is smiley, looks at his mother, wiry and fast-talking Joyce, with a doe-eyed affection that seems to be deeply mutual. "I always followed my mom," he says. Before Quintal Gourmet, the two worked as domestic help, with Carlos Vinicíus a caretaker for an elderly woman. When his 72-year-old patroa passed away, he longed to spend more time with his own community rather than leave the favela each day for work.

Carmen and Eduardo’s story could be an allegory for the rise and uh-oh moment of Brazil’s new middle class – except their tale is a real one, one that ends with a really nice savory fried pastel that’s become a midnight munchie hit with their neighbors in Rio’s iconic City of God (Cidade de Deus) favela. The pair’s life together started early; they met when Carmen, now 30, was just 12 years old; moved in together when she was 14; and both converted to evangelical Christianity and married in a church when she was 18. They came to the City of God, well-known from the book and film of the same name, looking for a more economical housing option.

Cervejaria Ramiro is the undisputed temple of seafood in central Lisbon. The 50-year-old business represents an old-school type of eatery: a beer hall where the seafood is fresh and cheap, with a choice from the daily menu or directly from the large aquariums that look out to the street. Taking up two floors of a late-Art Nouveau building on Avenida Almirante Reis, Cervejaria Ramiro is perpetually crowded. The clientele has not been affected by the recent urban regeneration of the area, which is turning the degraded Intendente neighbourhood, long affected by social exclusion, into a fashionable district. In fact, the restaurant was already popular in the 1970s, when eating seafood was new to the capital.

There used to be a state-owned publishing house in our neighborhood with a cafeteria that served a proletariat menu that included ostri (beef stew), cold slices of beef tongue and cutlets with buckwheat or mashed potatoes. It was a stolovaya, which is the Russian word for “canteen,” but a more accurate translation would be “human fueling station of protein, carbs and vodka.” It was gutted several years ago; its ghosts now haunt the dining room of a designer hotel.

Tacos are everywhere in Mexico City, and though the options are many – chicken, al pastor, carnitas, carne asada – the basic ingredients tend to be the same wherever you go. That’s why, as we were walking the aisles of Tianguis La Raza on a Sunday morning, El Parrillón caught our attention. A big sign announced tacos – nothing new there – but besides the classic chicken and bistec, cecina and arrachera – all different cuts of beef – El Parrillón (roughly, “The Big Grill”) offers several Argentine-style sausages and cured meats, including chistorra, a small spicy sausage, and panceta, pork belly (like Italian pancetta), as well as Spanish chorizo, which, unlike the fresh Mexican sausage, is cured. But for us the real draw was griddled provolone, which we had never seen on a taco before and happens also to be one of our favorite cheeses.

Like other cities around the world, Mexico City has been flooded with big-name chain coffee shops that charge exorbitant prices for a cup of bad coffee. Fortunately, D.F. is a city of contrasts, where good taste in coffee still exists. We set out to find the best coffee shops in town and were surprised by what we found. Our first stop was one coffee shop we have been visiting for several years now, Café Triana, inside Mercado San Juan, the city’s first gourmet stop par excellence. Marilu and Pablo Arana started selling coffee from Veracruz, a city on the Gulf of Mexico with a Caribbean feel, in the aisles of the market until they got the chance to get a booth and start their own coffee shop. Their establishment has since been featured in many national and international media outlets.