A few months ago a little storefront joint opened down the street next to our neighborhood green grocer, a mom and pop operation that has been there for decades. A varnished wooden counter behind the iron-framed windows and a few matching tables make it fit the new bohemian-chic Tbilisi style popping up the street around Rooms Hotel, the hip four-star flophouse all the travel magazines are fawning over these days. Although the wine list was not well-stocked, the food didn’t disappoint. The pork belly was not the standard room-temperature slab of bacon on a plate, but was oven-roasted and nestled on two puddles of cherry and plum sauce, zesty richness that nearly overpowered the smokiness of the pork. It was simple, bold and delicious. And it was Georgian, although not everyone will agree on that.

The oldest suburb in Mexico City, Santa María la Ribera has seen better days, but it continues to surprise us with cultural and culinary discoveries. One of the most emblematic sites of this colonia is Alameda Poniente park, where, at the center, sits the beautiful Kiosco Morisco, a Porfirio Díaz-era pavilion that is often used as the backdrop for wedding and quinceañera photographs. Right in front of the park is Máare, a Yucatecan restaurant that has been one of our most delicious discoveries in Santa Maria la Ribera. In business for more than eight years, this restaurant is the brainchild of José Ramón and Gabriela Castilla. Although José Ramón has lived in Mexico City for 25 years, he’s extremely proud of his Yucatecan heritage.

Kurtuluş Son Durak is a busy intersection and transit hub that’s a hive of activity 24 hours a day. Marking a transition between the tidy, middle-class Kurtuluş neighborhood and the rough-and-tumble quarters of Dolapdere and Hacıahmet, the area is home to a host of eateries and cafes that never seem to close. Right in the center of it all, we stumbled across a diminutive white van rigged with a makeshift grill. Inside the tiny, elaborately decorated vehicle crouched Yıldırım Usta, a 75-year-old veteran of the kebab trade who has been serving up truly delicious dürüm – kebab wrapped up in flatbread – on Kurtuluş Son Durak for 28 years. He has lived in the area for just under half a century. “You see all these other kebab shops? I was here before all of them,” he told us.

The view from Weekender’s doorway is promising only for those comfortable with snooker: The room is dominated by three intimidatingly broad tables devoted to that challenging cue sport. Compared with New York’s typical coin-op bar-pool tables, a snooker table’s balls are smaller, its pockets tighter and successful shots consequently rarer. They certainly were for us. Crossing to the far side of the counter, we found more action, of a different sort, in a screened-off dining area provisioned by a Bhutanese kitchen. This Woodside establishment is one of the few in all of New York that serves the cuisine of Bhutan, a Himalayan kingdom landlocked between Tibet and India.

Nuno Mendes is excited. He’s standing at my kitchen counter, where laid out before him are pieces of half-moon-shaped dough, each encasing a juicy meat mixture. They’re about to go into a pan filled with bubbling oil. My mom, Lica, is nervous. She is sharing her mother’s recipe for pastéis de massa terra, a traditional Portuguese savory pastry, with the highly esteemed chef of Chiltern Firehouse and Taberna do Mercado in London. He has heard about her mouth-watering pastéis from a mutual friend and decided to see for himself just how good they are. Worried that the dough isn’t quite right, she drops in the first one and the pastry bubbles up crispy, as it should. When it’s finished, she gives it to Mendes, who takes one bite and says, “Wow, these are amazing!”

Brazil’s economic crisis has hit Rio hard this past year, and the culinary scene was by no means immune from the downturn. Some famous restaurants and bars closed their doors for good. But the city hasn’t given up. In fact, if some doors have closed, a lot more have opened. Because now creativity is being used as a weapon against the crisis, and not only at newly opened spots. Established bars and restaurants have been reinvigorated with new ideas and processes. In this atmosphere, many exciting culinary novelties have made their way to the streets, ready for us to indulge in, all without having to spend too much money. So my best bites of 2017 reflect this abundance of good and cheap novel eats that have become so popular in these leaner times.

With new restaurants popping up in this increasingly popular city and so many more disappearing due to rising rents, 2017 was a year of change – both good and bad – in the Lisbon food scene. We mourn those spots that have left us, but also celebrate the arrival of some exciting places helmed by a new crop of young chefs who are highlighting quality and local products and ingredients. Pies at Bel’Empada: Bel’Empada, a tiny restaurant and takeaway in Alvalade, a residential area in the northern part of the city, bakes the most delicious pies with a thin light dough that are bursting with flavor.

After an awful 2016 punctuated by bomb attacks and a failed coup attempt, Istanbulites were clinging to the desperate hope that tensions would ease in the new year. Then, shortly after bottles had been popped and toasts had been made, news suddenly poured in that the city’s ritziest nightclub had been sprayed with bullets in a shocking and tragic attack that claimed the lives of 39 people. Though the year started off with the kind of bang I wasn’t expecting, things have calmed down in 2017. This has afforded Istanbulites the opportunity to spend less time worried about their own personal safety and more time focused on the still-troubling political situation that clouds Turkey today.

Caga Tió, Tió de Nadal No cagues arengadas Que són saladas Caga torróns Que són més bons It’s not a carol, but it is likely the most popular song in Catalonia around Christmastime. Please pardon the profanity necessary in rendering a faithful translation: “Shit, Log, Christmas Log/Don’t shit herrings/Which are salty/Shit nougats/Which are better.” You might also hear Caga Tió/Avellanas i mató/Si no cagas be,/Et dare un cop de bastó. “Shit, Log/Hazelnuts and mató [curd cheese]/If you don’t shit well/I’ll hit you with a stick.”

This year saw record-breaking numbers of tourists descend on Tokyo, and a handful more Michelin stars to further the capital’s lead over every other city in the world. Feeling vicariously fatigued from all this attention, for the most part I tried my best to avoid both the throngs of tourists and Michelin-grade ostentation this year, though both proved impossible to elude completely. For that reason, my most memorable meals in 2017 were a combination of old favorites and unexpected discoveries. Ushitora: I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve spent an entire evening unwinding at a corner table in Ushitora.

Editor’s note: We’re celebrating another year of excellent backstreets eating by taking a look back at our favorite restaurants and dishes of 2017. Starting things off is a dispatch from our Tbilisi bureau chief Paul Rimple: In 2001, a chic fashion designer opened up a snazzy café in the Vake Park building we were living. The low quadratic furnishings were not made for comfort, but were perfect for posing with your nose in the air and a cigarette between your fingers. It was the only cafe in this part of town and lucky us, it was downstairs.

The debate rages on: which are Greece’s best traditional Christmas cookies, kourambiedes or melomakarona? Amongst our friends and family, moist, honey-soaked melomakarona win out over the crumbly, butter-rich almond kourambiedes. The word “melomakarona” is a combination of meli, which means “honey,” and makaronia, which comes from the ancient Greek word makaria (μακαρία), meaning “blessed” (and having nothing to do with the Italian pasta with the Greek name “macaroni”). Long ago, the makaria was a piece of oval-shaped bread made for a funerary dinner to bless the dead. Later on, the makaria was soaked in honey and became known as melomakarono (the singular form of the word; these cookies are also called finikia by some).

There’s a new phenomenon in Rio’s botequim scene. Until some years ago, running one of these small bars was something done exclusively by immigrants from Portugal, Spain and Brazil’s northeast. But ever since botequims became extremely popular among the carioca middle class, new players have gotten into the business: the customers themselves. Since the beginning of the 21st century, it has become more and more common to hear about botequim customers who decided to buy the bars they used to frequent. Initially, it might be to help the former owners and to keep the bar from closing due to financial problems. But then they might notice that running a botequim in Rio can be enjoyable – and also good business, if the job is well done.

We spent the summer in Georgia’s Shida Kartli region, a vast expanse of fertile terrain in the heart of the country that we have fallen crazy in love with. One day, over a glass of local Chinuri wine, we wondered aloud, “Every other region in the country has signature dishes, but what about Kartli? What are its signature dishes?” We asked our neighbors and got a lot of shoulder shrugs. Shota, a 65-year-old contractor, re-called his grandmother’s soups. “They had fruit,” he said. Seventy-year-old Maro said she too ate fruit soups as a child. Thus began our plan to dig up forgotten Kartli recipes, someday.

In the sections of China’s Jiangsu Province where Huaiyang cuisine reigns supreme, autumn is marked not by yellow and red foliage or falling temperatures. The change in seasons instead comes when restaurants post hairy crab (大闸蟹 Dàzháxiè) menus and shops selling baked goods the rest of the year pivot to aquariums full of the live crabs trying to scale the glass walls. Peak hairy crab season falls during the ninth and tenth lunar month of the year. In 2017, that means from October 20 until December 17. But when we arrived at Yangcheng Lake – a hairy crab mecca – before China’s National Holiday on October 1, the lake was already lined with hawkers wrapping the live crabs with twine and selling them to hungry tourists.