We are sitting under the tonic canopy of an enormous pine tree in a hidden Tbilisi garden, licking our lips over menu items that are neither European nor Georgian. When our dining companion informs us she will not share her trout tartare with adjika (highly concentrated spicy red pepper paste), we realize there will be no plate-dipping tonight. Just as we settle on our main courses, a woman in a blue chef’s jacket comes up to our table, beaming bonhomie, and asks if she can help us in any way. This is Tekuna Gachechiladze, the blue-eyed Tbilisi chef dedicated to changing the way Georgians understand their food culture. We are sitting at her latest culinary venture, Cafe Littera.

The smell and the smoke attract us like a magnet. We can’t see them, but there are sardines being grilled over charcoal somewhere nearby. We are in Largo do Chafariz de Dentro, where the Fado Museum is, and the strong smell of the popular deep-fried farturas (a big churro) goes unnoticed due to the overwhelming – and delicious! – smell of grilled sardines everywhere.

You don’t need the excuse of a ferry departure to head for the port of Rafina, on Attica’s east coast. Its long, open beach is a favorite among windsurfers, its fish stalls carry the catch from most of the central Aegean and, most important, it offers a handful of excellent eateries. But how can you separate the standouts from the run-of-the-mill?

Chalkida, the small peninsula on central Evia (Euboea) just an hour’s drive from Athens, is an ideal day-trip destination for urbanites. It’s famous for an unusual phenomenon, in which the tide in the Strait of Evripos changes direction several times a day, and it’s also known among tourists for its fresh and delicious fish and seafood. When Chalkideans want fresh seafood, however, they head to the less touristed town of Nea Artaki, just north of Evia’s main city. In the tiny port, there’s a classic promenade lined with taverns, and the penultimate, Teskos, is our favorite destination. On a recent visit, the weather was beautiful, sunny and cool enough for us to sit on the sidewalk adjacent to the sea.

The Yaveş Gari Bodrum chapter of the international Slow Food movement organized the first Slow Cheese Festival of Turkey, which took place March 5 to 8 this year. We were lucky enough to experience it for ourselves. Local food cultures and small-scale food producers everywhere are at risk of disappearing due to the market economy and industrialized food production, and Slow Food’s various initiatives aim to help them survive and to educate the public about their cultural and gastronomic value. Dairy products in particular are under threat from immense regulation, which decreases diversity and imposes an often insupportable financial burden on small producers. Moreover, as Slow Food says, “It is not simply a question of the best milk and cheeses – our food culture and the freedom to choose what we eat are at stake.”

The cosmopolitan island of Aegina sits in the center of the Saronic Gulf, a few miles away from Piraeus – close enough for a quick day trip from Athens. Aegina may not have the gastronomic reputation of the Cyclades or Crete, but it does have its famous pistachios, the first Greek agricultural product that earned the European Union’s Protected Designation of Origin status, in 1996. Pistachio trees arrived in Greece around 1850 and were first cultivated in Zante. A few years later, a local named Dr. N. Peroglou decided to cultivate pistachio trees in Aegina using rootstock from Syria. Over the years, local farmers grafted the Syrian trees with those from Chios, yielding a new variety that produces superb nuts.

In a couple of days, Brazil will be the center of the world. And over the course of the World Cup, Rio will host seven matches, including the big final. Needless to say, the city is already packed with visitors from all over the world, all of them hoping for a ticket to watch at least one of those matches at legendary Maracanã Stadium. But only a privileged few will get to see the beautiful game in person; most people will support their national teams in front of a TV. But where? Inside a boring hotel room? Of course not. Everybody will be on the streets trying to find a good place to watch the games and have a lot of fun at the same time. And in Rio, watching soccer matches at bars is a national sport that is almost as important as the futebol itself. Here’s our list of the best “watch-and-drink” bars in town.

Morro Fi and Mitja Vida are two relatively new entrants to Barcelona’s vermuteo (“vermouthing”) culture, whose history stretches back to the turn of the last century. These two bars are the product of nostalgia for a bygone era fused with the social network- and urban design-driven present. The vermouth tradition in Barcelona was started in the early 20th century by Flaminio Mezzalama, who represented the Italian company Martini & Rossi in Spain, at his fabulous modernist Bar Torino. Vermut began to be produced in Catalonia, and in the following decades, the province developed its own style of the aromatic fortified drink. At the same time, the custom arose of having vermut before lunch with some pickles to whet one’s appetite. That tradition faded over time but has emerged in recent years as a kind of retro, hipster-approved pastime.

Fried pig’s ears fortified with garlic and parsley, veal cheek and tongue laced with vinaigrette, hefty veal and pork meatballs, creamy artichoke or eggplant omelets or a hearty bocadillo of marinated tuna, red pepper, anchovies and olives: these esmorzars de forquilla, or “fork breakfasts,” are how a Catalonian might start his day – especially at Can Ros, a tapas-and-bocadillos joint that’s open every day from 7 a.m. until midnight. Office workers might drop by for a coffee at mid-morning, followed by the lunch crowd, which takes over from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Dinner, of course, lasts well into the night. It’s breakfast, however, that has made Can Ros most popular among locals.

Like many other Central Anatolian cities, Erzincan is one of those places with very little there there. The natural setting – on a high plateau and ringed by craggy peaks – is promising, but the town itself feels like it’s been scrubbed clean of all traces of history or local distinctiveness, its streets lined with characterless buildings painted in fading pastels, their ground floors occupied by the same furniture and supermarket chains found in every other city in the Turkish heartland. Erzincan does have one thing going for it, though: it’s the kind of place where you can land at the airport, hop into a waiting taxi and ask your driver to take you to the local cheese sellers’ bazaar, and he’ll take you straight there, no questions asked, as if it’s the most natural request he could get.

In a recent New Yorker profile of Turkish entrepreneur Hamdi Ulukaya, founder of Chobani, a wildly successful company that makes Greek-style yogurt in the U.S., we read with great interest about the trip writer Rebecca Mead made to Argos, in the Peloponnese, where renowned cookbook author Diane Kochilas had told Mead she’d had “the best yogurt she had ever tasted.”

In Piraeus there is a tacit agreement among locals to keep treasured taverns and restaurants hidden, lest they be overrun by the tourists arriving on the cruise ships that dock in town. This is particularly true of Keratsini, a neighborhood on the outskirts of the port city. In 1922, Keratsini became home to Greek refugees driven out of Smyrna, the coast of the Sea of Marmara and Constantinople during fighting between Greece and the nascent Turkish state. At first, these immigrants were treated poorly and suffered poverty and hardships, but eventually they became a vital part of the Greek population.

Legend has it that in 12th-century Priorat, in the region of Tarragona in southern Catalonia, there was a shepherd who dreamt every night of a ladder leaning against a pine tree. The ladder ascended from the valley all the way to heaven and angels climbed up and down, tending to their heavenly and earthly duties. Some Cistercian monks, upon hearing this story, took the vision as a divine message to build the monastery Scala Dei (“Ladder of God”) in that very spot. Those clever monks, noting the angels’ comings and goings, decided to become their wine suppliers and began cultivating grapes and making wine there.

Dear Culinary Backstreets, I keep hearing about something in Chinese cuisine called “stinky tofu.” Does it really smell that bad to earn such an offensive moniker?

Piraeus holds the distinction of being Greece’s biggest port, as well as the largest passenger port in Europe. Although it is a mere 20-minute train ride from downtown Athens, most Athenians think of Piraeus with a reverence reserved for a foreign country. There is just something almost mythic about this ancient port, which has been in existence since the 5th century B.C. – the famous opening line of Plato’s Republic is, after all, “I went down to the Piraeus yesterday.” In the modern period, the greater Piraeus area – home to a population of about half a million in Piraeus proper, along with a number of suburbs – has witnessed dizzying highs and lows, especially over the past century. The area has been a major destination for immigrants from elsewhere in Greece, including the islands and the Peloponnese. One of the biggest population expansions came after 1922, when vast numbers of Greek refugees fleeing Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) migrated to the area and established new working-class neighborhoods, including Nikaia, Keratsini, Drapetsona and Korydallos.