Guda cheese is sheep cheese from eastern Georgia, aged in guda, which is sheep skin. Nowadays most guda is aged in plastic, but we found one vendor at the Deserter’s Bazaar who has the real deal in her stall, which comes from Tusheti in the high Caucasus.

Walk through Lisbon’s Madragoa, a neighborhood of cobblestoned streets and small houses, and you are likely to be hit with the intoxicating smell of freshly roasted coffee. Follow the scent and you are likely to find yourself in an utterly unique spot: Flor da Selva, one of the last wood-fired coffee roasters in Europe. Manuel Alves Monteiro, from Melgaço in northern Portugal, founded Flor da Selva in 1950, and Manuel’s son, Jorge, and grandson, Francisco are keeping the family business alive and kicking via an artisanal method – one they started using many years before anything artisanal was trendy, mind you. “My father was a coffee lover,” says Jorge, thinking back to when Manuel first opened his shop. “At this time, we were drinking a lot of mixtures with barley or chicory that were inexpensive, but he could see the potential for 100% coffee blends.”

While meandering through a market in Istanbul’s Beşiktaş, we spotted unripe figs that are perfect for making delicious fig jam. The thought of the sweet yet refreshing taste together with kaymak was making us drool, so we bought some and headed on home to make jam.

When Nikos Thomas was desperately looking for work in 2005, he was forced to switch gears from music and take on a particularly unglamorous gig: working at the Hooters in Athens Mall as a grill cook, the best-paying job he could find. Little did this rocker know he would be sacrificing his life-long passion of music for a new and tastier one – cooking. Two years out from his Hooters gig, Nikos found himself enrolled at a chefs’ school, eventually moving on to work in restaurants, then hired on as chef at a hotel on the island of Zakynthos. And as Nikos opened himself up to new passions, more found its way into his life.

Like most Syrians who fled their war-ravaged country and made their way to Turkey, Fatma Jabal, a 19-year-old from Aleppo now living in Istanbul, had to get creative in order to make a living. With a baby boy to take care of and her husband struggling to provide for their family while working as a carpenter, Fatma tapped into something she’s been doing since she was a child: baking cakes and cookies. Making desserts had been something Fatma has loved from early on growing up in Aleppo, which she left in 2014 in the midst of the worsening conflict there. For her, each treat she bakes is a work of art that just happens to be edible. “The first thing I did in the kitchen was sweets,” she says. But Fatma realized she needed to develop her budding baking prowess to start charging customers.

On our Born on the Bosphorus walk, we visit the fresh market in Beşiktaş where vendors boast fresh erik (sour green plums), çağla (unripe almonds) and types of local kiraz (cherry). The taste peak for these spring specialties is somewhat short, leaving expats to hunt for vendors that will ship early and fast enough.

While meandering through a market on Istanbul’s Asian side, we spot strings of dried eggplant and peppers that will at some point in the future become extremely flavorful dolmas once they have been rehydrated and stuffed with a rice and herb mixture.

There is a day in February when we raise our noses to the sky like dogs and catch the first teasing wisps of spring. Our eyes widen, we nod and chime with giddy grins, “It’s coming.” Then the weather turns with a cold snap or even snow and we forget all about spring until one day in mid-March we wake up, pour a coffee, peer out the window and cry out, “Whoa, look!” jabbing our forefingers towards our tkemali tree and its little white flowers that bloomed overnight; the first blossoms of the year. No fruit says springtime greater than tkemali, which is a cherry plum (prunus cerasifera) harvested young, when it is exquisitely sour. Together with fresh tarragon, it is the basis of the mandatory Easter dish, chakapuli. People are stocked with preserved sour plums just in case Easter falls too early on the calendar.

The neighborhood of Exarchia in downtown Athens has long played a storied role in the social and political history of Greece. Bordering the National Technical University of Athens, also known as Athens Polytechnic, where students staged a massive uprising against the Greek military junta in 1973 that resulted in a violent repression, and the Law School of the University of Athens, it has for years attracted people with leftist political leanings, including anarchists, socialists and anti-fascists, as well as students, bohemians and artists. Although famous for the various riots and uprisings that have taken place here throughout the years (a reputation that has often kept fearful tourists away), Exarchia has also developed a vibe and character all its own, one that’s unique amongst neighborhoods in Athens.

We used to live near the Mtkvari River, in a ground-floor apartment with a single window looking into our courtyard, which was a dirt parking lot. The sun never made it to our window but every morning at the crack of eight, a woman would wake us with the melodious croon of “ma-tso-ni, mat-so-ni!” And if that didn’t wake us, her incessant tapping on our window certainly did. The payoff, however, was a jar full of the thickest, creamiest, most refreshing homemade yogurt, with just a perfect hint of tartness. So, we would shuffle out of bed, open the window and exchange our empty jars with her full ones.

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.

Our Born on the Bosphorus walk in Istanbul pays a visit to a third-generation candymaker in the market at Üsküdar whose lokum (Turkish delight) is made with only the best fruits Turkey has to offer: apricots from Malatya, oranges from Finike, and peaches from Bursa.

We humans can cry for many reasons – out of happiness, sadness, anger and frustration. But for someone who hails from the northwestern Spanish region of Galicia, there’s something else that can easily bring tears: morriña, which basically means homesickness, similar to the Portuguese concept of saudade. So it’s no surprise that Galician bars and restaurants abroad often have names related to this pining for home. Bar Bágoa (“bágoa” means tear) in Barcelona is no exception. This humble Galician bar has made something of its homesickness, continuing to thrive among the fancy restaurants and gastro-pubs on Carrer d’Enric Granados in the Left Eixample neighborhood.

The late Christos Kaskavelis began his career as a traveling salesman of sorts: he owned a portable canteen, a common sight at farmers’ markets around Athens. Moving daily from one market to the next, he prepared coffee and snacks for the market vendors, delivering their orders on his traditional metal tray. Yet Christos harbored a special passion for koutoukia, or basement tavernas, those hidden, underground, low-budget eateries that offer a laidback atmosphere and are packed come wintertime. Places where the chatter of patrons combines with the Greek music playing in the background to create a pleasing din. For Christos, this was the best type of taverna, and it was his dream to one day open his own.

Manuela, like many Neapolitans who emigrated abroad, used to make periodic trips home to see her family. On one such trip in 2012, she went to her grandmother’s house for Sunday dinner. As one does in Naples when a relative returns to the ancestral home, her grandmother prepared a ragù sauce for her. It was a simple meal, but one that would forever change Manuela’s life. When she finished eating, Manuela made the ceremonial scarpetta (dipping bread in the remaining sauce). Then a flash of inspiration came to her. “I thought, ‘Why isn’t there a place where you can eat only meat sauce? Where you can do the scarpetta like at home?’” she tells us.