There’s an old Catalan saying that goes, A Vic, llonganisses, frares i misses (“In Vic, cured sausages, friars and masses”). The capital of the Osona region – equidistant between Barcelona and the Pyrenees – was indeed for a long time an important religious town: it is said to be one of the towns with the highest number of convents and churches in Catalonia. Nowadays, university students and a diverse off-campus population have largely replaced priests and nuns, while masses have been swapped for music, film and other cultural festivals. Cured sausages, though, have managed to retain their place in local culture and are in evidence in every single pork deli shop window in this central Catalonia town.

Beneath modern Lisbon lies a complex network of galleries belonging to the city’s 18th-century aqueduct, a monumental structure that resisted the 1755 earthquake that devastated much of the capital. The aqueduct’s 58 km of tunnels and underground channels distributed water to 33 chafarizes (fountains) – often ornamental – to supply the city with drinking water. One of them, located along the steep steps connecting the Avenida and Príncipe Real neighborhoods, now houses Chafariz do Vinho, the Portuguese capital’s oldest enoteca, or wine bar.

Editor's note: Our recurring feature, Building Blocks, focuses on foods and ingredients that are fundamental to the cuisines we write about. Here we look at phyllo, an essential element of the Greek kitchen that tastes best when made by hand. It is thin, fragile, difficult to roll out and fiddly to work with – at least to the uninitiated – and yet phyllo is one of the pillars of the Greek kitchen. This delicate pastry is almost as ubiquitous as bread, turning up in the form of scores of sweet and savory pies with myriad fillings and dozens of shapes that vary depending on what part of Greece you’re in or even whose home you may be visiting. The phyllo-based pita, or pie, is the most versatile of foods: It can be served hot or cold; as a starter, a main course or dessert; eaten on the run or sitting down; lifted out of the frozen food section or made at home.

Offering some of the world’s purest, most passionately produced chocolate, along with some of the best coffee in Lisbon, Bettina & Niccolò Corallo on Rua da Escola Politécnica in the Príncipe Real neighborhood has changed the tastes and habits of many locals. There’s no milk chocolate available at this family-run shop, only dark chocolate. And yet Portuguese chocolate lovers – who have a notorious sweet tooth – will swoon when one mentions Corallo’s products. As for the coffee, area residents now wait until 10 a.m., when the café opens, to have their morning brew here.

As the towers of Tokyo’s Nihonbashi financial district began to proliferate and grow taller, developers took special care to preserve and in many cases not displace the area’s mainstream department stores, art galleries and varied restaurants, and so traditional establishments were often incorporated into the new buildings. The Mitsui real estate group, which opened the two Coredo Towers in 2014, made sure to include time-honored restaurants in the new setting, including an amazingly good, classic Edo-mae sushi bar lured from an outdated setting, an outpost of a Kyoto home-cooking restaurant and a dazzling array of famous sweets shops. The developers were also clever enough to include a classic izakaya, or pub-style establishment, enticed away from the Tsukiji market. Every evening, office workers pour out of local mega-buildings and pack into Nihonbashi Suminoe to enjoy the collegial atmosphere and flavorful charcoal-cooked fish. Sakaya means a location in which to purchase sake, and “i” means to stay in a place and feel at ease. Thus, i-sakaya becomes “izakaya” when pronounced correctly, and it’s the perfect way to describe Nihonbashi Suminoe.

You get to Bar do Alto by taking a zippy mototaxi up the snaking streets of the Babilônia favela and then walking 10 minutes up jagged staircases that eventually bear right. On the route, you’ll pass by slices of life that make favelas a museum of Rio, where the city’s symbols and icons are on display in the bare and human way that’s made possible by close quarters of self-made dwellings. There are the evangelicals raising their voices in weeknight prayers. Shirtless men with leathered skin that speaks to long day jobs, now tipping back tall evening bottles of beer. Children playing soccer as overheated cops in bulletproof vests slump on nearby benches.

Şehzade Erzurum Cağ Kebabı is one of our favorite places in Istanbul for a satisfying, lamby meal. You could easily walk past its handful of outdoor tables, tucked into a bustling pedestrian-only shopping street in the Sirkeci neighborhood. But if you stay, proprietor and head grill master Özcan Yıldırım will make you an unforgettable dish. Cağ kebabı flips the ubiquitous döner concept on its side: Think layered lamb, lamb tail fat, garlic and spices, roasted on a horizontal spit, in front of a blazing wood fire. As the giant lamb cylinder’s outer edges caramelize, the grill master deftly slides an offset skewer into each glistening morsel, slashes the tender pink meat free from the mothership and repeats this process until your skewer is loaded up with perfect bites of lamb.

The story starts with two successful business executives, dreaming of a drastic change in their lives. They turn to what they love, eating, and find a gaping hole in Istanbul’s restaurant scene. Until just a few years ago, you’d know where this story was heading – a research trip to Naples or Bangkok, followed by the opening of a limp pasta restaurant in the environs of İstinye Park or some other upscale shopping mall. But not this time. The heroes of our story set their sights on the city of Izmir and its offal-laden cuisine. Izmir folk love kelle söğüş (boiled sheep’s head, served cold) and kelle tandır (a roasted version). While in Istanbul these specialties are largely a novelty, in the busy downtown markets of Izmir you’re more likely to come across kelle than kebab. Your friends from Izmir will never post a photo of a sheep’s head on their Facebook page with a freaked-out-looking emoticon because, to them, tucking into a sheep’s head lunch is just everyday business as usual. And, in Istanbul, it seems, the Izmir way of lunch could be catching on.

With all the talk about the benefits of quinoa, chia seeds, goji berries and similar superfoods, we can’t help but be a little taken aback when Dolors, one of the owners of the restaurant Can Vilaró, explains the benefits of eating cap i pota, a traditional Catalan stew made with calf’s head and leg and chickpeas. According to her, the gelatinous chunks of meat make the skin glow and fight wrinkles. “It works as well as the most expensive collagen facial cream available at stores,” she says with a cheeky smile.

Before Roppongi Hills rose from the warren of rambling streets, aging wooden homes and traditional Japanese ways nestled amongst embassies and Korean barbeque joints, Azabu Juban was a sleepy section of Tokyo, moored more in custom than the flashy markets and designer boutiques to come. The main shoten gai, or shopping street, was a classic example of Japanese daily life. Small mom-and-pop stores catered to neighbors, and after the third or fourth visit anyone could be a regular. The vegetable man would disappear into the back of his stand and produce a perfectly ripe melon before you had to ask; the flower vendor waved at her customers even if they weren’t in the market for flowers; and the shoe repair man admonished everyone for not shining their shoes regularly enough.

It’s a common fantasy: Accidentally locked in a bakery, forgotten overnight, we quickly eat everything in sight and fall into a sugary, carb-filled dream of sweet-spun bliss. Sequestered away where nobody will find us until morning, we wake from time to time and continue to eat cakes until we sleep again. Short of that happening in this lifetime, we frequently daydream of walking the aisles of bakeries, latte in hand as we pull pain au chocolat and sticky buns from racks, consuming everything in a hurried rush before we’re asked to leave.

Coca is a word used in Catalonia and neighboring regions for many kinds of baked doughs and pastries, both sweet and savory. The Catalan and Occitan word has the same root as “cake” and comes from the Dutch word kok, which entered the local lexicon during the reign of the Carolingians in Catalonia (759-809)

Editor’s note: To cap off our annual review of the year’s best eating experiences, we’ve unleashed our imaginations to create the Turkish food court of our dreams. After a period of protest, we finally broke down and visited the Zorlu Center, a new, high-profile shopping mall in Istanbul and a showcase of international brand names, from Fendi to Jamie Oliver. Our initial attraction was the promise of a particularly well-kept playground, but while we were there, we visited Eataly, the all-Italian culinary emporium.

Editor’s note: The year is coming to an end, which means it’s time for us to look back on all the great eating experiences we had in 2014 and name our favorites among them. Can Pineda At this tiny, century-old restaurant in the neighborhood of El Clot, we ate a simple dish of guisantes lágrima (“tear-shaped peas”) with little bits of jamón ibérico, one of the most delicious culinary treasures we have had all year – and one we will remember for a long time to come.

Horn of plenty, yellow foot, ox tongue, gray knight: the bewitching names are like something out of a fairy tale. But at Casa Lucio, in Sant Antoni, these are all mushrooms you might find on your plate, especially in autumn.