From the street, Café Lamas looks almost intentionally nondescript. A fluorescent-lit bar with a glass case of snacks and a few metal chairs would make it identical to any other lanchonete (snack bar) across the city, if it weren’t for the shadowy doorway behind the bar’s aisle. Behind that door awaits a blast from the past. Café Lamas is Rio de Janeiro’s oldest restaurant – a respectable 138 years old in a city that is rapidly putting on a new face as it buzzes with Olympic, hotel and condominium construction – and the place radiates a sense of history and tradition. Bow-tied waiters politely bend as guests enter the dining room, which is dimly illuminated by lamps on ornate cast-iron mounts.

When longtime locals discuss contenders for “best all-around po’boy shop in all of New Orleans,” R&O’s is usually an integral part of the conversation. Fans of the stalwart seafood house located a literal stone’s throw from Lake Pontchartrain will wax poetic about a wide variety of the menu’s delectable standouts – Italian salads studded with tangy chopped giardiniera, oversized stuffed artichokes, seasonal boiled seafoods – before they even start talking po’boys. However, once the conversation turns to the city’s signature long-sandwich, the accolades come in fast and strong. Want a classic shrimp, oyster or soft-shell crab po’boy? They’ll arrive overstuffed, crunchy and fried to juicy perfection.

Although there are plenty of bars on Copacabana’s famous Avenida Atlântica – or even at the beach, at the so called quiosques – very few are worth a visit. Many are just tourist traps. Others are much too expensive. No, the really good bars in Copacabana are inland, along Barata Ribeiro street. That road, along with some of the side streets that let onto it, reveals the true face of Copacabana's popular gastronomy. One of the first bars you encounter on Barata Ribeiro is Galeto Sat's. Open seven days a week, always until 5 a.m., the bar is a bohemian temple – but it’s far from being only that. For many cariocas, Sat's serves the best galeto in town. A galeto is a very young chicken (no more than three months old) cooked over a big coal-fired grill.

Oaxaca City has a mysterious hour, a period of the day when time is suspended. As we walk through a hot day of Oaxaca’s eternal summer, the sun is at its zenith and the mind starts slowing down. The streets feel emptier and quieter than ever, though the soundly closed doors hide lively households of buzzing fans and cool adobe walls. When we need respite from the heat, we remember that, just around the corner, salvation awaits at Mezcalite Pop, a lush paleta (popsicle) and ice cream shop that since 2017 has been an oasis in the middle of the green quarry stone desert of Oaxaca’s historic center, always surprising us with its bold, fresh creations.

Evi Papadopoulou is no stranger to the culinary arts. A well-regarded food journalist who has written articles on pastries and desserts in the top Greek gastronomy publications, she is also a classically trained chef. She studied at the culinary school of renowned Italian pastry chef Iginio Massari and followed that up with specialized training in making artisanal gelato at Francesco Palmieri’s prestigious laboratory in Puglia, Italy. In July of 2014, Papadopoulou opened Le Greche, a gelato parlor tucked away on Mitropoleos Street, right off Syntagma Square. The parlor itself is straight out of an Alphonse Mucha painting and has an Art Nouveau feel, with its airy, muted color palette. Since it opened, the shop has accumulated quite a cult following – and for good reason.

The smell of clean clothes with a lavender sachet from grandma’s closet; the family farm in nearby Lleida province during summer with apple trees and wild aromatic herbs growing all around; peaches washed in seawater during a beach day; an afternoon snack of popsicles while playing under the pine tree in the garden. These are just some of the memories that neighbors left in the mailbox of Mamá Heladera in Barcelona’s Poblenou, where owner Irene Iborra turns them into gelato flavors – an initiative that was recently awarded by the Barcelona City Council as best new innovative business (XVII Premis Barcelona Comerç). Mamá Heladera sits next to Tío Che, a classic horchateria and ice-cream parlor on Rambla del Poblenou that opened in 1912.

There’s a pocket of Tokyo, strolling distance from the stock exchange and the former commercial center, which feels like a step back in time. Ningyocho is filled with stores specializing in traditional crafts, some more than 100 years old. Here you can buy rice crackers or traditional Japanese sweets or head for a kimono, before watching kabuki (traditional Japanese theater) at Meijiza. On Ningyocho’s main street, just a few minutes from Suitengu Shrine which couples visit to pray to conceive a child or for safe childbirth, is a window. The window isn’t very wide, but a flurry of movement draws the attention of passersby. There, a broad-faced Kazuyuki Tani is making udon, bouncing – no, dancing – as he works.

For a city whose natural beauty is what often sweeps visitors off their feet, Rio’s historical gems often look a little like urban ugly ducklings next to the bikini crowds and chic bars on sandy Ipanema beach. That’s a shame, because Rio Antigo has a great story to tell. Old Rio runs along the Guanabara Bay rather than the open Atlantic, and it was the former that gave the city its name – River of January – when Portuguese explorers came upon it in the first month of 1502.

The eyes of Tacacá do Norte’s harried staff widen as yet another customer arrives during the lunchtime rush. The bedroom-sized snack bar can barely hold one line of chairs around its bar but they have somehow managed to squeeze in two. Impatient regulars shake hands and whistle “psst” to the young men staffing the establishment, who gingerly hand steaming pots of shrimp soup and freshly puréed juices over the packed bar.

In Porto, francesinhas are everywhere. The monster-sized sandwich of white bread with steak, ham, cured cold cuts, and melted cheese smothered in a beautiful spicy sauce is a ubiquitous dish that says a lot about the city. When he first visited Porto, Anthony Bourdain asked after eating an entire francesinha with fries: "What is the rate of coronary disease in this country?" He didn't know at the time that, more than clogging the arteries, the beloved local dish warms local hearts. It also generates lively discussions. Every Porto inhabitant has their preferences: some like their francesinha with more sauce or even with a fried egg on top; others prefer different types of bread, from brioche to crusty bread roll. It is impossible, therefore, to reach a consensus on which venue serves the best francesinha in the city.

There’s one thing about the very popular Copacabana bar Pavão Azul that remains a mystery, even after 60-odd years of business: its name. Pavão azul means “blue peacock” in Portuguese, but even the owners don’t know where this curious name come from. Some customers who have been frequenting the bar since it opened in the 1950s say that it was named after the bar in the movie “Casablanca” – except that that place was actually called the Blue Parrot. What’s not a mystery is the bar’s popularity. Once just a regular old botequim – a small bar serving simple food – Pavão Azul was discovered by food critics thanks to its patanisca.

If you go to Rio’s Café Lamas to see where leftist organizers met during Brazil’s military dictatorship, go to Majórica to eat steak where the city’s business and political elites gather today. Located on a residential street in Rio’s Flamengo neighborhood, the restaurant from the outside looks like a three-story house, but for the neon red cursive sign with its name. It was founded in 1963 by two brothers from the Spanish island of Majorca. When we last interviewed the owners in 2015, it was being run by the daughter of one brother, together with (then) 79-year-old Galician-born Ernesto Rodriguez, who worked his way up from being the restaurant’s janitor back in 1965.

Ricardo Manuel Pires Martins likes to brag about the popularity of his bar among Japanese tourists. We don’t begrudge him that, because if you’re in the market for seafood, particularly the less-cooked kind, as these tourists evidently are, Adega Pérola is your bar. Tucked on a commercial lane a few blocks behind the Art Deco condo-and-hotel jam that is the Copacabana beachside, Rio's Adega Pérola sticks close to its Iberian roots, with wine jugs lining the high wall shelves and a selection of about a hundred tapas stewing in their respective marinades behind the glass bar window.

Jokes and laughter can be heard from among the olive trees in a field on the coast of Arsuz, a village in the southern Turkish province of Hatay. Here, two dozen women are hard at work on the hilly land, with a view of the Mediterranean Sea on one side and the Amanos Mountains on the other. Seven days a week, from early morning to midday, the workers comb through the trees one by one, gathering the olives and depositing them on plastic tarps spread on the ground.

Those arriving at Tsukiji Station on an early morning food hunt are most likely in pursuit of some breakfast sushi. Although Japan’s world-famous Tsukiji fish market relocated to Toyosu in October 2018, the ramshackle outer market remained, with its eclectic mix of household goods, tea and dried goods, and seafood donburi shops. Those in the know, however, might head for a different and very unusual breakfast experience in the area – one that has its origins in traditional vegan Buddhist cuisine. The most striking landmark upon exiting Tsukiji Station is not the market entrance, but the imposing Tsukiji Hongwanji temple. Set back from the road, this grey stone behemoth is modeled after ancient Buddhist architecture found in India and other Asian countries, with an arched roof rounded into a ringed point known as a sorin.