Everything at NAM 43, from the exposed wood beams that extend across the space to the Neapolitan tuff, an ancient stone, embedded in the walls, reflects a philosophy of recycling. (Except the food, of course, which is fresh every day.) In fact, it was one of the basic principles that inspired 50-year-old Raffaele Montesano to take over the space, an old antique shop, in early 2016 and turn it into a bistro, one that would enhance classic Neapolitan offerings with gourmet touches. “I love minimalist furniture,” Raffaele tells us. “The tables came from a school canteen in Emilia-Romagna [a region in northern Italy] and were won at an auction.”

You would think Sérgio Oliveira, the owner of Conga in Porto and the secret-keeper of its legendary recipe for bifanas, would be tired of the restaurant’s signature dish. But you’d be wrong. “As much as I try not to eat it, I cannot. It is impossible,” he says. "One always eats it; there is no chance not to.” It’s a simple but addictive dish. Pork, cooked all day in a mysterious spicy sauce and stuffed into a piece of bread that looks a bit like a roll– at first glance, it does not seem to impress. But Porto continues to hide the best and tastiest of its secrets in the simplest things in life.

Located near the end of Akşemsettin Street in Istanbul’s Fatih district is a small yogurt shop that radiates history. Barbaros Yoğurtçusu has been around since Kemal Kurap’s grandfather Abbas came to Istanbul from Albania at the dawn of the 20th century and established the business in 1918. The current location in Fatih was opened in 1946, but the brand’s name comes from its original locale at the Barbaros Hayrettin Paşa ferry pier in the district of Besiktaş, named for the legendary Ottoman naval commander. Like the owners of other classic dairy shops in the city, the Kurap family belongs to a rich tradition of Balkan dairy producers that made their way to Istanbul in the latter years of the Ottoman Empire.

It’s hard to imagine now, but Alvalade, a neighborhood north of downtown Lisbon and close to the airport, was comprised mainly of fields in the early 20th century, with farms in the area supplying the Portuguese capital with dairy products as well as fresh fruits and vegetables. Those farms may be long gone, but this residential neighborhood is still famous for its high-quality produce – except rather than being grown on the land, it’s sold at the Mercado de Alvalade, a municipal market that opened in 1964. Although the produce comes from MARL (the large central wholesale market north of Lisbon), a lot of it is still grown in the fertile region north and west of Lisbon.

Editor’s note: To further explore how the pandemic has affected the areas featured in our 2020 “Neighborhoods to Visit” guide and what recovery may look like, we will be publishing dispatches from restaurants, markets and food shops in these districts all week long. The close links between Marseille and the French island of Corsica are, in some ways, clearly marked in the city. Like the red-and-white Corsica Linea ferries docked in Marseille’s port that make daily crossings across the Mediterranean. Or the prevalence of Corsican canistrelli at Marseille’s boulangeries and biscuiteries.

When it comes to food from Central and South America, some dishes have become ubiquitous in the US – like the taco – while others haven’t seeped into the country’s consciousness in quite the same way. “We’d like for a salteña to be like a taco,” David Oropeza tells us at our table outside Bolivian Llama Party (BLP), the Sunnyside restaurant he co-owns with his two older brothers, Alex and Patrick. True to that mission, the trio has done more to popularize the salteña than anyone in the city. But a salteña is no taco. In fact, at a glance it resembles nothing more than a fat baked empanada – a resemblance that can vanish with one incautious bite.

If you hadn’t read the flyer closely before heading to Shanghai’s first ever MeatFest in June 2019, you might have been a bit disappointed upon arrival. The sounds and smells of sizzling meat might have seemed like a carnivore’s dream come true, but the name was tongue-in-cheek; the event was thrown by Vegans of Shanghai for “eco-conscious meat lovers” and served only domestically sourced plant-based “meat” products. It’s part of a bigger push towards eating a plant-based diet in China, where vegetarians make up less than 5 percent of the population. But even at such a low rate, that still comes out to approximately 50 million people (a population larger than that of Spain).

It used to be the only favors I asked of Helena Bedwell were for phone numbers of particular officials I could not otherwise get from my usual sources. Helena, a journalist for 25 years, knows everyone in Tbilisi. Then last week, I called her for some help of a more domestic kind: I wanted to learn how to cook a Georgian holiday dish. She offered to show me pelamushi, a voluptuous tooth-smacking porridge. A couple of years ago, the Georgian journalist published her first cookbook, “Georgian Flavors from Helena,” a homey, straightforward collection of her take on classic Georgian recipes designed for “busy and on-the-go” people like her who may be abroad and want to recreate Georgian dishes with a limited supply of time and ingredients.

Some of my most powerful memories from 2020 are of the post-lockdown reunions with the owners of my favorite bodegas and grocery shops in Barcelona. After such a long period of confinement, it felt dizzying to move beyond the borders of my neighborhood and visit bars and restaurants again, which had newly reopened for takeaway. It was hard not to hug my friends – you know, we hug a lot in Spain. On one particularly ridiculous day in May, I remember sneaking a glass of vermut in a paper coffee cup at one of my local bodegas. The coffee cup was a disguise – any police patrolling the streets would think that I was just buying a takeaway coffee (permitted) and not having a drink inside a bar (forbidden).

Making chilaquiles always seemed a little out of my reach. I’m familiar with the dish’s humble beginnings, invented as a way of making use of day-old tortillas, but it still held some element of mystery for me: Under the practiced hands of locals, what seemed to be normal, everyday ingredients – fried tortillas, cooked salsa, raw onion, fresh cheese, double cream – transformed into a blend of flavors that felt impossible to recreate. This is a dish that I came to love after moving to Mexico City, where it quickly became my go-to when I sat down at a restaurant for breakfast. If I couldn’t find anyone to accompany me, I would often go out to breakfast alone just to eat chilaquiles.