A famous Italian saying goes, “Christmas with yours and Easter with whomever you want.” Well, this year there wasn’t much of a choice: Easter was spent at home, with family. The lockdown in Italy has largely coincided with Lent (the 40 days leading up to Easter, from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday). Except that this year, our Lent will not end on Holy Saturday but looks to continue for a long time (at least until May 3). Jesus Christ rose again on Easter Sunday to fly to the heavens, but it would be enough for us to be able to leave the house.

Though half of France’s population is officially Catholic, only 5 percent of the country regularly attends mass. Yet, les français still remain faithful to their Christian holidays. After Christmas, Easter is the second-most popular fête – perhaps because it falls on a Sunday, when lunch en famille is a French tradition that is as revered as a religion. Like many nations, chocolate is France’s essential Easter ingredient. Not surprisingly, the French exception – the country’s belief that they are unique – extends to the shape of their holiday confections. Here, a cloche (bell), not a rabbit, delivers Easter’s chocolate-y treats. How did an inanimate object become the bearer of sweets?

The word “resilience” has come into fashion. I’ve heard it used everywhere in recent years, not only in the psychological field, where it was born, but also in a wide variety of disparate sectors. While I hate linguistic fashions, resilience is the only word that properly describes the ability of Naples’ long-standing family-run businesses to overcome traumatic events or periods of difficulty. I started thinking about this because the coronavirus has come in like a wrecking ball, one that risks destroying many companies. But, I wondered, how many punches in the face have the entrepreneurs of my city taken in the past? And how did they recover from what might have seemed at the moment an irreversible crisis?

I have sat down to write this three or four times, and every time I stop, scrap everything and start all over. For many reasons, the most important being that things are changing so fast – every time I finish, the information I have included is inaccurate. More and more restaurants are closing, businesses are changing hours, closing, opening again. It starts at the top. The Mayor of New York City, the Governor of New York State and the President of the United States can’t seem to agree on what to do and how to do it. The mayor announced we must prepare to be under “shelter in place” in the next 48 hours only to be contradicted by the governor just a few hours later.

A popular dessert in Naples and beyond, the zeppola di San Giuseppe, a deep-fried cream puff, is traditionally eaten on the Feast of St. Joseph (also called St. Joseph’s Day), on March 19, which is also when Father’s Day is celebrated in Italy. On this day, each Neapolitan traditionally eats several zeppole, despite their enormous size and rich filling. I have seen some that, with the addition of cream puffs, cream (inside and outside) and black cherries, weighed almost half a kilo.

In Spain, preserving the rituals of Lent – historically a period of 40 days of prayer, penance and pious abstinence from eating meat that leads up to Easter – was up until the second half of the 20th century mostly the responsibility of priests. Nowadays, however, it is more often the country’s chefs who are shaping the observance of Lent, by both maintaining and updating its delicious culinary traditions, which are still very much a part of Spain’s contemporary food culture. Each country where Lent was customarily practiced has its own special dishes in which meat is replaced with other protein-rich ingredients in order to fill the stomach. In Spain, the “king” of Lenten cuisine is cod (bacalao), introduced in the 16th century by Basque fishermen who had begun to catch it off the faraway coast of Newfoundland.

We went looking for Rogério Sá at his usual spot – his restaurant, Rogério do Redondo – but we were told at the counter that he just went “down there” to get “something” and will be back in a minute. “Down there” is with the men who fish in the Douro River. “Something” turned out to be shad – two fine specimens of the fish, in fact. “It’s in season,” Rogério tells us when he arrives. We know that fresh fish is worth the wait. The phone rings as we’re talking to Rogério, and he picks up. It’s someone calling for reservations – a party of six, and they’d like to pre-order the classic dish of rooster cabidela (where the meat is cooked in its own blood). “Let me talk to the cook to see if there’s any available, and I’ll call you back,” he says.

The place smells like a wet dog. The fishmongers have long grown accustomed to it, but the uninitiated are assaulted by the full force of La Nueva Viga’s funky barnyard smell almost from Eje 6, the congested avenue were we turn into the entrance. The trick, we find, is to walk quickly into one of the long, narrow corridors of the fish market's three massive buildings, so that the smell of salt and sea and freshly crushed ice fills up our nostrils so completely there is room for nothing else.

If Marseille is a city of 111 villages, Cinq-Avenues is a village that feels like a mini-metropolis. From boulangeries to boucheries, the neighborhood brims with personable local businesses rather than impersonal chain stores. Some places have seen generations pass through their doors – like Maison Calambo, a family-run spot that has been shucking shellfish since 1946. Named for a species of gray shrimp found in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, this small écailler (the French word that is both noun – oyster seller – and verb – to open an oyster) embodies the prized Gallic custom of seafood stands. On Christmas, New Year’s Eve and during other celebrations, French families gather around teeming shellfish platters, the perfect pairing to festive bubbles and the ideal antidote to fatty foie gras.

Old Carnide feels like Lisbon’s land that time forgot. Just a 15-minute subway ride from the tourist bustle of downtown, tucked away behind a sprawling mega-mall and phalanxes of high-rise apartment blocks, it’s a neighborhood of cobbled lanes and pastel-painted 18th-century homes, where children play beside the cream-colored medieval church and graybeards argue soccer and politics under shady lime trees. Come lunchtime, however, and the sleepy, village-like calm is shattered. Cars honk for parking spaces, and packs of besuited business types, chatty troops of workmates, extended family groups and multiple couples suddenly emerge onto Carnide’s narrow streets with one thought in mind: food.