In the mid-1980s, a teenage Félicité Gaye left the Côte d’Ivoire to join her older brother in Marseille. Though their homeland had been independent since 1960, the siblings had grown up in the era of Félix Houphouët-Boigny, the pro-France president who kept close ties to its colonial ruler. “France is beautiful and there is money to be made here,” Félicité’s brother urged. Félicité’s plan was to get a good French education, and then put it to use back home. When visa problems prevented her from finishing university, the 21-year-old decided to stay, knowing her opportunities in the Côte d’Ivoire would be limited without a degree. She found work with a well-to-do Marseille family, cooking and tutoring their daughter.

Turkey’s rich regional food culture reflects its diverse landscapes: seafood, olive oil and wild greens along the Aegean Sea; wheat- and meat-heavy dishes in the country’s heartland; corn, collards and anchovies on the rugged Black Sea coast. But with climate change altering the environments that produced those ingredients, what will happen to the dishes they inspired? Will the way people in Turkey eat have to change too? And if so, how? Those are the kinds of questions posed by CLIMAVORE: Seasons Made to Drift, a thought-provoking exhibition on display at Istanbul’s SALT Beyoğlu cultural center on İstiklal Caddesi until August 22.

We arrived at Taberna Santo António after lunch, looking for a bit of warmth in the middle of winter. It wasn’t a shot in the dark – we already knew that we would be enveloped by a comforting hospitality at this classic Porto spot. The sun was shining, so we sat on the terrace with Pedro Brás, whose parents own Taberna Santo António. “We’ve been here for 30 years in March,” he said. And while nowadays the surrounding landscape is inviting – just around the corner is the Parque das Virtudes, where crowds congregate in the late afternoon to listen to music, chat and drink beer as the sun sets over the Douro River – that was not always the case.

In 2017, when Francesco Cancelliere and his brother-in-law Oreste Improta opened their small trattoria in Piazza Cardinale Sisto Riario Sforza, a splendid little-known square behind Cattedrale di San Gennaro, they drew inspiration from a nearby masterpiece: Caravaggio’s The Seven Works of Mercy, which was made for, and is still housed in, the church of Pio Monte della Misericordia, located close to the cathedral. First was the name of their new trattoria: Caravaggio. But they really leaned into the theme. “All the tablecloths and napkins were inspired by a Caravaggio painting. But it happened that napkins disappeared every day, because tourists took them as souvenirs.”

Dust, sweat, rain, and severe sun – these were only a few of the many discomforts that travelers of yore suffered as they made the long journey in horse-drawn carriages from their home provinces to Barcelona. In those days – around a century or two ago – the city was protected by fortified walls; it was outside of those walls, in an area known as Hostafrancs, part of the Santa Maria de Sants village (today the neighborhood of Sants), that many travelers and merchants found a convenient refuge – a place to recover from the journey. Taverna La Parra was one of the several inns that dotted the area.

A decade ago Lisbon was a very different city, and the riverfront Cais do Sodré neighborhood was dominated by Mercado da Ribeira, the central market, and office buildings. No Time Out Market, no hipster cafés or trendy restaurants and bars, and hardly any tourists. In 2011 Café Tati opened in an 18th-century building behind the central market, a new entry amongst the old-school tascas and restaurants feeding market vendors and office workers, and the bars and clubs down neglected streets in the neighborhood’s former red light district. Founded by Ramón Ibáñez, a transplant from Barcelona, Café Tati was a breath of fresh air, offering relaxed meals, organic and natural wines, and live music, too.

For those wishing to get into the true Neapolitan spirit, a visit to the Porta Nolana market – traditionally famous for its fish – is essential. It’s a place where time seems to have stopped a century or so ago. The market is named after the imposing Porta Nolana gate, which itself is an important piece of the city’s history, despite being dominated by ugly housing blocks today. It was where villagers from the surrounding areas used to enter the city, and thus it was a common spot for saddlers to set up shop – travelers were always in need of repairs to their horse’s equipment. One saddler remains today, although it has morphed into a leather shop, selling beautifully crafted pieces.

Non-descript is the best way to describe Xiaoping Fandian’s storefront. Its plain-Jane décor would never make you stop and take notice – the first floor looks more like a hotel check-in than a restaurant – but walk by around any meal time, and the scrum of waiting diners speaking in rapid-fire Shanghainese will turn your head. Where there are this many speakers of the local dialect, there’s bound to be delicious local food. Upstairs, you’ll discover that Xiaoping Fandian is a multi-level home with former bedrooms and an attic space that have been converted into private dining rooms with lazy Susans. A few smaller tables are scattered in the hallway and living room for good measure.

Located less than 200 kilometers from Mexico City, Tequisquiapan is one of Mexico’s Pueblos Mágicos, or Magical Villages, places deemed to be rich in cultural traditions and symbolism by the country’s Secretariat of Tourism. Before Covid times, it was a favorite weekend getaway and a popular place to unwind. The “magical” qualities of the town are plentiful. Tequis, as locals call it, first became famous for its hot springs. The area is also ideal, weather-wise, for growing wine grapes, even in spite of the occasionally severe winters. International brands such as Martell, and later Freixenet, developed vineyards in the area; the latter now makes excellent sparkling wines using méthode champenoise as well as reds and whites here.

Sichuan cuisine is famous for its mouth-numbing, spicy flavors, but what many people don’t know is that the provincial cuisine is subdivided into several specialty subregional cuisines. One of our favorites is Xiaohe Sichuan cuisine, which hails from the cities of Zigong, Luzhou and Yibin in the province’s southern region. Originally famous for its salt mining, the Xiaohe (which means “small river”) region is now perhaps best known for the Zigong Dinosaur Museum, a monumental museum built over a dig site that’s had an incredible number of dinosaur finds. But the local cuisine – renowned for being spicy and creative – is worth exploring.

Xueling Zhang is “a working man, not a talking man.” So he told us, through the translation of his daughter, Elsa Zhang, before he returned his full attention to fashioning a set of crab-and-pork xiao long bao. Those faintly sweet soup dumplings, as they’re often called, are a signature item at Memories of Shanghai, his family’s recently expanded restaurant in Forest Hills. Chef Zhang, we might say on his behalf, lets his hands, and his delicious dim sum, do the talking. At greater length we sat down with Elsa – in a cozy booth, retained from the previous restaurant tenant, a diner – to learn more about her father’s long affinity for the kitchen, and especially for dim sum.

“A proper Rum house has to have everything,” a venerable chef once told me in Greek, the language that we have proudly spoken within our Istanbul community for more than 2,000 years. “Spoon sweets, lakerda, pickles, liqueurs…” He then puckered his grey mustache and switched into Turkish: “Olmazsa olmaz,” which is best translated by the Latin phrase sine qua non. Many of these essential culinary preparations appear in my novel, A Recipe for Daphne, which is both a love story and a meditation on the past and future of the community. But just who are the Istanbul Rums? The thoughts of my novel’s main character, Fanis, explain the term best.

These days, plenty of traditional restaurants in Lisbon display in their windows a homemade sign reading “Há Lampreia.” We have lamprey. This simple message is usually illustrated by a pixelated photograph of said creature, almost always taken from Google. While lamprey, an eel-like fish, is one of the ugliest in mother nature’s portfolio, many people are delighted to look at it. That’s because lamprey, the ingredient, has a lot of fans in Portugal, especially in the areas around the rivers (Minho in the north, and Tejo in the center) where it is usually caught during its spawn migration period, from January to April.

Wandering around the neighborhood of Çarşamba, home to a famous weekly market and close to the sprawling Fatih Mosque complex, we get the distinct impression that this area is honey central: the streets are lined with shops selling the sweet nectar, particularly stuff coming from the Black Sea region. “This area is full of honey sellers,” Aslan confirms on a cold November afternoon after we took refuge in his store, Balmerkez, “but there is no place like this.” He’s right – there’s something about his storefront that we found particularly appealing on that cold day. Perhaps it’s because Aslan’s little shop looks more like an atelier than a commercial outlet. Pots, containers, glass jars and wicker baskets are stacked high on the shelves – a honey lab may be a more fitting description.

Born right before the Covid-19 storm, Taberna Noroeste opened its doors in February 2020, mere weeks before the pandemic hit Spain and strict confinement forced them to close. It was a turn of events that spelled disaster for many established restaurants and food businesses, let alone one that was brand new. Yet this project from the chefs Javier San Vicente and David López has grown healthy and strong, despite the hardship, and emerged with a unique culinary identity, now known across the city for elevating the popular cuisines of Galicia and Castilla y León (Castile and León, in western Spain) while incorporating Catalan touches.