Oriol’s face lights up whenever a customer selects his favorite pintxo from one of the 49 different trays, beautifully displayed at Euskal Etxea, the bar where he works and the first bar in Barcelona to serve traditional Basque pintxos. One wonders how a small slice of bread topped with a chickpea fritter, jamón serrano and romesco sauce spiked with a toothpick that costs just €1.95 can make someone so happy. We try one and we immediately see why.

Fresh fish caught daily in the icy Atlantic Ocean – this is the key to the longtime success of Kalky’s, the original fish and chips restaurant in the seaside village of Kalk Bay, one of South Africa’s oldest working harbors. In the summer of 1996, the Rosslind family started this small takeout café serving satisfying fried hake (cod) and snoek (mackerel), with fish supplied by the local fishermen of Cape Town’s Kalk Bay. Kalky’s size and menu have since grown, reflecting the harbor’s rich cultural and nautical history. But it remains a no-frills, no-fuss seafood spot, where utensils are optional and cash is king.

The blackboard hanging outside Dexameni’s cramped kitchen reads, “Kindergarten-Bar-Nursing Home,” the title jokingly bestowed upon the café by the eminent novelist and poet Alexandros Papadiamantis. He was among the literati who made Dexameni their regular hangout shortly after it opened in the early 1900s – so regular that the place ended up serving as a home-away-from-home for all stages of life.

Along the southwestern coast of Turkey, the vibrant blue waters of the Mediterranean crash against dry, rocky mountains jutting from the water’s edge. For centuries, pilgrims and adventurers alike have scrabbled over the unforgiving terrain between Fethiye and Antalya known as the Lycian Way. Ruins dating back to Greek and Roman times nestle between the scrubby trees and undergrowth, melding with the landscape and painting a picture of the life that has always dotted the shore. The Turquoise Coast is a popular place to visit in the summer, with massive sand beaches and countless pansiyons catering to every type of tourist. While most people visit this region for its stunning vistas and beaches, it has exceptional food if you know where to look.

Wandering around Shanghai’s quieter streets, you may often hear a thump thump thwack! ringing out from a streetside café. If you’re lucky, it means someone is pulling noodles fresh to order, and if you’re even luckier, you’ll happen to be hungry enough to enjoy a bowl.

Ali Bey, the owner of a cubby-sized restaurant in Küçük Pazarı called Kısmet, sounded a bit like Bubba Gump listing the items on his menu: “We've got chicken soup, fried chicken gizzards, shredded chicken breast, dark chicken meat too, chicken and rice, chicken with onions and peppers, and chicken breast pudding for something sweet.”

El Mercat del Ninot opened way back in 1894, but recent renovations have breathed new life into this L’Eixample market. From time to time, the local government has updated noucentistes (19th-century) municipal markets in Barcelona, keeping the essence of the buildings but bringing them up to speed with current needs and trends. The Mercat de la Llibertat in Gràcia and Mercat de Santa Caterina in Born have received their facelifts, and the amazing Mercat de Sant Antoni is expected to open in 2016 after more than six years of construction.

A foodie friend of ours took us to El Caguamo – aka K-guamo – for the first time a few years ago, promising us that this was the best marisquería (seafood restaurant) in the city. And since then, it has become one of our favorite downtown stops. For almost 40 years, the Tamariz family has been selling tasty shellfish and seafood on the sidewalk of Ayuntamiento Street, just a couple of blocks away from San Juan market in the heart of Mexico City.

The roaring '20s: Flappers in the Pera Palas Hotel were dancing the can-can, Art Deco was all the rage, the Turkish Republic was born. Hope, progress and newness double-stepped to the beat of Kemal Atatürk’s drum. This was the backdrop to which two Istanbul bakers, Filip and Yorgi, opened a whimsical chapter in the culinary story of the city

In a land with no breakfast culture to speak of, a couple slices of khachapuri and a cup of tea or coffee are all it takes to fuel you up until suppertime. If you need a snack to carry you over, you grab a pie at any one of the hundreds of khachapuri stands in Tbilisi, and no supra – feast – is complete without an “Imeretian” or “Megrelian” pie for every three people at the table.

The Praça da Bandeira, an area of Rio that until recent years was mostly known for prostitution and cheap inner-city housing, is rapidly changing. Lying in the shadow of the massive Maracanã Stadium – built for the 1950 World Cup and the planned location of the opening ceremony of the 2016 Summer Olympics – it is alive with new construction and pedestrian traffic, which are changing the tired face of this historical but underappreciated neighborhood. And sitting snugly in the midst of this new buzz is Aconchego Carioca, a restaurant and bar with one of the best beer menus in Rio.

In the late 1980s, Anthony Mlungisi Baker lived in Spain and other parts of Europe to dodge the military draft in South Africa. On February 11, 1990, the release of Nelson Mandela signaled the end of the apartheid regime and time for Baker to return home and become part of a new creative transformation. With a love for entertaining and cooking for his friends, Baker saw a gap in the “New South African” market for something different in the bohemian Observatory district (known as Obz to locals). The result was Café Ganesh, which opened its doors on November 10, 1990, and has since gone on to become a neighborhood institution.

Why are you seeing colorful, 1960s-era carbonated water siphons everywhere in Barcelona? Because they’re the symbol of our beloved vermut ritual. The phrase hacer el vermut (literally “to do the vermouth”) in Spain has for decades described not only that delicious beverage, but also any kind of pre-lunch aperitif. But since the end of the 19th century in Barcelona, the vermut ritual – a fresh drink accompanied by tapas composed usually of preserved food, cold cuts, cured or marinated fish or seafood – has been a way to bring people together before meals. Perhaps no one is more responsible for vermouth’s popularity here than Flaminio Mezzalama, the Italian Martini & Rossi representative in Spain, who in the first decade of the 20th century opened two beautiful Art Nouveau vermouth bars, which became hugely popular. Mezzalama died in Torino in 1911, but the fame of vermouth in Catalonia only grew, with local investors putting their money into production of Catalan vermut.