Kifisia, as we’ve mentioned before, used to be a holiday destination for wealthy Athenians, and its suburban charms remain intact. Green spaces, high-end shops and close proximity to most of Athens’ international schools have seduced a number of expats into settling down here. We’ve written previously about the original Nice ‘n’ Easy in Kolonaki; it’s one of the few non-smoking establishments in a city where everyone puffs up all the time.

Galicia, the autonomous region in northwest Spain, is famous for its extraordinary beef and – with its lengthy Atlantic coastline – an abundance of spectacular seafood. Barcelona has a slew of Galician eateries, ranging from the most expensive and famous seafood restaurants with valet attendants to humble establishments occupying the most out-of-the-way corners of the city. In the middle are the interesting neighborhood eateries that offer food cooked with great care, using excellent ingredients and offered at fair prices. Among these, O Meu Lar is one of our favorites.

Very few people know that Copacabana beach, packed to the gills as it is with tourists, restaurants and luxury hotels, is home to an old fishermen’s colony. The fishermen, of course, no longer live there, but they still ply the waters with their tiny boats and use handmade fishnets to bring in the catch every day.

When the seasons change from summer to winter, your body requires different foods to stay healthy – as anyone who has come down with a fall cold can attest. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) says that the changing temperatures result in a dry season, medicinally speaking, meaning that your body lacks fluids, affecting your lungs and throat, as well as your digestive systems. Autumn is also a chance for you to build up your body’s immunity before the harsh winter. Nourish yourself with these foods now, and you’ll be thanking yourself when winter sets in.

When it comes to finding new places to eat in Mexico City, we’ve learned not to be too quick to judge a place by its looks. A very good example of this is Mariscos Frescos del Mar, a hole in the wall we had passed without noticing many times before. When a good friend recommended it, we couldn’t even place it on a map, though we know the street it’s on very well.

Misty, lush Fırtına Valley is worlds away from Istanbul’s concrete urban hustle. It’s a land of cascading waterfalls, rushing rivers, wild edibles and precipitous hillsides covered with glossy tea bushes. We came to escape Istanbul’s infamous August heat and learn about the region’s special foods. After a week, we had stomped our way through bagpipe-fueled celebratory circle dances and eaten our weight in fried trout and cornbread.

Though giant pandas subsist almost exclusively on one single plant – bamboo – the same would not stand for the other, more human, natives of Sichuan province. Its capital city, Chengdu, was once famed as the start of the southern route of the Silk Road, along which exotic vegetables and spices were ferried inland from Burma, India and around Central Asia.

Anchoring one end of Poblenou’s quiet and lovely Prim Square, Els Pescadors sits surrounded by the white houses that once belonged to the fishermen for which it’s named. The old tavern opened in 1848, and through the 19th century, it was frequented by those fishermen, as well as workers from the numerous textile factories in the area. The factory workers earned a little extra by fishing along the nearby beaches.

Athinas is one of our favorite streets in the whole of Athens. Running from Omonia to Monastiraki squares, it has a scruffy, chaotic, disreputable charm that has hardly changed since we moved to Greece more than 40 years ago. From the Omonia side to City Hall and the Central Market, hawkers and peddlers – of everything from sunglasses and “magic” juicers to contraband cigarettes – make the sidewalk an obstacle course for the crowds of shoppers in search of bargains in open storefronts.

If you find yourself in the waiting area at Tang Gong (an hour-long inevitability if you go for dim sum on the weekends), there’s plenty to see to make the minutes go by faster. Slip-covered chairs lined up like movie theater seats in the lobby are an ideal perch for people-watching, although you’ll have to turn away from the display of Moutai baijiu and the flat-screen they face for a better view of the hungry hordes.

It’s a dirty secret nobody wants to talk about, but let’s put it out there: finding a good cup of Turkish coffee in Turkey can sometimes be very difficult. Thin and watery, rather than thick and viscous, is frequently the order of the day. This is no small matter, akin to complaining about the quality of the French toast in France or about finding stale danishes in Denmark. Turkey, after all, is the land that, during Ottoman times, helped introduce coffee to the rest of Europe. When it comes to making Turkish coffee, Turkey needs to represent.

An old star from the previous century still shines brightly in Port Vell. Renovated in 1992, La Estrella is a small, comfortable restaurant that serves simple but refined Catalan dishes, thoughtfully prepared from quality local products. The atmosphere is formal but relaxed, quiet and friendly, with the time kept by the discreet sounding of three wall clocks. It feels like eating in someone’s home.

Cantonese seafood restaurants are almost always stuffy dining institutions, with gilded menus listing astronomically priced shark’s fin soup and braised abalone in private dining rooms with gaudy chandeliers. Like a rebellious younger sibling, Apo’s Seafood has taken the marine Canto theme down a road more graffitied, democratizing the experience by scrapping the stuffiness and serving up affordable, delicious fare from the ocean.