Saturday, late afternoon, Jackson Heights. In the shadows of the 7, the elevated train that runs along Roosevelt Ave., sunlight is already giving way to street light; music spills from passing cars and lively watering holes; a few men and women hurry along on neglected errands. More than a few step into La Gran Via Bakery, lured by a show-stopping array of cakes and a long line of display cases filled with individually portioned pastries. At the back counter, Betsy Leites is poised, pastry bag in hand, over a bright white tres leches cake rimmed with strawberries and peaches. She squeezes out a cursive "Feliz Cumpleaños."

We are in the Vasto district, a difficult to navigate maze of narrow streets that criss and cross, a market area squashed between Naples’ central station and Centro Direzionale, the business district. The district’s Via Nazionale, a street adjacent to the station, is a shrine to local gastronomic treasures, and we consider it a true paradise for lovers of good food. It’s a jewelry box of flavors, ideas, and unique and original products. The daily street market on Via Ferrara, another local artery, is one of the city’s most colorful and fascinating – mentioned several times in renowned author Elena Ferrante’s “My Brilliant Rriend.” It was here, in 2016, that Dario Troise brought to life a project 15 years, if not centuries, in the making: a panini bar that serves only cuzzetiello (which roughly translates to bread bowl sandwiches).

Winding between the teenage fashion havens of Harajuku and Shinjuku is the ultra-hip Cat Street, lined with countless second-hand clothing stores and embellished with a single origin coffee shop. Just a stone’s throw to its south lies a nondescript concrete building. Unassuming from the outside, for the past 15 months its second floor hid a sake bar. The interior was a stylish and modern take on Japanese design – a sleek counter in the center, tatami mats and sliding doors splitting the space into three. Here, a young crowd gathered, sampling the latest sake and regional dishes – from Miyagi beef tongue meatballs and Iwate squid sashimi to Akita smoked pickled daikon topped with cream cheese. Given its relatively short residency, one might be forgiven for thinking the bar was a trend or a poorly conceived dream. But Mysh, (pronounced “my shu” meaning “my sake”) didn’t go out of business, nor were any of its members of staff full time. Their lease having expired, the founders decided to take some time out before finding a new home – time to review their goal of creating something more than a dining establishment, of creating a community space. Currently, the bar only exists as a monthly pop-up event, but its founding story and model are indicative of Tokyo’s broader culinary culture - one that is simultaneously steeped in tradition while constantly reinventing itself under the city’s bright neon lights.

When the other butcher shops in Naples are closing for lunch and at the end of the day, activity at D'Ausilio Macelleria is just picking up. The cooktops are lit, sandwiches are being made and this Italian butcher shop becomes a quality burgeria. “I come from Vomero (the hill district) to buy Raffaele’s hamburgers. My children love them,” says customer Rosaria Esposito at 8 p.m., when the macelleria is an hour into its transformation as a burgeria. But this is no trendy burger bar; the menu is steeped in local heritage. Rosaria leaves the burgers to the kids, choosing for herself the delicious home-style dishes created at D’Ausilio. Parmigiana alla Genovese stands out among those on display. Here are two sacred words of Neapolitan cuisine – Parmigiana and Genovese, a simple yet miraculous sauce made of meat (veal, beef or pork) and a heap of onions (red or white) – cornerstones in the history of local cooking.

The first few blocks of Baruthane are lined with a smattering of restaurants, barbers, television repair shops and dry cleaners, though in recent years a flurry of third-wave coffee shops and bars has arrived on the street. While this is a positive development for the young adults that patronize these establishments, there is the inevitable concern that their proliferation will cause a spike in rents and tarnish the quaint character of this beloved neighborhood. It is for this reason that we were thrilled to see a new establishment open up on Baruthane that reflects the classic small-business character that makes this area so special. Köy Börek is run by Abdullah Kral, a cheerful 53-year-old teddy bear of a man who makes some of the most delicious börek we’ve ever had – and we’ve had a lot. (Kral means king in Turkish, and we are prepared to crown Abdullah bey the king of börek.)

Has mezcal gone the way of avocado toast, an item that’s become shorthand for cliched hipster trendiness? If you think yes, a visit to Mis Mezcales in Mexico City’s Colonia Roma may be in order. There, you will find Omar Trejo sitting behind his unassuming makeshift bar, parceling out sips to the uninitiated and reminding everyone who stops by his small liquor store devoted to small-batch Mexican distillates that before it became a “buzzy” spirit, mezcal was an elixir heavily-rooted in the soils and stories of Mexico. As Omar makes clear to those who come in, every bottle of mezcal tastes different, even from the same brand, the same agave variety and same year. It’s one of the drink’s greatest strengths and probably one of the greatest frustrations for drinkers who expect the standardization of tequila.

Like most Syrians who fled their war-ravaged country and made their way to Turkey, Fatma Jabal, a 19-year-old from Aleppo now living in Istanbul, had to get creative in order to make a living. With a baby boy to take care of and her husband struggling to provide for their family while working as a carpenter, Fatma tapped into something she’s been doing since she was a child: baking cakes and cookies. Making desserts had been something Fatma has loved from early on growing up in Aleppo, which she left in 2014 in the midst of the worsening conflict there. For her, each treat she bakes is a work of art that just happens to be edible. “The first thing I did in the kitchen was sweets,” she says. But Fatma realized she needed to develop her budding baking prowess to start charging customers.

A tomato is a tomato, or that’s what it might seem like to grocery shoppers in Barcelona. But Karim, who currently oversees two hectares of organic gardens in Campíns, an area northeast of Barcelona located at the foot of the Montseny mountain range, knows otherwise. “We don’t know what we eat,” he tells us. “I used to work at other places dedicated to industrial farming, and they added a powder to tomatoes to force them to mature in a couple of days. There was a storeroom where we had to put on a special protection suit before entering [the greenhouses] because the tomatoes were sprayed with harmful products that could go directly to our bones.”

Feta must be one of the world’s oldest cheeses, it’s certainly one of the most famous, and it’s practically never missing from a Greek table, no matter the time of day. A person might grab a chunk of this chalk-white substance for breakfast, crunch through layers of feta-stuffed phyllo for elevenses, put a slab of it on her village salad for lunch, have it for supper along with a vegetable casserole and then pair it with watermelon for a scrumptious dessert. The only other food that a Greek may be even more addicted to is bread. If you were to guess which nation boasted the most cheese eaters on the planet, surely you would say France, home to so many delectable and sophisticated fromages.

Some people might tell you that the patron saint of Naples is San Gennaro, a 3rd-century bishop who died as a martyr. But that’s not actually true. The patron saint of Naples is, in fact, Diego Maradona, the Argentinian-born soccer player who, in 1987, propelled Napoli to win the Serie A Championship (Italy’s top football league) – it was the first team ever from the impoverished Italian south to do so. To this day, Maradona’s portrait is everywhere in the city. Just like any good patron saint, his picture watches over shopkeepers, restaurant owners and families in their living room. So when someone on the street called Francesco Sepe the “Maradona of wine,” you can imagine how proud he felt.

It almost never snows in Naples. Yet in the last decade, the city has seen an invasion of snowflakes. We’re not talking about an atmospheric phenomenon – rather, it is Pasticerria Poppella’s il fiocco di neve (“the snowflake”), a true gastronomic prodigy that has quickly become a “new classic” of Neapolitan pastry, as evidenced by the long lines at the bakery every day of the week. Ciro Poppella is quite a character: not only an important figure in the Sanità neighborhood, where Poppella is located, he’s also an icon of Naples. The inventor of the snowflake, Ciro is a living example of how there are no limits to what you can achieve when you believe in a project.

You might not have heard of trahana, sometimes called rustic pasta, if you don’t possess a Greek grandmother. This humble food rarely turns up in tavernas, yet it is a staple, especially in the winter months, and the basis of many a comforting meal. In fact, it may just be the world’s first instant soup. Trahana, which is most often seen in small couscous-like pellets, represents a synthesis of wheat and dairy, making it more nutritious and tastier than ordinary pasta. Its flavor and consistency depend on whether the flour, semolina or cracked wheat is kneaded with milk, soured or fresh, or yogurt. Traditionally, the mixture would be shaped into balls or patties, dried in the sun until hard, grated into tiny granules, dried some more, and then stored in cloth bags, where it would keep for months, even years.

It’s one of those brisk winter days in Istanbul, when the weather is just warm enough for a walk outside but cold enough that you’ll eventually want to cozy up in a café. So we set out for a stroll in Kuzguncuk, a laid-back neighborhood on the Asian side with plenty of inviting spots. After a walk through the bostan (urban gardens), we head back to the main drag in search of a warm place to rest and refuel. Opposite a large Orthodox church, its bell tower piercing the cloudy sky, we catch sight of Pulat Çiftliği (Pulat Farm) housed in a beautifully restored three-story building. The name suggests some kind of organic grocery store, but as we step inside it quickly becomes clear that Pulat Çiftliği is much more than that.