On Crete, endowed with fertile soil and an enviable climate, devotion to the island’s culinary traditions runs deep. This is even the case for people who have family ties to Crete but did not live there themselves, like Dimitris Katakis, who runs To Mitato tou Psiloriti, a small Cretan deli in Athens. In 1950 his grandparents left Crete, despite their great love for their native island, to go to Athens for better job opportunities – the postwar era saw many Greeks move to cities or even abroad in search of a better life. Yet the flavors and traditions of Crete, one of the southernmost points in Europe and the largest island in Greece, stayed with them and were lovingly passed on to their children and grandchildren.

Someone once said that humanitarian workers are like mercenaries, missionaries or madmen. It is a description we have also applied to expats who end up in far-flung places like Georgia. Like the foreigner out in the secluded Kakhetian village of Argokhi, between the Alazani River and the Caucasus Mountains, who has forged his life growing a nearly extinct variety of native wheat and baking it into bread; but he is no madman. He’s a Frenchman. We had first heard about Jean-Jacques Jacob some years ago while visiting the Alaverdi Monastery in Kakheti, when a friend pointed north of the giant cathedral and told us of a Frenchman who had started a farm in the middle of nowhere.

Ham is one of Spain’s best-known culinary treasures, and different types of the cured meat offer their own flavors and characteristics depending on the breed of pig, how the animal has been fed and raised and how its meat has been processed and cured. The wide selection of ham in Barcelona can be a bit intimidating, but it’s easy to decipher and make your selection with a little local know-how. The two major categories of Spanish jamón serrano ham are jamón del país and jamón ibérico. Serrano refers to the ancient technique – dating back to Roman times – of curing the ham in salt and then dry-aging it to extend preservation and increase the flavor and umami.

Cheese has a very long, storied past in Catalonia, as we wrote in the previous parts of this series. But what do the present and future of Catalan cheesemaking look like? The 21st century has seen cheesemaking flourish dramatically in Catalonia, thanks to increasing interest in and appreciation of culinary traditions and trends worldwide, not to mention the financial crisis of 2008, which led many people to make career changes or to take up a more DIY ethos. All of this, combined with that old Catalan inclination toward modern design and creativity, has made for a heady mix. The new generation of cheesemakers comes from a wide range of professional backgrounds; many are college-educated and well-traveled, and accordingly, they have specific aesthetic, gastronomic and nutritional criteria.

It was something almost unheard of: there was no line. We could have walked right into Pastéis de Belém, ostensibly the most famous pastry shop in Portugal – if not in the world – an exceedingly rare occurrence since Portugal’s tourism boom. But we had already wrangled a way in; we had an appointment with Miguel Clarinha, the fourth-generation owner of the iconic Lisbon bakery, who had agreed to give us a behind-the-scenes tour. Pastéis de Belém claims to be the inventor of the egg tart, known generally in Portugal as pastel de nata, “cream pastry,” but here as pastel de Belém. The story goes that the sweets – pastry cups filled with an egg and cream custard – have their origins in the Jerónimos Monastery, steps away from the bakery’s current location in Belém, just west of Lisbon.

In a nation with so many baking and confectionary traditions, it’s surprising that one of the most popular cakes – the bolo-rei – was imported from another country (a sweet tooth does not discriminate, apparently). Translated as “king cake,” the bolo-rei was brought to Portugal from Toulouse, France, by one of the oldest bakeries in Lisbon, Confeitaria Nacional. Over the years, the bolo-rei has become a staple during the festive season: ubiquitous on the table before, during and after Christmas and New Year, and certainly a must for Dia de Reis (Epiphany) on January 6, when it’s baked in its fanciest form with a nougat crown (made of caramel and almonds) and fios de ovos (“egg threads,” or eggs drawn into thin strands and boiled in sugar syrup).

It was a late night in 2009 when Thanos Prunarus finished his shift at Pop, a now-shuttered bar in Athens’ historical center on the tiny Klitiou pedestrian street. He was just a few steps out the door when he spotted a “For Rent” sign taped to the front of an old, empty store. This area of Athens used to be a part of the central market, with pockets of streets specializing in selling specific categories of products like buttons, doorknobs, textiles or wool. Some of the small, ancient-seeming shops selling these goods have managed to stay open despite the big historical center development boom that’s taken place in the last decade.

Generations of inhabitants of the modern-day Italian peninsula may have learned the art of aromatized ices and frozen fruits and puddings from the East (China, Persia, etc.) – perhaps it was the Ancient Romans or Marco Polo or the Crusaders who introduced some variation of these cold treats. But it is the Italian Francesco Procopio who is considered to be the father of modern gelato. In 1660, he created the first machine to mix sugar, ice and fruit to make “cream.” With less fat, less air, no egg and a slower churning process than traditional ice cream, gelato has taken over from Spain’s traditional orxateries. As Barcelona residents melt under soaring August temperatures, biding their time for a holiday getaway and continuing to battle the Covid variants, the one thing that provides some relief is the city’s stellar gelato scene.

When friends Paulo Sebastião, Paulo Pina and Paulo Neves decided in 2018 to open Isco Pão e Vinho, a small bakery-café, they knew they wanted to be in Alvalade, a Lisbon neighborhood at the edge of the city’s busy center. “We didn’t want to be dependent on tourists, we wanted a neighborhood clientele, and I have to say that 80 percent of the clients here are recurring,” says Pina, who has long worked as a business consultant, a job he still does in addition to running Isco. But the choice of Alvalade presented the pair with a challenge: It can be difficult to stand out in the neighborhood, which has an impressive density of bakeries, restaurants and cafés per square mile.

The scent of wood slowly burning is imbued with a sense of home and refuge: It calls to mind the fireplace around which people used to congregate at the end of the day, or the barbecues and grills that still commonly serve as gathering points. This feeling can also be concentrated in bites of food, like the almonds or hazelnuts that have been roasted in Casa Gispert’s wood-burning oven, a relic from 1851 that continues to roast to this day. The oldest food shop in Barcelona, Casa Gispert has both stayed stubbornly the same and slowly evolved. We’ll always remember how, 20 years ago, the beautiful shop was darker and more mysterious; locals used to line up around Christmas to buy their raw, roasted or caramelized nuts, dried fruits, spices and chocolates for their dinners and gifts.

In the heat of the summer, there’s nothing quite like settling into a breezy spot close to vast blue of the Tagus River with some friends and a few snacks. But due to the city’s hills and its construction projects, it’s not always easy to find a nice place for a picnic close to the river. One consistently good spot, though, is Tapada das Necessidades, previously a royal park. It’s also conveniently close to the Alcântara neighborhood, home to some of our favorite food and wine shops. While we aren’t currently permitted to drink in public places – a new Covid-19 measure – we can still picnic with amazing produce while overlooking the river and the 25th April Bridge.

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?

The refrigerators are spilling out onto the sidewalk. That’s the first thing we notice at Galaktokomio, a dairy shop in Ambelokipoi. We step inside and, unsurprisingly, more of these large refrigerators line one of the walls of this tiny shop. The opposite wall is filled with shelves of pasta, trahana, almonds, flour, honey, tahini and other edible goodies, while a freezer filled with frozen pies, which look homemade, looms at the back. But their most precious gems are in the refrigerators: dairy products, including some of the best yogurt in Greece. As we stand, enthralled by the contents of these gleaming cases, Vicky approaches us. The polite and professional shopkeeper, she begins to unravel the story behind this small shop in one of the most densely populated areas in Athens.

We like to travel on a smaller scale. Forget countries and cities, for us the neighborhood is the ideal unit of exploration. Celebrating neighborhood life and businesses is, of course, essential to what we do as Culinary Backstreets. Since our founding in 2012, we’ve been dedicated to publishing the stories of unsung local culinary heroes and visiting them on our food walks, particularly in neighborhoods that are off the beaten path. Plus, we recognize that tourism, while a justifiably important economic force in many cities, can devastate the urban ecosystem if not distributed responsibly into neighborhoods otherwise neglected by the travel industry. To help that process along, two years ago we launched an annual “Neighborhoods to Visit” guide, featuring areas off the main tourist trail from all the cities that we cover.

We like to travel on a smaller scale. Forget countries and cities, for us the neighborhood is the ideal unit of exploration. Celebrating neighborhood life and businesses is, of course, essential to what we do as Culinary Backstreets. Since our founding in 2012, we’ve been dedicated to publishing the stories of unsung local culinary heroes and visiting them on our food walks, particularly in neighborhoods that are off the beaten path. Plus, we recognize that tourism, while a justifiably important economic force in many cities, can devastate the urban ecosystem if not distributed responsibly into neighborhoods otherwise neglected by the travel industry. To help that process along, two years ago we launched an annual “Neighborhoods to Visit” guide, featuring areas off the main tourist trail from all the cities that we cover.