Another year has gone by, another year full of beautiful restaurants and wonderful flavors. The art of cooking and the pleasure of eating have reached new heights in Athens, where it’s all about the dining experience. Restaurants keep popping up, impressing us with a wide variety of cuisines and creative twists, often presented in stunning environments. But their menus also reflect a growing environmental awareness and emphasis on sustainability, seasonality and freshness. Young, talented chefs are more and more becoming owners of their own restaurants, going beyond just cooking to cultivate relationships with their customers. Being both chef and food writer myself, I have the pleasure of experiencing this from both sides and understanding the importance of the relationship between the one doing the cooking and the one doing the eating.

Location, location, location is a familiar mantra of New York real estate; invariably it comes to bear on restaurants and other food businesses, too. When e-commerce giant Amazon decided not to build a second headquarters in Long Island City, many food vendors were disappointed, sometimes bitterly, at the loss of a possible 25,000 new customers. With an eye on the lunchtime rush just across the Hudson River, in Manhattan, they wondered, why not in Queens? By contrast, continual development in Flushing, albeit on a much smaller scale, continues to displace many small businesses. The food stalls in the lower level of the celebrated Golden Mall shuttered in late summer for a renovation that was planned to last several months; it seems nowhere near completion.

Editor’s note: We’re celebrating another year of excellent backstreets eating by reflecting on our favorite meals of 2019. Starting things off is a dispatch from Alexis Steinman, our Marseille bureau chief. This year began with a bang, when Marseille nabbed a coveted spot on the New York Times’ “52 Places To Go in 2019” list. Written by food writer Alexander Lobrano, the blurb lauded the city’s ever-expanding food scene. Throughout 2019, new restaurants opened, captained by chefs who trained at local tables, first-timers emboldened by the city’s entrepreneurial energy and Parisians seeking sun and the easygoing vibes that go along with it.

You are motionless, stuck in a traffic jam after a long day at work while your stomach growls. You know the rest of the family will be hungry when you get home and that the fridge is empty and sad. Shopping and cooking is out of the question, so you turn onto a Vera side street, zig-zag through one-way lanes to Tatishvili Street, double park, and run into a tiny gastronomic oasis that has been saving lives like yours for nearly a decade. Its name is Tartan. Located in a step-down ground-floor apartment, takeout cafeterias don’t get homier than this. The front room is taken up with a long counter of refrigerated display cases half filled with enough ready-made dishes to lay down a feast when you get home.

Few places conjure more vivid images of delicious, cult meat consumption than Vari, a southern suburb of Athens, particularly the neighborhood of Vlahika. How, exactly, Vari became a meat-eating paradise goes back to members of the nomadic Sarakatsani tribe, who used to move their herds from the neighboring mountains of Parnitha and Penteli to spend the winter in this area, with its milder clime. In 1917, a few Sarakatsani families decided to make Vari their permanent residence. Later down the line, in 1962, Christos Goulas opened the first butcher-taverna called Tseligas (the name for a sheep herder) on Varis Koropiou Avenue (now called Eyelpidon, it’s one of the main drags in town).

Avli is one of those places you have to be introduced to by someone who’s already been there. Although a sign does exist above its narrow metal door, there’s so much graffiti on either side of it, you could walk right by even if you had the address firmly in your hand or mind. Once inside, if you’re the first customer, you still might think you’ve made a mistake. Avli means “courtyard,” but this one is narrow, much more like a back alley. Blue doors and shuttered windows the same shade as the Greek flag pierce the right wall, the left has a few potted plants and three plump alley cats comfortably ensconced on the old-fashioned rush-seated taverna chairs.

In early September and October, Athens – just like many other cities around the world – sees an influx of young people leaving home for the first time to spend the next four years in intellectual pursuits and drinking coffee. Few among them are as concerned with what they’re eating as they are with other, seemingly more important matters, and so Greek student life is usually associated with deliveries of souvlaki, pizza and other minor domestic disasters. But for young people eating on the cheap, fast food doesn’t have to be the only option; local restaurants often offer student specials this time of year.

It was a scorching summer day in Istanbul, one of those days when the only thing you can imagine eating is ice cream. We were in Moda, and our friend Vicente suggested a stop at Dondurmacı Yaşar Usta – in fact, he’d been raving about this ice cream all summer long. So we followed him to the branch on Bahariye Caddesi, in hopes of understanding why he’s so crazy about it. It didn’t take long for us to figure things out. The homey, no-frills atmosphere and the array of creative ice cream flavors make Dondurmacı Yaşar Usta something of an oasis in Moda, a hip neighborhood on Istanbul’s Asian side, where a majority of the new food ventures springing up like mushrooms prioritize a shiny cool look over substance.

One of the problems for travelers with celiac disease is that they often can’t taste local gastronomic specialties. This is particularly true in Naples, a city famed for its pizza and pastries, such as the mythical babà; pastiera, the queen of Neapolitan sweets; and the ancient sfogliatella. Until about 20 years ago, it was very difficult for someone with celiac disease to eat in Naples; the number of restaurants equipped for gluten-free cooking could be counted on one hand, and they often had to resort to processed food products sold in pharmacies.

Growing up in Athens in the 1980s and 90s, weekend family excursions to a suburban taverna were an integral part of life. Back then, prices were affordable and eating out was not a luxury; in fact, it was a social necessity. It was a way to catch up with friends, enjoy good food and good wine, but also to entertain the kids. These tavernas were often away from the city center, in areas that offered a break from the gray buildings and the heat – usually with a large outdoor area shaded by trees, encompassing a playground and sometimes even a pond with small boats to enterain the kids. The food on offer was basic, but delicious – mainly meat (grilled lamb chops, etc.), salads, fried vegetables (zucchini, eggplant, potatoes) and dips (tzatziki and tyrokafteri, a spicy feta spread).

Agapi Stavrakaki was born in Anogia, a mountain village on the island of Crete famous for producing fine produce and excellent musicians. Decades before she would open Raeti, a delightful restaurant in Athens’ Ambelokoipi neighborhood which pays homage to her island home, a 10-year-old Agapi worked by her grandmother’s side at her family’s vineyard in Anogia, cooking for the workers harvesting grapes and making wine. She and the other women would prepare huge quantities of food in enormous kettles. Despite being cooked in bulk, the food was always traditional, fresh and tasty – Cretans have high standards! Before continuing with Agapi’s story, a few things about Cretan cooking: One of the most legendary of Greece’s regional cuisines, it makes use of all the simple ingredients that are offered by nature with an open hand.

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).

Naples is a city strewn with street vendors. Bread, thin pizzas meant to be eaten folded, fried pizzas, octopus broth, roasted artichokes, cones full of fried goodies, donuts, panzerotti and rice balls – there’s little you can’t find one of Naples’ vendors selling. Together, these numerous street sellers and their small stands play an important economic and cultural role in the city. In the midst of all these vendors there’s one that somehow manages to stand out. Some know him simply as Carmine. Others call him Carmine the Wizard because of his enchanting roasted chestnuts, which warm the hands and the stomachs of Neapolitans in winter. Whatever you call him, he’s an icon of Naples street food.

The neighborhood of Exarchia in downtown Athens has long played a storied role in the social and political history of Greece. Bordering the National Technical University of Athens, also known as Athens Polytechnic, where students staged a massive uprising against the Greek military junta in 1973 that resulted in a violent repression, and the Law School of the University of Athens, it has for years attracted people with leftist political leanings, including anarchists, socialists and anti-fascists, as well as students, bohemians and artists. Although famous for the various riots and uprisings that have taken place here throughout the years (a reputation that has often kept fearful tourists away), Exarchia has also developed a vibe and character all its own, one that’s unique amongst neighborhoods in Athens.

At first glance, Manolis, located in a quiet, residential corner of Chalandri, a neighborhood far from the bustling center of Athens, looks like your typical Greek family taverna: the large dining room is clad in wood paneling and brick, with various old-fashioned paintings, drawings and old photographs covering the walls. But if you look a little closer, the slogan written on the blackboard over the bar – “1977 was the year that Taverna O Manolis and punk rock appeared in the world” – hints at the restaurant’s penchant for music. In fact, the ties between Manolis and the music world are so strong that some of world’s top musicians including Nick Cave, the band Depeche Mode and Moby have eaten at this family-run spot. How many tavernas in Greece can boast that?