Editor’s note: To give 2015 a proper send-off, we’re taking a look back at all our favorite eating experiences this year. Hamo’nun Yeri The nohut dürüm, a simple wrap of mashed chickpeas, peppers, parsley and spices, may be a popular breakfast choice in certain districts of the southeastern province of Gaziantep, but we'll eat it anytime and are prepared to travel far and wide to do so, as this treat is by no means common in Istanbul. Hamo'nun Yeri is located in Güngören, a densely packed working-class district located well outside the radar of tourists and more affluent Istanbulites. Made with bread hot out of the oven from the family's bakery down the block, the dürüm – and a chat with the friendly Gül brothers – is more than worth the trip. Address: Güngören Merkez Mah., İkbal Sokak 9/B, Köyiçi Telephone: +90 535 016 0316 Hours: 7am-10pm —Paul Osterlund

Editor’s note: As the year comes to a close, we honor some of the people who are keeping up traditions on the Japanese food scene. And we remember the foods we’ve dreamt about eating again and again from each of them. Nodaiwa This 200-year-old restaurant, one of Tokyo’s best sources of wild-caught unagi (freshwater eel), is housed in a building brought from Hida-Takayama in Gifu prefecture, which is famous for gassho-zukuri farmhouse architecture, with its massive dark wooden beams and thatched roofs. The structure was dismantled and then hauled down to Tokyo piece by piece and reassembled in the modern building where Nodaiwa offers a small glimpse of traditional taste and skill, with vintage touches throughout. Fifth-generation chef Kanejiro Kanemoto keeps the tradition alive and deserves his Michelin star. His passion for offering only the best eels available is evident in everything he serves.

If there is a word to describe the Laranjeiras (“Orange Trees”) neighborhood, it is “pleasant.” Agradável. Agreeable. As you walk up its main drag, Laranjeiras Street, you pass by the creamy yellow and white façade of the elegant 19th-century National Institute for the Education of the Deaf on your right. Soon, on your left, you could come across the youth orchestra Camerata Laranjeiras playing free concerts at the General Glicério fair. It’s measurably Rio’s most progressive neighborhood – in the 2012 mayoral election, it was the neighborhood that most favored human rights activists and opposition candidate Marcelo Freixo (48 percent of the neighborhood voted for him in the election against Mayor Eduardo Paes, whereas the city as a whole voted only 28 percent for Freixo). Follow the rising street to its top and you’ll find yourself at the tourist train, ready to go visit the Christ statue.

Some islands, Mykonos and Santorini for example, are known for their temples of gastronomy. Others, like Tinos, Milos, Syros and Sifnos, possess solid reputations for uniformly excellent tavernas. Until recently, Andros, a green anomaly in the treeless, windswept Cycladic chain, had two main attractions for tourists: a world-class modern art museum and a network of well-maintained hiking trails. You could get a decent meal after you’d seen the exhibition in Hora or trekked up to a 1,000-year-old monastery or down a river lined with water mills, but it wouldn’t be something to write home or tweet about.

Standing behind the counter at his small bici bici shop in Gökalp Mahallesi, a neighborhood in the Zeytinburnu district of Istanbul, Cuma Usta recalls the first time he headed up into the mountains with his uncles in search of wild ice, one of the key ingredients in this Turkish snow cone treat sold from street carts throughout southern Turkey. His uncles had gone up in the winter and cut large slabs of ice from the mountaintop, wrapped it in old blankets and hauled it off with a donkey to a nearby cave. In July, with young Cuma – just being introduced to the ways of bici bici – in tow, they headed back to the cave to collect the ice. It took a couple of hours by car, as he recalled, and the ride back to Adana, vehicle loaded with the frozen bounty, was nice and chilly. Then they’d use that ice to make the summertime street food favorite bici bici (pronounced like the disco-era band of brothers from Australia) and sell it from pushcarts. According to tradition, a bici bici master is, firstly, a harvester of ice.

You don’t need the excuse of a ferry departure to head for the port of Rafina, on Attica’s east coast. Its long, open beach is a favorite among windsurfers, its fish stalls carry the catch from most of the central Aegean and, most important, it offers a handful of excellent eateries. But how can you separate the standouts from the run-of-the-mill?

Chalkida, the small peninsula on central Evia (Euboea) just an hour’s drive from Athens, is an ideal day-trip destination for urbanites. It’s famous for an unusual phenomenon, in which the tide in the Strait of Evripos changes direction several times a day, and it’s also known among tourists for its fresh and delicious fish and seafood. When Chalkideans want fresh seafood, however, they head to the less touristed town of Nea Artaki, just north of Evia’s main city. In the tiny port, there’s a classic promenade lined with taverns, and the penultimate, Teskos, is our favorite destination. On a recent visit, the weather was beautiful, sunny and cool enough for us to sit on the sidewalk adjacent to the sea.

Editor’s note: To cap off our annual review of the year’s best eating experiences, we’ve unleashed our imaginations to create the Turkish food court of our dreams. After a period of protest, we finally broke down and visited the Zorlu Center, a new, high-profile shopping mall in Istanbul and a showcase of international brand names, from Fendi to Jamie Oliver. Our initial attraction was the promise of a particularly well-kept playground, but while we were there, we visited Eataly, the all-Italian culinary emporium.

Editor’s note: The year is coming to an end, which means it’s time for us to look back on all the great eating and drinking experiences we had in 2014 and name our favorites among them. Ferro e Farinha We have the Fulbright Program to thank for this newcomer – a one-of-a-kind Rio dining destination. Pizza chef and New Yorker Sei Shiroma had put out a Craigslist ad looking for a roommate, and a Brazilian exchange student studying linguistics answered it. The two went from being roommates to eventually marrying. This gave Shiroma a motive to bring his mobile pizza oven down to Rio, where he gained a devoted Facebook following in spite of the very un-carioca style of dining he was proposing. (Eating with your hands, on the street? The concept does bear some similarity to the cheap drunk food of the podrões – the “rotten” food trucks that dot Rio’s streets late through the night.)

Editor’s note: The year is coming to an end, which means it’s time for us to look back on all the great eating experiences we had in 2014 and name our favorites among them. Can Pineda At this tiny, century-old restaurant in the neighborhood of El Clot, we ate a simple dish of guisantes lágrima (“tear-shaped peas”) with little bits of jamón ibérico, one of the most delicious culinary treasures we have had all year – and one we will remember for a long time to come.

Editor's note: In the latest installment of our recurring feature, First Stop, we asked chef and artist Dilara Erbay where she stops first for food when she heads to Istanbul. Erbay interprets traditional Turkish flavors from a global perspective through her company, Abracadabra. Her children's cookbook, published in Turkey, explores alternative, healthy ways for children to eat.

Rio’s small traditional bars, known as botequins, are by definition simple establishments, where orders are usually taken down with pen and paper – and sometimes not taken down at all, but mentally noted. But even in these fuss-free eateries, times they are a-changin’.

The 2014 edition of Brazil’s Comida di Buteco competition is underway! The month-long competition pits botequins against each other. These small, family-run bars serve traditional food and are the center of Brazilian popular gastronomy.

By the name of the place, you’d expect the Sütçüler (“Milkmen” in English) district near Isparta in southern Turkey to be a dairyland paradise, thick on the ground with men carrying buckets sloshing fresh milk, cheese wheels stacked in cool dark sheds, verdant hills freckled with cows. But there are no milkmen in Sütçüler, at least not in the wintertime. The area’s name actually has nothing to do with anything going on in Sütçüler itself.

Editor’s note: This is the final installment of “Best Bites of 2013,” a roundup of our top culinary experiences over the last year. Be sure to check out the "best bites" in all the other cities CB covers. Breakfast in Erzincan We were strangers in a strange land – eastern Turkey’s Erzincan, to be exact – and Yalçın Kaya welcomed us into his cheese shop with such gracious fervor that it didn’t surprise us to find out that this Anatolian cheesemonger moonlights as an imam.