Mount Everest Deli may appear, to many of its customers, interchangeable with its neighbors – Globe Smoke & Convenience, Seneca Deli Corp., or any of the dozens of Ridgewood bodegas that are instantly familiar to any New Yorker. Passersby on Myrtle Avenue dash in for a pack of cigarettes, a tube of off-brand super glue, or a turkey bacon-egg-and-cheese on a roll. But inhale deeply while shopping there and you’ll smell masala. Peek behind the deli counter and you’ll see momos – Himalayan dumplings – tumbling onto the griddle. Mount Everest isn’t just a corner store. It’s a distinctive, tradition-bending urban Nepalese restaurant.

Bhanchha Ghar (Bahn-sah Gar) is the only four-time winner of New York City’s annual Momo Crawl. Early one afternoon, more than a thousand event goers fanned out from the block-long, pedestrian-only Diversity Plaza, at the western edge of Jackson Heights, and called on dozens of nearby restaurants, cafés, trucks and carts. Each dished out at least one style of momo, a filled dumpling best-known from Tibet and Nepal. Several hours later, after momo-crawlers had returned to the plaza and the popular vote had been tallied, Yamuna Shrestha, the owner of Bhanchha Ghar, once again proudly raised the Momo Belt high. The decorated yak-hide belt returned to its glass case, mounted on the back wall of the upstairs dining area, where it overlooks an open kitchen and a handful of tables.

"Simple but good." This guiding principle is evident from the moment we step into Jackson Heights’ Angel Indian Restaurant, where the small dining room is almost bare of decoration. Until our food arrives at the table, the most eye-catching sights – just barely visible above the tall partition that screens the seating area from the open kitchen – are the flames that leap from a pan as chef and owner Amrit Pal Singh puts the finishing touches to our meal. It's unlikely that the flames leapt quite as high at home in Pathankot, a city in the northern Indian state of Punjab, where Amrit was born in the mid-1980s. (Even today, few home kitchens are outfitted with a high-powered commercial stovetop and ventilation system.)

It was our first Tbilisi summer stroll down the city’s main drag, Rustaveli Avenue; two sweaty, newly arrived pie-eyed tourists tripping on the 2001 reality. There were billboards advertising the recent kidnapping of a Lebanese businessman, policemen in crumpled gray uniforms extorting money from random motorists with a wag of their batons, and at the top of the street, a former luxury hotel looking like a vertical shanty was full of displaced Georgians from Abkhazia. Parched and cotton-mouthed, we entered a café of sorts for cool respite. The room had high ceilings, was stark and all marble-tiled, including the long, wide bar. A splendid social-realism mosaic of women, grapes and wine was laid into the back wall. The counter was decorated with a few tin ashtrays and a spinning rack holding several tall cone-shaped beakers filled with technicolored syrups.

When we think of Spanish convent pastries, we imagine a group of old nuns gathered together in the dark and humble kitchen of some small Gothic or Baroque cloistered convent, hidden away in the old part of town. We picture them working quietly, baking elaborate, time-consuming treats from ancient recipes that have been passed down over the centuries by the previous nuns who lived there. Yet when it comes to the only convent in Barcelona that still makes sweets to support themselves, we should throw our biases out the window – Santa Maria de Jerusalem defies all stereotypes.

CB has teamed up with the creators of “Native Dish: United Flavors of NYC,” NYC Media’s new food TV series, to offer a behind-the-scenes look at some of the New Yorkers featured in these short videos. The series, which aims to celebrate New York City immigrants from all over the world, focuses on one individual and one dish at a time as a means through which to explore the myriad cuisines represented in the city and the people who make them. This month we are spotlighting Jamyang “Jimmy” Gurung, a Nepalese immigrant from the Himalayas, who manages the Himalayan Yak, a Nepalese/Tibetan restaurant, and Raksha Thapa, a waitress and former teacher from Kathmandu Valley. The Himalayan Yak team delve into their still-deep connection to Nepal and their love in sharing their cuisine and yak momos with New York.

The view from Weekender’s doorway is promising only for those comfortable with snooker: The room is dominated by three intimidatingly broad tables devoted to that challenging cue sport. Compared with New York’s typical coin-op bar-pool tables, a snooker table’s balls are smaller, its pockets tighter and successful shots consequently rarer. They certainly were for us. Crossing to the far side of the counter, we found more action, of a different sort, in a screened-off dining area provisioned by a Bhutanese kitchen. This Woodside establishment is one of the few in all of New York that serves the cuisine of Bhutan, a Himalayan kingdom landlocked between Tibet and India.

To Petalo is probably the only place in Athens that offers a Sunday lunchtime buffet with homemade Greek food. It’s certainly the only all-you-can-eat brunch we know of that’s offered at the affordable price of €12, in a cozy yet slightly chaotic atmosphere that makes you feel like you’re eating in someone’s living room. And just as if you were at the house of a Greek friend, brunch at To Petalo is served in typically late fashion: Arrive before 2 p.m. and you’ll be waiting around for the food to be served.