Over the course of 2018, Lisbon saw restaurants, cafés and bars popping up like hot buns. It’s hard to tell if there’s room for so many places, especially in the already saturated city center. In the meantime, we watched helplessly as many classic shops and restaurants shuttered their doors. It’s a pattern we saw in 2017, but it seemed a lot more intense this year. There are reasons to celebrate, though, and they are delicious.

The Athens food scene has been booming over the past few years. The increasing number of tourists, the growing optimism of investors who see a financial opportunity in the food industry, as well as an ever-growing pool of talented new chefs, cooks, baristas and bartenders have all contributed to this creative regeneration – not just of the food scene but of the city itself. There is a deeper interest in high-quality ingredients, which is why we’re seeing more and more farm-to-table and organic restaurants. Food trends are also making an inroad, hence the growing number of street food and vegan options – some of which are so good that they really deserve an award.

Shanghai usually opts for trendy over traditional, and 2018 was no different. Dining and drinking “hotspots” tended to appear in the slew of newly-opened ultra-lux five-star hotels, including the Middle House, Edition, Sukkothai and BVLGARI hotels, to name just a few. In the everyday budget range, we’re still seeing mom-and-pop shops struggle to survive the tight real estate market and licensing battles with city officials. With yet another western-style bakery opening up and replacing our neighborhood Hunan joint, we’re left hoping that maybe 2018 was also the year of “peak” bread and coffee. It seems that trendy coffee shops are taking over any slice of open real estate.

Editor’s note: We’re celebrating another year of excellent backstreets eating by taking a look back at our favorite restaurants and dishes of 2018. Starting things off is a dispatch from our Tbilisi bureau chief Paul Rimple. It was a wet, cold, gray autumn day, and we were shopping for household stuff at the East Point Mall, close to the airport, where we built up an appetite. Our home was being renovated, we had no kitchen, and the mall had a food court. We understood nothing here would taste good – the sushi, the pizza, the Asian noodles with a 30 minute wait – but were not prepared for the hideousness that passed as burgers and a chicken wrap from a world-renowned fast-food enterprise. “Of all the good places to eat at in this city,” my partner bemoaned, dropping her half-devoured chicken wrap on the plastic tray and pushing it away.

Black ice cream is not an easy sell, but Jose Luis Cervantes, AKA Joe Gelato, is a persuasive guy. It’s not just his million-dollar smile or easygoing nature, but also the passion that he clearly feels for his gelato. “Before I went to Italy, I knew about the concept of gelato,” says Jose, “but I had no idea how good it would be. I had only tasted what was available in Mexico at time. I went there and felt the fat in my mouth, the sugars, I can’t explain it – I love it. I love the whole culture around gelato.”

It’s 9 o’clock in the morning and the narrow streets that fringe Inokashira Park are largely empty. This part of Kichijoji, a lively neighborhood in west Tokyo, has yet to wake up. Storefront shutters are yet to be lifted; staff inside cafés can be glimpsed preparing for the day. Yet, on one corner, a couple of girls duck into an enclosed alleyway and reappear five minutes later. Next, a solo lady strides inside, emerging after a minute or two. People drift in and out, marking an unusual pattern of activity. This is the entrance to Kooriya Peace, a renowned kakigori (shaved ice) store that’s so popular customers secure their dessert hours in advance – although for early birds it might become their breakfast.

In the center of Exarchia, a hub of activism often referred to as the “anarchist” neighborhood of Athens, a small minimalist eatery with just a few tables outside opened last April and was an instant success by breaking all the rules. At first glance it looks like a regular souvlaki shop, with sauces and condiments lined up at the front, pita breads being grilled and potatoes being fried. It even smells familiar, but if you look closely, you will notice that there is no meat in sight or, to be exact, no animal products. Welcome to Cookoomela Grill, Greece’s first vegan souvlaki spot.

There has always been a bit of a rivalry between the two main cities of Portugal, Lisbon and Porto, which is well illustrated by an old running joke among some tripeiros (the name given to the people of Porto): whenever someone asks what is the best thing about Lisbon they will reply, “The highway sign that says ‘Porto.’” But it’s a healthy rivalry for the most part – football aside. Lisboetas, Lisbon locals, in general even tend to recognize that the food might actually be better in Porto and its surroundings, especially traditional dishes. While Porto does not benefit from the same multicultural influences that helped shape Lisbon’s restaurant scene, it is home to some very talented cooks with a knack for doing so much with so little.

We are so heartbroken to report the passing of Nunu Gachechiladze, fondly known as our “Pickle Queen” at Tbilisi’s Deserter’s Bazaar. We first met Nunu two years ago, while mapping out our market walk with Justyna Mielnikiewicz. In our decade and a half of life together in Georgia, Justyna, a Polish native and pickle expert by default, had never been impressed with local pickled cucumbers, finding them too salty, too mushy or simply bland. Some sort of cosmic force directed us to Nunu. How else to explain that out of all the pickle makers at the bazaar, we were drawn deep into a hidden corner of the labyrinthine market to where Nunu stood behind stacks of her creations?

We had no sooner finished unpacking our Tbilisi lives from the car for a Garikula summer, when our neighbor Zakhar stopped by to welcome us with a firm handshake and a bristly cheek kiss. He sat down and immediately told us about a restaurant he had recently visited in Kavtiskhevi, a neighboring village about 12 kilometers away. He was deeply smitten. “Wha!” he boomed. “The fish, straight from the river! Trout! Delicious! Come on, let’s go. I’ll bring my wine!”

Each year in late summer, some of the best athletes on the planet converge on Flushing Meadows Corona Park to compete in the United States Open Tennis Championships. In 2018, the U.S. Open begins with practice sessions and qualifier matches on Tuesday, August 21, and concludes with the men’s singles final, scheduled for Sunday, September 9. The tournament site does provide hungry fans with several cafés and casual bar-restaurants as well as a pair of “food villages.” But when in Queens – where some of the best food in the city is so close at hand – why would we confine ourselves to the boundaries of the tennis center? To energize ourselves beforehand or wind down afterward, here are a few of our favorite nearby dining destinations.

Editor’s note: It’s Beat the Heat Week at Culinary Backstreets, and in this week’s stories, we’re sharing some of our favorite spots to visit when the summer temperatures soar. Mexico City is blessed with great weather all year round. Summer is not very hot because it’s the rainy season, and at 2,200 meters above sea level, things cool down very fast as soon as the rain starts falling. However, we still get our hot days, especially in the spring, and even early afternoons in summertime can make us break out in a sweat. Two of the many delicious ways we have to cool down are paletas (popsicles) and raspados (shaved ice).

Editor’s note: It’s Beat the Heat Week at Culinary Backstreets, and in this week’s stories, we’re sharing some of our favorite spots to visit when the summer temperatures soar. Yelo, Roppongi’s kakigori (shaved ice) mecca, summoned the faithful with free samples on April 1 like some kind of cool April Fool’s joke for the not-quite-warm weather. The line stretching to the Hard Rock Café a block away was a reminder of things to come. Now the weather has turned much warmer, and the wait is daunting. The line snakes out the somewhat hidden doorway along the outside of the restaurant, winding down a street housing an artisanal-beer darts bar and a club featuring a Beatles cover band.

We recently spoke to food historian and researcher Priscilla Mary Işın about her new book, “Bountiful Empire: A History of Ottoman Cuisine” (Reaktion Books; May 2018). She has previously published edited transcriptions of texts relating to Ottoman food culture and “Sherbet and Spice: The Complete Story of Turkish Sweets and Desserts” (2008), a social history of Ottoman sweets and puddings.

The story of how Queens transformed into a microcosm of the world’s cuisines is just as fascinating and important as those of the cuisines’ creators. The borough is one of the most diverse places on the planet, with over 120 countries represented and 135 languages officially spoken in the public school system. The cause? The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. From the Colonial period to the early 20th century, immigrants to the U.S. were mainly northern Europeans. Soon after the Immigration Act of 1924 passed, a national origins quota system dictated migration patterns. The Act allowed unlimited northern European entry, limited southern Europeans with quotas and excluded Asians, Africans, Hawaiians, Puerto Ricans and Alaskans.