Hit by a devastating earthquake in September, Mexico City has certainly faced some challenges this past year. But life in the city marches on, and adventurous foodies can still find a great meal simply by following their nose. Our DF correspondents did just that in 2017, rediscovering some old favorites and branching out into unchartered territory. Mercado Jamaica By far my favorite food experience of this year was exploring Jamaica Market. Mostly known for its wholesale flower section, this large market offers much more: fresh produce, colorful piñatas, and incredible food. In fact, it is home to three of my favorite food stands in the city.

Brazil’s economic crisis has hit Rio hard this past year, and the culinary scene was by no means immune from the downturn. Some famous restaurants and bars closed their doors for good. But the city hasn’t given up. In fact, if some doors have closed, a lot more have opened. Because now creativity is being used as a weapon against the crisis, and not only at newly opened spots. Established bars and restaurants have been reinvigorated with new ideas and processes. In this atmosphere, many exciting culinary novelties have made their way to the streets, ready for us to indulge in, all without having to spend too much money. So my best bites of 2017 reflect this abundance of good and cheap novel eats that have become so popular in these leaner times.

Queens is a grazer’s paradise. On any given day the devoted food lover will find that the culinary experiences come early and often, thick and fast, in mind-boggling variety. Limiting the year’s favorites to a mere handful, then, is problematic when they easily outnumber the combined total of fingers and toes. Consider these five – each in a different neighborhood of Queens – as points of departure for further exploration. Nepali Bhanchha Ghar From the sidewalk the seating area seemed tiny. It was within enticing range of the cooktops at this Nepali “kitchen home” (pronounced Bahn-sah gar) but also exposed staff and patrons to periodic sub-Himalayan gusts from the front door.

In 2017, the Naples food scene took many steps forward by taking a step back: Restaurants resurrected ancient ingredients and most importantly, in a city famed for its pizza and pasta, old flours native to southern Italy made a comeback. The renewed interest in quality can be observed in all corners of this great city, from fast food joints to starred restaurants. My favorite eats of 2017 centered on those spots that attach importance to the basics, serving Neapolitan cuisine made with only the finest traditional ingredients. But it wasn’t the food alone that hooked me: The special people who manage these places played as large of a role, if not larger, in drawing me back to their tables time and time again.

Shanghai’s dining scene still contains its share of neighborhood dumpling and noodle shops, but the overall trend is marching towards mall dining and chain stores in the ever-changing downtown, historic and suburban areas. A silver lining: At least a handful of our favorite street stalls have also taken the plunge into new digs, with the same dishes, but shiny (read: soulless) interiors. You win some, you lose a lot sometimes. Benjia Heading out to Gubei, Shanghai’s East Asian expat district, for Korean barbecue is one of our favorite meals any day of the week, but this year we brought a friend who took the meal to a whole new level.

This year saw record-breaking numbers of tourists descend on Tokyo, and a handful more Michelin stars to further the capital’s lead over every other city in the world. Feeling vicariously fatigued from all this attention, for the most part I tried my best to avoid both the throngs of tourists and Michelin-grade ostentation this year, though both proved impossible to elude completely. For that reason, my most memorable meals in 2017 were a combination of old favorites and unexpected discoveries. Ushitora: I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve spent an entire evening unwinding at a corner table in Ushitora.

Bodega Bartolí opened in 1939 as a little bulk wine shop in Barcelona’s Sants neighborhood. Then everything changed for the bodega some 20 years later when a local client arrived with a stomachache. He asked a young Marina Dolz, who was minding the wine shop with her husband, if she could prepare some soup for him. It was the first dish she cooked there and, since then, Bodega Bartolí has moved far beyond simply being a wine store. At the time Bodega Bartolí opened, Sants was still an industrial quarter with several factories and thousands of workers. During the 1940s, the bodega sold both bulk wine to the neighbors and factory employees and barreja (a very traditional drink made of Muscat wine and anise liquor) to the wheelwrights passed by everyday.

It was 10 a.m. on a bright, crisp Monday morning as we blasted down a miraculously traffic-free stretch of Istanbul’s E-5 highway. We were en route to Bağcılar, a jam-packed outer district home to three quarters of a million people. Awaiting us was an ambitious breakfast of büryan kebabı, delectable lamb meat roasted to perfection in a belowground coal-fired oak tandoor oven before emerging in all of its glory, ready to be sliced and devoured quickly with fresh flatbread. Clearing a vast swath of the notoriously traffic-strangled city in less than 20 minutes, the first meal of the day was just around the corner and we already had the feeling, mere hours in, that this was going to be a good week.

Sometimes we crave salty, sometimes sweet. But there are those inexplicable moments when we want both at the same time. At these moments of mixed signals, we make our way to Ciro Pace Bakery on Via Nazionale for a rustico soffiato. This perfect mix of salty and sweet is made of short pastry and pâte à choux (cream puff dough), and stuffed with ham and cheese. Its lower half recalls the typical Neapolitan rustico (a savory cake), while the upper part resembles a huge hat (this is where the pâte à choux dough comes in) – the truly innovative feature of this pastry.

“My mother had many celebrity customers,” says Luis Enrique Mejía Rosales, the son of Merendero Biarritz’s founder, Esther Rosales. “When they were opening the storefront, the famous [Mexican] bull-fighter Luis Procuna came up to my mother and said, ‘Call it Biarritz!’ He had come back from a tour in Europe and had fallen in love with a woman in Biarritz.” So, in 1956, when the family opened a storefront on Doctor Velasco Street, they called it Merendero Biarritz. Merendero, because they sold “meriendas,” nighttime snacks. The restaurant’s founder, Esther, now 82, arrived in Mexico City from the near-by state of Morelos in 1950, when she was just 15 years old. She started working at a food stand that sold chicken soup and tacos dorados, fried tacos, along Cuauhtémoc Avenue in Doctores.