Late October marks the start of the olive picking season throughout Greece. From Thrace to Crete, from Corfu to Lesvos, and even in the suburbs of Athens, landowners lucky enough to have olive trees will start harvesting their fruit. And the harvest may continue for another six months. On Crete, for example, where neat rows of low trees cover vast areas, civil servants are given leave to collect their olives in January and February. On Corfu, on the other hand, where the giant trees are too tall for easy harvesting, the common practice is to spread black nets underneath them and wait for the fruit to drop. They collect it once a month until late spring.

Photographer David Hagerman is one half of the duo behind the new cookbook Istanbul & Beyond: Exploring the Diverse Cuisines of Turkey, which will be published by Rux Martin Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (USA) on October 10. Together with Robyn Eckhardt, his journalist wife and the author of Istanbul & Beyond, he has crisscrossed Turkey countless times in order to document farm-to-table food culture and discover the country’s best dishes. The resulting book is a stunning culinary journey through Turkey, one told as much through the recipes collected as through Hagerman’s arresting photos. We spoke with David about his approach to shooting the images for the book, culinary culture in Turkey and some of his favorite spots in the country.

As soon as you enter Mercado Jamaica, one of Mexico City’s largest markets, you will quickly see (and smell) its main trade: flowers. Down the long aisles, hundreds of sellers line up colorful flowers that come from Xochimilco and other states. Visiting the market truly engages all the senses. But, you may ask, how does this include taste? Well, Jamaica Market happens to be home to several outstanding food vendors, among them one of our favorite taco stands in all of Mexico City. Hidden away among the market’s produce vendors, this stand doesn’t have a sign, and you can easily miss it if you don’t know what you’re looking for. Once you find it, though, you’ll keep coming back for their superb green chorizo tacos.

I used to joke that the only thing binding together Spain is the classic tortilla española, which in Catalonia we refer to as the tortilla de patatas – a neutral name. This potato omelet is one of the very few traditional dishes that is prepared the same way (and equally beloved) throughout Spain’s Autonomous Communities, the regions created after the Spanish Constitution of 1978, a necessary step towards creating a democratic country after the end of Franco’s dictatorship. The fact that this is one of the few dishes we all have in common highlights the significant regional differences of our traditional cuisine, despite our common Mediterranean culinary culture.

The sun is already down when the food kiosks at the entrance to the Z10 fishing colony open their doors. It’s evening and we are on Ilha do Governador (Governor’s Island), the largest island in Guanabara Bay and far away from Rio’s tourist spots – the only reason most visitors come to this working-class suburb is to catch a flight at the Rio de Janeiro International Airport. These kiosks are almost all alike: boring food stalls serving bland seafood broths, bad pizzas and standard sandwiches. But six months ago, a new kiosk set up shop, one that was completely different from the others. It’s called Lá na Rosi and serves some of the most amazing street food in Rio.

Bar chats are on fire these days in Barcelona. As the controversial Catalan independence referendum draws closer, it’s not uncommon to witness spontaneous private discussions or overhear customers express passionate or indignant comments while reading the newspaper or watching the news on the bar’s TV. There is tension in the air, and bars, perennially popular agoras for debate, have become even livelier places. Many Catalans, whether pro-independence or not, will find themselves voting under difficult conditions on Sunday, October 1, in the controversial referendum organized by the Catalan government.

In the past five years, Mexico City has flourished as an international tourist destination, and the Roma and Condesa neighborhoods are the city’s crown jewels for travelers. A typical weekend in bohemian Roma or posh Condesa might include a late lunch of tuna tostadas at Contramar, followed by a drink at Cervecería del Barrio, a bar and restaurant overlooking the scenic Plaza Cibeles. Nightclubs and bars abound, as well as tacos to chow down at 3 a.m. when bars close. But the earthquake on September 19 put the brakes on the renaissance of Roma and Condesa. At least five buildings in the area collapsed in the 7.1 magnitude quake, and dozens more suffered damage so severe that residents were evacuated.

In 2005, the city of Tbilisi bulldozed a riverside row of some the best restaurants in the capital to make way for a lackluster park and a gondola to take tourists to the ancient ruins of the Narikala Fortress, which overlooks the Old Town. City Hall justified this act of gastronomic destruction by stating the property had been illegally privatized under the previous administration, but everyone knew it was a land grab. And among the many restaurants it razed was Megrelebi Manoni, the best Megrelian restaurant in Tbilisi. Of all the regions that make up “Georgian cooking,” the western province of Samegrelo is the most distinctive.

Where the British have a Sunday roast, Cariocas spend their Sunday afternoons at churrascos, Brazilian barbecues. Starting in the mid-afternoon, Rio’s residents typically gather in squares and street corners throughout the city and load spindly grills with slabs of meat. As the evening draws on, skewers and sausages are washed down with copious amounts of beer, and people shake their hips furiously as sizeable loudspeakers blare out samba and Brazilian pop classics. It’s a long-established recipe for a good time. Churrascos of this sort are most commonly held in the working-class suburbs. But what’s a resident of Rio’s new, more genteel, middle-class neighborhoods to do on a Sunday? The answer is being provided by Praticità Carnes, a churrascaria with the suburbanite in mind.

The best pizza in Naples is a family affair, but perhaps not in the way you may think. Gino Sorbillo, the man behind the eponymous Pizzeria Gino Sorbillo, belongs to one of the oldest pizza-making families in Naples. In 1935, his grandparents Luigi Sorbillo and Carolina Esposito opened a tiny pizza shop with only four marble tables on Via dei Tribunali, the epicenter of Neapolitan pizza production. While this history is certainly interesting, the way that Sorbillo broadcasts it is what we delight in. Take, for instance, our favorite pizza, the Raimondo. Who is Raimondo? He’s one of Gino’s uncles; twenty-one out of the 23 pizzas served at Sorbillo’s are named after his father and his father’s 20 siblings (all were pizza-makers).

In the world of wagyu (marbled Japanese beef), Kobe beef is king. However, the demand for this fabled fatty meat has so far outstripped the supply as to send prices forever skyward. Yet lesser known varieties can be every bit as good as, if not superior to, the more celebrated Kobe cuts. As with Kobe beef, the Yamagata variety is named after a place, in this case the mostly mountainous prefecture of Yamagata, which abuts the Sea of Japan in the country’s northeastern Tohoku region. But in order to be certified as Yamagata beef, simply being raised in the prefecture isn’t enough. True Yamagata beef can only come from castrated males of the Kuroge Washu (Japanese Black) breed of cattle raised within the prefecture.

If Istanbul had a city museum, in the 20th-century exhibition we’d expect to walk into a life-sized recreation of Kenan Usta Ocakbaşı, a seminal grill joint in the Beyoğlu district. As visitors descended a few steps into the exhibition, sensors would trigger the harsh light of fluorescent bulbs overhead, illuminating a room covered in photographs of husky men with mustaches posing with a stout man in an apron, grill master Kenan Usta. The somber, groaning warble of the great Arabesque singer Müslüm Gürses would cue up in the visitors’ rented headsets and ducts inside the replica grill would belch out smoke scented authentically by grilled meat.

These days, you won’t find anyone reaching for their wallet while dining out in Shanghai. Cash has become almost obsolete as virtual currencies corner every last slice of the retail payment market. QR codes and app-based systems are the new normal, even for transactions less than the equivalent of US$1 (like our beloved breakfast street food staple, the jianbing). According to a recent New York Times article, mobile payments in China hit US$5.5 trillion in 2016. Yes, with a “T”. And 2017 is sure to be another banner year as AliPay, WeChat Wallet, Apple Pay and others continue to fight for market share.

Seating around only 20 people, Taberna dos Mercadores is a microcosmic reflection of contemporary Porto: a mixture of high-concept design and traditional food. From a design perspective, the focal point of the small yet comfortable dining room is the ceiling, where white metal supports create the outline of a false dome. Although sculptural in nature, the distinctive design is not merely ornamental but also practical: it doubles as a wine rack, cradling neatly stacked rows of bottles. Wine buffs will be satiated at the diverse but humble selection on offer here, which mainly originate from the Douro valley, the sumptuous growing region that extends from Porto along the Douro River all the way to the eastern border with Spain.

Traveling out to the Nakameguro district from central Tokyo is similar to a trip from midtown Manhattan to Greenpoint, Brooklyn. It’s not that far and there are many amusing and delicious reasons to go. Nakameguro is similar to parts of Brooklyn in that real estate prices remain reasonable and artists, designers, chefs and entrepreneurs have flocked there to establish high- and low-end shops and restaurants catering to the hip and trendy. It is now one of the more desirable places to live in Tokyo. Smack in the middle of all things fabulously cool is the yakitori shop Kushiwakamaru, catering to neighborhood regulars as well as a rabid expat community since the mid-90s.