When we first arrived in Marseille, we heard rumblings about a most intriguing ice cream flavor. A “black vanilla” whose color and savory taste was rumored to come from squid ink, fitting for the city’s Mediterranean perch. In a city where exaggeration is the norm, we had to go check it out for ourselves. A long line snaked from Vanille Noire, the name of both the ice cream shop and famous flavor. The vendor handed us our scoop, so black it looked like a photo negative of a vanilla cone. Our first lick was rich Madagascar vanilla. A few seconds later, the sweet became salty like the seaside air. We were hooked – regardless of what it was made of.

For a city whose natural beauty is what often sweeps visitors off their feet, Rio’s historical gems often look a little like urban ugly ducklings next to the bikini crowds and chic bars on sandy Ipanema beach. That’s a shame, because Rio Antigo has a great story to tell. Old Rio runs along the Guanabara Bay rather than the open Atlantic, and it was the former that gave the city its name – River of January – when Portuguese explorers came upon it in the first month of 1502.

The eyes of Tacacá do Norte’s harried staff widen as yet another customer arrives during the lunchtime rush. The bedroom-sized snack bar can barely hold one line of chairs around its bar but they have somehow managed to squeeze in two. Impatient regulars shake hands and whistle “psst” to the young men staffing the establishment, who gingerly hand steaming pots of shrimp soup and freshly puréed juices over the packed bar.

A visit to a pastelaria in Lisbon in the lead up to Easter brings with it new surprises. Alongside the usual pastries and cakes, you’ll spot folares, loaves of sweet bread, some topped with hardboiled eggs, and many surrounded by a colorful assortment of almonds. This type of bread, which contains ingredients forbidden during Lent, has long been associated with Easter and the feasting that occurs on this holiday. “After the winter months and the long fast during Lent, the Easter brings an intense activity in terms of culinary preparations and the exchange of cakes, namely the folares,” writes Mouette Barboff in her book A Tradição do Pão em Portugal (Bread in Portugal).

Back when it was called Noisette, we'd passed by Paris Oven in the (not quite) year that it had been open. But whenever we’d walked down those sometimes clamorous blocks of 30th Avenue in Astoria, Queens – not far from a bagel shop, a pizzeria, a comfort-food hotspot and a New Orleans-themed bar-restaurant, whose windows open wide toward the street during happy hour – we’d given little notice to the quiet bakery-café with the French name. That changed during one recent stroll, not long before dark, when a hand-drawn signboard beside the door wished us “Ramadan Kareem” and beckoned us to come inside.

Today is Día de Reyes (Kings’ Day), also known as Epiphany, and in Catalonia, as in many places with Catholic traditions, we celebrate the Magis’ visit to the baby Jesus with a tortell de reis (roscón de reyes in Spanish), or kings’ cake. Made of brioche and shaped like a crown, the cake is filled with marzipan made from marcona almonds, wonderfully fragrant with orange-flower water and studded with jewel-like candied fruit – such as orange, cherries, melon or quince – as well as pine nuts and sugar. Most people purchase their tortell at a bakery and eat it for dessert at the end of their family lunch on Dia de Reis, as it’s called in Catalan. The Gremi de Pastisseria de Barcelona, a Catalan association of professional bakers, estimates that some 1 million tortells will be eaten in Catalonia this year.

New York City’s most international borough certainly delivers when it comes to baked goods. Queens is home to some of the city’s best bakeries with influences and recipes from around the world, making it a prime destination for anyone with a serious sweet tooth. From baklava to Black Forest Cake, Filipino tortas to freshly baked bread, you’ll be spoiled for choice. Here, our local experts have handpicked the best pastries, breads, and goodies in Queens to bookmark for your next trip.

In our beloved home base of Kurtuluş, the neighborhood's rich patisserie culture is often associated with its Greek and Armenian communities. Some of these shops churn out the best profiterole in the city, while numerous others bake sakızlı Paskalya çöreği, a subtly-sweet bun laced with mastic gum and topped with thinly-sliced almonds consumed on Easter. There are more of these excellent patisseries in Kurtuluş than we could count on both hands, but only one that features the traditional Sephardic specialty börekitas, a small, crescent-moon shaped empanada variation stuffed with either roasted eggplant or potato.

Royaume de la Chantilly’s renowned logo is featured prominently above the entrance, in bright red lettering, flanked by a blue crown and the royal emblem, the fleur-de-lis. Founded in 1917, Royaume de la Chantilly, (“Kingdom of Chantilly”) is certainly considered royalty by the Marseillais when it comes to their signature specialty: fabulously fluffy, perfectly sugared homemade whipped cream. Over 100 years ago, Joseph Ganteaume opened the first store on rue Longue des Capucins not far from the old port. Before refrigeration, people would go to what was then called the BOF, meaning beurre, œufs, fromage (“butter, eggs, cheese”) on a daily basis to purchase dairy products.

In 1683, so the story goes, an Austrian Jewish baker wished to honor King Jan Sobieski of Poland for repelling an invading army. The king was renowned as a horseman, and so the baker shaped a ring of dough into the shape of a stirrup – a beugel. That origin story might be impossible to verify, but the bagel is inextricably entwined with the culinary history of Eastern European Jews – and, thanks to immigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with the culinary history of New York City Today, of course, bagels are consumed not only within New York's Jewish communities but throughout the city – and the United States – as standard American breakfast fare. Commercially packaged and, typically, frozen, bagels are displayed and sold in the same chain stores that sell brand-name sliced bread. But while they might adhere to the basics – yeasted dough shaped into a ring, briefly boiled, then baked – these mass-market bagels are factory-made.

As a singular city that differs from the rest of France, it is no surprise that Marseille has its own lingo. Parler marseillais (Marseille speak) is mostly Provençal, the original dialect of Provence, peppered with Italian, Arabic and other languages spoken in the multicultural city. We call the fervent fans of our football team OM “fada,” Provençal for crazy. Tarpin, which means “very” in Romani Caló, is used on the daily by the hyperbolic Marseillais. When the fruit vendor rounds up your bag of peaches, that is the “bada,” Provençal for the “extra bit.” It makes a fitting name for a baker known for her bite-sized treats.

Across Marseille, winter’s neon-yellow mimosas have given way to amandiers’ (almond trees’) fragrant white and pink blooms. Here, the French adage, “en avril, ne te découvre pas d'un fil. En mai fais ce qu'il te plaît,” (in April, don't remove a stitch. In May, do as you wish,”) is oft quipped, for our springtime weather can be fickle. Last weekend, I took a dip in the Mediterranean to cool off after a sun-soaked, 70-degree hike; as I write this, the local mistral wind has iced down the air temperature to just above freezing. Despite spring’s yo-yoing thermometer, ‘tis the season for Marseillais to fill up outdoor patios.

Sōsuke Hirai’s hands tilt this way and that as the machine whirrs, raining large, fine flakes of ice into a bowl. He pauses the machine, lightly pats the ice and taps the bowl on the counter, allowing the ice to sink and compress. A swirl of persimmon tea syrup is added to the ice. Then it goes back under the machine for a second ice shower. Over this, several twirls of a cinnamon-infused milk syrup, a few tea-flavored meringue cookies, two large soup spoons of rum-spiked zabaglione. More ice. His hands gently coax the shavings into an elegant dome.