Close to Jardim do Príncipe Real, the singular, beautiful park built in the 18th century above one of many underground cisterns of Lisbon’s public water system, is a cozy, rustic Portuguese eatery defying – while also benefiting from – the trends of its surroundings. Tascardoso is a typical tasca often frequented by tourists in the increasingly chic Principe Real neighbourhood, which tops one of the city’s seven hills and commands that soft Lisbon light until the last moment of the day. While fad food and French-owned business ventures abound, the restaurant’s popularity has risen with the booming interest in the area: it is especially difficult to get a table at Tascadorso for dinner.

Standing on a sidewalk at 9:30 a.m. in Mexico City, waiting for food, one typically imagines pan dulce (sweet bread), tamales and piping hot atole, a drink made from corn. Yet there we stood waiting for Arroz Black Tiger – a steaming, heaping, fried rice dish with salmon, surimi, shrimp and white mushrooms, something you might find for dinner at a trendy Asian fusion restaurant in Roma or Polanco, but certainly not for 135 pesos (US$7.30) and not at that hour. Nevertheless, business was humming, and several clients rushed in and out to place orders for their office, buying early before ingredients start to run out. Why so early?

Baoyuan Jiaozi Wu was locally famous in Beijing for years, then U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Jacob Lew turned the sprawling dumpling house into a Chinese viral sensation when he lunched there in 2013. The modest meal came just weeks after Xi Jinping became the President of the People’s Republic and launched anti-corruption campaigns that tried to eliminate extravagant dinners replete with sea cucumbers and Moutai baijiu. The meal for three at Baoyuan came to just RMB 109 (US$16) – a jaw-droppingly low number for a lunch for officials in China. Netizens around the country hailed the secretary for his low-key, local choice.

Located just beneath Istanbul’s first Bosphorus Bridge in the Anatolian side district of Üsküdar is a secluded slice of Trabzon, the Black Sea province known for its otherworldly lush green forests, hot-tempered inhabitants and distinctly deep cuisine. The Trabzon Kültür Derneği (Trabzon Cultural Association) is something of a clubhouse for folks who grew up in the province and later moved to Istanbul for school and work. Founded in 1970 and having changed locations a number of times, the association set up shop in Üsküdar’s Beylerbeyi neighborhood at the turn of the millennium and crafted a miniature version of home in the heart of Turkey’s largest, ever-sprawling city.

Wine and health: that was the prevailing philosophy of Joan Cusiné Hill, who in 1978 took over Parés Baltà wines, produced in Penedés, the land of cava. Cusiné Hill, who had already started working in viticulture at the age of seven, applied this philosophy first to himself – to what he ate and drank, to exercise, always with his focus on discipline and his vision. But he also applied it to his vineyards, using natural fertilization methods that included walking his sheep among the vines so that they could eat the grass and planting vines in the middle of the forest in an effort to harness the power and energy of those natural surroundings.

Over the last 20 years the wine industry in Baja California has grown exponentially, with the majority of production located in the Guadalupe Valley. The valley, which lies just 22 miles northeast of Ensenada, is about 14 miles long and is home to over 100 vineyards of varying sizes, from large-scale wineries like L.A. Cetto, to boutique operations like Monte Xanic, Vena Cava and La Lomita. Interest in the valley, both for its bright and rocky landscape and the unexpected wines it produces, has brought a boom in tourism. Design hotels and high-quality farm-to-table restaurants abound, making the valley a hot spot for food and wine enthusiasts.

Celebrating its 300th birthday this year, the Quinta do Vallado estate, located near Peso da Régua in the heart of the Douro valley, is integral to the history of the region. The current owners are the sixth-generation descendants of D. Antónia Adelaide Ferreira, a legendary visionary and businesswoman who, in the 19th century, changed Douro wines. Francisco Ferreira, the 44-year-old scion of the family, is now leading the wine making of this old estate, which for years was dedicated exclusively to port and is now producing some great red and white wines.

If you walk the length of Roosevelt Avenue from 69th Street to 111th Street in the early morning, you may encounter up to two dozen tamale ladies, usually at the major intersections that correspond to the 7 train’s stops. Few have licensed carts; most vend from grocery carts. Many of these women are up at 3 a.m. cooking and packing their steaming goods and are on the street by 4 or 5 a.m. Licensed or not, their business is brisk, efficient and professional. The ladies feed their own and charge prices that day laborers can pay. It is 5 a.m. on the corner of 69th Street and Roosevelt Avenue in Woodside, Queens. I am here to meet Christina Fox and her favorite tamale ladies.

On Serifos island, local word-of-mouth advice on where to eat real Greek home cooked food – at excellent prices – will take you to the end of a beach road, a dirt path bordering the turquoise sea. Around a slight bend on a corner clearing, a dozen or so mismatched, aged wooden tables and chairs strewn in front of whitewashed house are simply lit by a string of light bulbs hanging between two thick tamarisk trees. Here, 83-year-old Kyria (Mrs.) Margarita has faithfully taken orders, cooked every dish and welcomed her summer guests for more than three decades. Hers is the prototypical traditional Greek island taverna.

Home cooks and high-end restaurateurs alike have taken to hedgerows and beaches to forage for wild herbs and sea vegetables over the past couple of years. But 60-year-old George Demetriades, the larger-than-life owner of Seven St. Georges Tavern, just outside Cyprus’s Paphos, has been serving up incredible meze based on the flora in the woods and fields around the area he grew up in for the past 20 years. “I’ve foraged for food since I was a little boy. That’s how I grew up, as a hunter-gatherer for healthy food,” Demetriades said.

Roughly a year ago, José, the owner of Das Flores, was heartbroken: he had just received an eviction notice demanding that he close the restaurant. And it’s not like he hadn’t been paying his rent – he had, but there were plans to transform the whole building into a luxury hotel. That has become a common occurrence in Lisbon’s recent history: closing an old family-owned business to make way for something more profitable to its landlords. Only this time the story had a different ending. With the help of a lawyer, José managed to keep his doors open. At least for the time being. He’s now a happier host, running the place behind the counter with his business-as-usual mindset.

We’ve seen the doleful little building a hundred times, every time we cross Tbilisi’s Dry Bridge. With the seductive words chacha, grappa and vino hand-painted on the wall enticing us like a red-light district lures lonely sailors, we would move on, thinking, “one of these days.” Then one sweltering summer night our band got a gig at the biker bar next door to the sad little building. We had a half-hour to kill until show time, and we thought, surely, one shot won’t hurt. But instead of walking into a moonshine dispensary we found a little tourist shop packed with wine, ceramic vessels and assorted knick-knacks. The real discovery, however, were three refrigerators stocked with balls of craft cheeses.

Even in well-trod Mexico, little pockets of paradise can still be found. Located to the north of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, where the Gulf of Mexico meets the Caribbean, little Isla Holbox is one of the most beautiful places we have visited in the country. It’s easy to lose track of time just meandering down dirt roads past brightly painted palapas (buildings with palm-leaf roofs), sunning yourself on a tranquil beach, watching spectacular sunsets and eating delicious seafood. Getting to the island isn’t easy, however. There are buses from Mérida, Cancún and Playa del Carmen to Chiquilá, and the trip can take up to four hours on roads that are not always the smoothest. From there, ferries cross over the Yalahau lagoon to the final destination.

Inner Mongolia is famous in China for its lamb and all the different ways it’s prepared there, whether it’s braised lamb spine or thinly sliced marbled cuts dip-boiled in a hotpot. Lamb roasted whole is always a great choice, but the more common version (and the one you won’t need to pre-order days in advance) is roasted lamb leg (烤羊腿, kǎo yáng tuǐ). Legend has it that Genghis Khan’s personal servant was worried about how much of the nomadic conqueror’s time was taken up by waiting for whole lambs to be grilled to sate his hunger, so he asked the chef to prepare roasted lamb legs instead.

We recently spoke with travel writer Caroline Eden and food writer Eleanor Ford about their new cookbook, Samarkand: Recipes & Stories from Central Asia & the Caucasus (Kyle Books; July 2016). Eden has written for the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Financial Times, among other publications, while Ford has been an editor for the Good Food Channel, BBC Food and the magazine Good Food and currently writes about restaurants for Time Out. How did this book come about? Caroline Eden: It was an idea I was percolating for a long time, since about 2009. Travelling in Central Asia, mainly as a journalist but sometimes for fun, I got fed up with guidebooks dismissing the food in the region as “survival fare.”