Editor’s note: We are very happy to be able to add Oaxaca to the growing list of cities CB is covering. Our coverage of that city’s deep and fascinating culinary scene begins today, with our report on Oaxaca’s State of the Stomach. Every Sunday, a vendor named Domitila heads out from a village called Etla and makes the hour-long journey to Oaxaca, where she sets up a small stand at a market on the north side of town and sells tamales filled with her homemade stews and moles. The many ingredients for these stews and moles cook slowly, for hours, after which Domitila combines them with spices, chile, chicken or cheese and mixes them into a cornmeal dough spread inside a cornhusk and then steamed – the quintessential Oaxacan snack, one that combines all of the area’s agricultural and culinary richness in one package.

The name Aristaeus Ethno Wine Bar suggests many things, some puzzling but the most obvious being that wine is served. One look at the menu, though, and it becomes clear this spot is more restaurant than bar. One food item in particular caught our attention: dambalkhacho. We first heard of dambalkhacho some years back when a friend offered us hard, moldy cheese bits cut from a ball about the size of a healthy orange. It was rich, slightly peppery with a sharp, tart finish; nothing like any cheese we had ever tried.

The excavations at Oplontis, located in the modern city of Torre Annunziata, are often overlooked in favor of its much larger, much grander neighbor: Pompeii. Yet like all little-known things, this archeological site is full of incredible surprises, like the magnificent villa said to have belonged to Poppaea Sabina, the second wife of the Emperor Nero. A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997, the villa is certainly worth a visit (plus, you’ll avoid the tourists who come from far and wide to invade Pompeii). And after having “discovered” Oplontis, there is a small gastronomic treasure to be discovered: DocSicil.

Think of Blavis in the Sant Gervasi neighborhood as the restaurant equivalent of the iconic Fiat 500 or Mini – perfect for a crowded city and charmingly so. Even though there are only two regular members of staff, this tiny spot packs a powerful punch. Chef and co-owner Marc Casademunt crafts tapas-style plates influenced by local and international cuisines, which are then served by Paco, the friendly waiter. When Marc and his partner, Sonia Devesa, opened the small restaurant in 2008, the financial crisis informed their initial concept: offering an affordable daily lunch menu for workers. In the beginning, they only opened for dinner two nights per week.

A philosophical bar with a throwback name, Cuccuma Caffè opened in October 2018 as a counterpoint to the Neapolitan coffee culture – unlike the many, many bars where you sling back a shot of espresso while standing at the counter, this spot prioritizes a slow coffee. Achille Munari, 32, fell in love with Naples when he arrived 10 years ago from Umbria and decided to stay here in our city. A brilliant guy, Achille prefers a calm, relaxed pace of life, one that allows for reflection and conversation. So he decided to set up a bar that puts his life philosophy into practice.

What do shakshuka, kibbeh, nachos, hummus, crepes and a turkey club sandwich have in common? They are all on the menu of The Spot, a charming comfort-food/tapas bar with a global pedigree that opened in October not far from the pedestrianized road that circles the Acropolis. And they are there because they are all personal favorites of the owners, Turkish-born Aysegul Ozden Trifyllis and her Greek husband Yiannis Trifyllis. “We don’t want to fit into a niche,” Aysegul told us when we visited one balmy day in early November. “That’s why we didn’t make our food just Turkish or Greek.”

In Sukhumi, the capital of Abkhazia, there is an old pier with a sorrowful rusting shell of a café poking out over the Black Sea. What had been a dining room is a vacant space that mostly seems to serve as a public urinal, while upstairs a kiosk-sized café serves Turkish-style coffee, beer and snacks with plastic tables and chairs for locals who bitterly recall when the café was one of the most happening spots in Sukhumi. Georgians and Abkhaz dined, drank and danced together at the café, called Amra, until war erupted in 1992, and these friends and neighbors began killing each other. Within a year, much of what had been the capital of the Soviet Union’s “Red Riviera” was destroyed and as the Abkhaz advanced, some 250,000 Georgians were forced to flee their homes, not realizing they would never be able to return.

Underneath the rumble of the 7 train in Corona, Tortilleria Nixtamal turns about 5,000 pounds of corn masa into 50,000 tortillas every single day. Stacks of them fill all the available shelf space in the unassuming storefront, as a lone conveyer belt spits out a continuous single-file row of perfect tortillas. Unlike mass-produced supermarket flour tortillas, or even the average corn tortilla at your local bodega, these are all made from real corn – no preservatives added – and they’re always fresh. Anything over a day or two old is turned into chips. When Tortilleria Nixtamal opened 10 years ago, real-deal fresh corn tortillas were impossible to find in New York, and stores had only recently begun to stock Mexican goods aside from the odd can of Ortega chiles.

It’s been three years since that fateful windy day in December when Nacho, a friend of ours who usually prefers the quiet of his house to popular cafés or crowded bars, suggested we have a soup at Kadıköy Çorbacısı. Together with a couple of shops selling knockoff shoes and the back entrance of a famous American fried chicken restaurant, this soup spot occupies the ground floor of an ugly building located on an eerily silent alley by the Boğa, the trademark bull statue considered to be the symbol of Kadıköy. Anticipating the warmth awaiting us inside – evident from the fogged-up windows – and eager to thaw our body with some soup, we entered the restaurant with high expectations, which were resoundingly met.

When we think of Spanish convent pastries, we imagine a group of old nuns gathered together in the dark and humble kitchen of some small Gothic or Baroque cloistered convent, hidden away in the old part of town. We picture them working quietly, baking elaborate, time-consuming treats from ancient recipes that have been passed down over the centuries by the previous nuns who lived there. Yet when it comes to the only convent in Barcelona that still makes sweets to support themselves, we should throw our biases out the window – Santa Maria de Jerusalem defies all stereotypes.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Italians – particularly southern Italians – immigrated to the United States in droves. Seeking their fortune in a distant land, they boarded ships with cardboard suitcases containing only a few clothes. But there was no shortage of good food in those suitcases: bread, cheese and even soppressata, cured pork salami made with the best pieces of the pig (and thus low in fat content), a perennial favorite in southern Italy. Alas, once they arrived on American soil after the long journey, their soppressate were seized because of a law prohibiting the import of cured meat, among other meat products (a ban that still exists today).

Avli is one of those places you have to be introduced to by someone who’s already been there. Although a sign does exist above its narrow metal door, there’s so much graffiti on either side of it, you could walk right by even if you had the address firmly in your hand or mind. Once inside, if you’re the first customer, you still might think you’ve made a mistake. Avli means “courtyard,” but this one is narrow, much more like a back alley. Blue doors and shuttered windows the same shade as the Greek flag pierce the right wall, the left has a few potted plants and three plump alley cats comfortably ensconced on the old-fashioned rush-seated taverna chairs.

It is impossible not to look at the history of Quinta de Covela, a winery in Portugal’s Douro Verde region that has faced misfortune, gotten some lucky breaks and survived tricks of fate, as a masterpiece of literature, one that could easily be adapted to the cinema. In fact, the area around the winery already has ties to both genres: It inspired A Cidade e as Serras, the last work of José Maria de Eça de Queiroz, the 19th-century writer who is one of the towering figures of Portuguese literature. And it was here that famous Portuguese film director Manoel de Oliveira bought a large swath of property to prove himself a worthy candidate for the hand of Maria Isabel Carvalhais, the woman who would become his wife.

The wine harvest is about timing. The time it takes for a grape to ripen to optimal sweetness, the moment they are cut from the vine, the days or weeks that each mix of crushed grapes and juice sits in fermentation tanks or oak barrels. Timing is everything and to get it right, you not only have to be obsessed with accuracy, but also have a passion for perfection. Alejandra Cordero, the winemaker at Tres Raices, a winery in Dolores Hildago, located in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, has both. Wearing a black lab coat, her hair in a tight bun and her hands stained ruddy red with wine, Cordero is testing the sugar levels of the latest batch of Tres Raices wine. This year’s harvest went fast. There was little summer rain and the grapes matured quickly. They started cutting in July and were finished by the start of September. Timing was vital.

At a typical pâtisserie orientale, the front window is often stacked with towers of sweets – honey-soaked visual merchandising to entice passersby to pop inside. Some pastry shops line their walls with colorful geometric tiles and Moorish arches, the icing on the Maghreb cake. Pâtisserie Orientale Journo goes for a decidedly more subtle approach. Though located a block from Marseille’s main drag, the Canèbiere, this unassuming shop is somewhat lost in the shuffle of the pedestrian Rue de Pavillon. The few tables scattered out front suggest that there’s food to be found inside but the open storefront is bare – save for a giant five-gallon water jug propped on a stool, with a hand-scrawled sign “citronnade – 2 euros” beside it. That’s all the advertising needed for a pastry shop that has survived by word of mouth for 60 years.