The year was 2001, and we were squeezed around an enormous table, together with a half dozen men in their late fifties, in a small conference room at a Soviet-era tobacco collective in Lagodekhi, near the Azerbaijan border. The director of the collective casually slipped a biography of Joseph Stalin under the table and told us the story of the farm, although we weren’t really interested. Our local host had hijacked us into the meeting, believing we could give these gentlemen sound business advice simply because we were westerners. “Our tobacco is natural, no chemicals,” the director asserted. “Yes,” another man interjected with a grin, “we have no money for chemicals.” The men all chuckled.

Nuno Mendes is excited. He’s standing at my kitchen counter, where laid out before him are pieces of half-moon-shaped dough, each encasing a juicy meat mixture. They’re about to go into a pan filled with bubbling oil. My mom, Lica, is nervous. She is sharing her mother’s recipe for pastéis de massa terra, a traditional Portuguese savory pastry, with the highly esteemed chef of Chiltern Firehouse and Taberna do Mercado in London. He has heard about her mouth-watering pastéis from a mutual friend and decided to see for himself just how good they are. Worried that the dough isn’t quite right, she drops in the first one and the pastry bubbles up crispy, as it should. When it’s finished, she gives it to Mendes, who takes one bite and says, “Wow, these are amazing!”

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.

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.

This was an intense year for Barcelona, with a complex political situation stemming from Catalonia’s bid for independence from Spain. It was a storm that the culinary scene could not help but get caught up in. Bars and restaurants have always been a temple of leisure and pleasure, but we sometimes forget that they also serve as a space for people to connect and debate. And in the spirit of debate, food and drink constitute another form of expression, an indication of a restaurant’s cultural leanings. In Barcelona this year, we could taste the continued interest in developing and strengthening Catalan cuisine, often considered an extension of Catalan identity. But we also observed the food scene’s openness to other regional cultures and global influences.

With new restaurants popping up in this increasingly popular city and so many more disappearing due to rising rents, 2017 was a year of change – both good and bad – in the Lisbon food scene. We mourn those spots that have left us, but also celebrate the arrival of some exciting places helmed by a new crop of young chefs who are highlighting quality and local products and ingredients. Pies at Bel’Empada: Bel’Empada, a tiny restaurant and takeaway in Alvalade, a residential area in the northern part of the city, bakes the most delicious pies with a thin light dough that are bursting with flavor.

After an awful 2016 punctuated by bomb attacks and a failed coup attempt, Istanbulites were clinging to the desperate hope that tensions would ease in the new year. Then, shortly after bottles had been popped and toasts had been made, news suddenly poured in that the city’s ritziest nightclub had been sprayed with bullets in a shocking and tragic attack that claimed the lives of 39 people. Though the year started off with the kind of bang I wasn’t expecting, things have calmed down in 2017. This has afforded Istanbulites the opportunity to spend less time worried about their own personal safety and more time focused on the still-troubling political situation that clouds Turkey today.

Caga Tió, Tió de Nadal No cagues arengadas Que són saladas Caga torróns Que són més bons It’s not a carol, but it is likely the most popular song in Catalonia around Christmastime. Please pardon the profanity necessary in rendering a faithful translation: “Shit, Log, Christmas Log/Don’t shit herrings/Which are salty/Shit nougats/Which are better.” You might also hear Caga Tió/Avellanas i mató/Si no cagas be,/Et dare un cop de bastó. “Shit, Log/Hazelnuts and mató [curd cheese]/If you don’t shit well/I’ll hit you with a stick.”

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.

As we think back over the truly delicious meals we enjoyed this year in and around Athens, it appears to us that the food scene here is going from strength to strength, despite the continuing prolonged recession. And most of these memorable feasts focused on procuring the finest local ingredients and employing them in traditional Greek or Mediterranean recipes in imaginative but not surreal or outlandish ways. Below are some of our Athens correspondents’ favorite memories from the last year of places and meals that reflected this encouraging trend. A Little Taste of Home: The overall excellence makes it difficult to choose just three places, but I have absolutely no difficulty in singling out the best bite of all.

Editor’s note: We’re celebrating another year of excellent backstreets eating by taking a look back at our favorite restaurants and dishes of 2017. Starting things off is a dispatch from our Tbilisi bureau chief Paul Rimple: In 2001, a chic fashion designer opened up a snazzy café in the Vake Park building we were living. The low quadratic furnishings were not made for comfort, but were perfect for posing with your nose in the air and a cigarette between your fingers. It was the only cafe in this part of town and lucky us, it was downstairs.

The debate rages on: which are Greece’s best traditional Christmas cookies, kourambiedes or melomakarona? Amongst our friends and family, moist, honey-soaked melomakarona win out over the crumbly, butter-rich almond kourambiedes. The word “melomakarona” is a combination of meli, which means “honey,” and makaronia, which comes from the ancient Greek word makaria (μακαρία), meaning “blessed” (and having nothing to do with the Italian pasta with the Greek name “macaroni”). Long ago, the makaria was a piece of oval-shaped bread made for a funerary dinner to bless the dead. Later on, the makaria was soaked in honey and became known as melomakarono (the singular form of the word; these cookies are also called finikia by some).

In Japan, there’s a different version of Newton’s third law of motion that applies to etiquette: for every act of kindness, there must be a similar and equal act, usually in the form of a gift. Japanese people are perpetually cognizant of the opportunities and appropriate moments for giving gifts and the many meanings and rituals attached to them. Rather than considering it a burden, many of them love to give gifts and believe it a tradition worth observing. The gold standard for gift giving in Japan are the mid-year ochugen and the end-of-year oseibo, or seasonal presents.

There’s a new phenomenon in Rio’s botequim scene. Until some years ago, running one of these small bars was something done exclusively by immigrants from Portugal, Spain and Brazil’s northeast. But ever since botequims became extremely popular among the carioca middle class, new players have gotten into the business: the customers themselves. Since the beginning of the 21st century, it has become more and more common to hear about botequim customers who decided to buy the bars they used to frequent. Initially, it might be to help the former owners and to keep the bar from closing due to financial problems. But then they might notice that running a botequim in Rio can be enjoyable – and also good business, if the job is well done.

We spent the summer in Georgia’s Shida Kartli region, a vast expanse of fertile terrain in the heart of the country that we have fallen crazy in love with. One day, over a glass of local Chinuri wine, we wondered aloud, “Every other region in the country has signature dishes, but what about Kartli? What are its signature dishes?” We asked our neighbors and got a lot of shoulder shrugs. Shota, a 65-year-old contractor, re-called his grandmother’s soups. “They had fruit,” he said. Seventy-year-old Maro said she too ate fruit soups as a child. Thus began our plan to dig up forgotten Kartli recipes, someday.