Many people think of miso as the soup that gets tacked onto every Japanese meal. We can still remember our first experience of Japanese food in the West, when the waiter brought the soup at the end of the meal, and someone thought he’d forgotten to serve it at the beginning. Any self-respecting Japanese meal, just about anywhere in the world, will end with miso soup. The miso used in the soup is a paste that will determine the flavor of the soup. There are basically three kinds of miso: red (akamiso), white (shiromiso) and mixed (awase), which has a brownish hue and is the most common variety used in miso soup.

These days, a good Portuguese-style savory pie is hard to find – even in Portugal. In a country with so many great examples, namely in Alentejo, Beiras or Trás-os-Montes, where pies (or empadas in Portuguese) are beautifully made, it’s disheartening that in Lisbon you’ll find mostly dull and dry versions or disappointing fillings within good pastry. Belmiro de Jesus, a native of Trás-os-Montes, one of the most remote and unspoiled regions of Portugal, always loved the empadas his grandmother would cook for special occasions or festive times of year, like Easter or the August village festival. So when he decided to open an empada-themed restaurant, he used hers as an inspiration but changed the format and developed a thinner pastry.

The rustic Neapolitan tarallo, made of 'nzogna (lard), pepper and toasted almonds, is a true delicacy. It can be considered the first popular snack in Naples, a bite that combines the punch of black pepper with the sweetness of almonds, the whole united by lard. It’s a dangerous combination for the waistline, that’s for sure. Taralli are offered to celebrate a new home, shared with friends during soccer matches, enjoyed with one’s significant other on the rocky shore, given to guests at parties, taken aboard boats (it’s the very height of yuppiness to eat them accompanied by iced spumante while out at sea). Until a few years ago, taralli were sold by tarallers, roving vendors who carried a basket full of taralli on their heads.

Oaxaca, consistently ranked as one of the three poorest of Mexico’s 31 states, can also claim the title of having the country’s worst school system. Demonstrations and rallies by students, teachers and unions are a regular occurrence in Oaxaca City, causing frequent gridlock in the center of town. The walls of the city in bold graffiti reflect the young voices of the social movement: sometimes, a mere angry scrawl, but more often, these are canvases that will move you to pause and consider these depictions of revolution, past and present. One such wall is on Calle Porfirio Diaz in the Centro Histórico. It’s the exterior of Espacio Zapata, the home of the Asamblea de Artistas Revolucionarios de Oaxaca (ASARO).

When Tonkatsu Hamachan first opened in 2001, it became an industry favorite – one of those places chefs, foodies and lifestyle journalists kept to themselves. Perhaps they closely guarded this spot because the dining room barely fit six tables, most of which were usually occupied by Japanese businessmen. The restaurant itself refrained from self-promotion – the shoji screen with hiragana script and a frosted glass door would have been as illustrative as a blank canvas to the mostly Japanese-illiterate pedestrians in the expat-friendly enclave of Jing’an. We lived just two blocks away from Hamachan for over a year when we first moved to Shanghai in 2007 and didn’t know about the tonkatsu genius until a friend drunkenly whispered the secret to us one night.

The backstreets of Istanbul's Osmanbey quarter are loaded with fabric shops, while the adjacent thoroughfare of Halaskargazi Avenue is a busy shopping area lined with chain clothing stores and hotels. Come here for a cheap shiny suit, but don’t expect to find rewarding culinary adventures, as most of the area's restaurants offer fast food that manages to be both overpriced and underwhelming. Given all that, we were thrilled when Mahir Lokantası rolled onto the scene in 2015, bringing to the table a fine-tuned rotating menu featuring daily regional specialties from every corner of Turkey. “We make a variety of dishes from the Black Sea region, the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts and Eastern and Central Anatolia,” Mahir Nazlıcan, the restaurant's namesake and head chef, told us.

Though it’s an age-old method for preservation and flavor enhancement all over the world, the smoking of meat, fish, and cheese is not a notable tradition in southern Europe. In Portugal, in the old days, salt curing was more common – particularly for the national staple, cod. However, the presence of smoking traditions in the north, particularly around the Minho river, indicates the possibility that the Vikings’ favorite method for cooking fish may have reached all the way to the northeastern Iberian peninsula.

Georgians – that is, Georgians who hail from the former Soviet republic and not the American South – love their cheesy khachapuri and their beef-and-lamb-filled khinkali. At a glatt kosher restaurant, however, dairy items and meat items can't mingle, either in the kitchen or in the dining room, and many such establishments serve only one or the other. Marani takes a second approach: two kitchens, two dining rooms, two sets of dishes. It's possible to enjoy a progressive dinner under a single roof, first with khachapuri in a basement bakery that resembles a spartan pizzeria, then with a succession of appetizers, skewers and entrees in the more formal setting upstairs.

Inside Barcelona’s lesser-known Mercat de Les Corts is a small, unassuming bar offering up the bounty of the Mediterranean. El Bisaura opens up shop at 6:30 a.m., serving esmorzars de forquilla (hearty Catalan breakfasts like sausage and beans, tripe stew and grilled cuttlefish) to local workers. At lunch, it serves a more refined seafood menu composed of whatever owner Alfonso Puig gets from Peixateria Anna, the fish stand on the other side of the market. The fish and seafood of the day are always seasonal, local and impeccably fresh – which is no surprise, since Puig is also the owner of the fish stand.

There was a dowdy little joint in Batumi, Georgia’s Black Sea port town, where two middle-aged women churned out the most exquisite Adjarian-style khachapuri pies in an old pizza oven. It was a must-stop for every trip to the coast, as there were few places in Tbilisi that could scorch such an authentic acharuli. As the years passed, the seedy potholed streets that hosted a pool hall, brothels and our favorite khachapuri joint transformed into a gentrified neighborhood of gift shops and boutiques catering to the ever-growing number of tourists flocking to Batumi. Meanwhile, the boat-shaped acharuli has become one of the most emblematic dishes of Georgian cuisine and is not only found all over Tbilisi, but is also being served in New York and Washington, DC.

Asking cariocas if they remember their first Biscoito Globo, the ubiquitous, crunchy beach snack, is like asking anyone who teethed in the United States if they remember trying Cheerios for the first time. Globo biscuits and sweet iced mate are to Rio's beaches what hot dogs and beer are to American baseball stadiums. Calls of “Ó Globo! Ó mate!” are the soundtrack along the shores of Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon. The iconic packaging, which features a globe-headed mascot surrounded by the Eiffel Tower, the Tower of Pisa, Portugal's Belém Tower and Rio's Sugarloaf, has been reproduced on t-shirts, tote bags, and cangas (sarongs).

Sergi de Meiá, in his own words, “started in cuisine the day he was born,” growing up as he did in his mother’s restaurant. He received his first cooking lessons from her and from a family full of chefs and cooks before heading off to cooking school at 14. Nowadays, his mother, Adelaida Castells, is still a fundamental part of the team at de Meiá’s restaurant and is in charge of the most traditional recipes they make. Those dishes are part of a concept dedicated to Catalan cuisine that is, de Meiá says, “evolutionary” and “determined by nature,” a tribute to local products, mixing tradition and modernity in the same pot and in a menu that includes a few historic recipes as well as vegan options.

Tucked away from the constant hustle and bustle of Queens Boulevard, Anna and George Artunian’s Sunnyside bakery, Arsi’s Pateseria, is a pleasant surprise. As we walk down 47th Avenue towards the gauzy Midtown Manhattan skyline, the smell of freshly baked burekas greets us long before we get to the bakery’s wide window. Inside, in metal trays behind the counter, four different types of burekas, savory sesame ring cookies and even baklava gleam in different shades of gold. Also behind the counter is 60-year-old Anna Artunian, one-half of the husband-and-wife team running the establishment and chatting with the customers, most of whom are regulars.

Japan is well known for its variety of national dishes, as well as local specialties claimed by individual regions and cities. Tokyo, which boasts more Michelin stars than any city in the world, is a natural nexus for these disparate eats, as well as more international fare. It may come as a surprise, then, that Tokyo itself only really has one true homegrown specialty: monjayaki. The baseline ingredients for monjayaki, often referred to simply as monja, are nothing more than wheat flour and dashi, that ubiquitous Japanese broth made from kombu (kelp) and shavings of katsuobushi, dried, fermented and smoked skipjack tuna. Cabbage is also common enough to be considered a third basic ingredient.

Whether we’re heading to Sichuan province for a little culinary vacation or just looking for the best bowl of dan dan mian in the city, there’s one person we call for dining recommendations: Jenny Gao. Born in Chengdu and raised in Canada, Gao’s family still lives in Sichuan, and since moving to Shanghai in 2012, she visits them often. Over the past couple years, she’s turned her love for her hometown cuisine into a full-time job, becoming Shanghai’s unofficial Sichuan food ambassador. For years, Gao was the writer behind Jing Theory, a popular food blog about Shanghai’s best places to eat, drink and more.