After a couple of harsh years, Porto's culinary scene is finally coming up for air again, as in many other places in the world. It is undeniable, however, that the pandemic shook things up a bit, influencing the local scenario: we’ve seen more casual venues opening, and some traditional restaurants closing for good. But the overall balance has been good for the city and it’s been fascinating to see its evolution, with new projects taking shape and others that have been given the chance to establish themselves.

As amazing as Lisbon’s food and drink scene is, many of its markets are underwhelming. The sad truth is that it’s necessary to head outside of the capital to witness spaces that showcase the real bounty of Portugal’s fields, orchards, vineyards, farms and waters. The recently-renovated Mercado do Bolhão, in Porto, is one such place. Or the expansive, seafood-forward Mercado de Olhão, in the country’s far south. From Lisbon, visits to either of these would involve time-consuming trips, but thankfully, one of the country’s best markets is located an hour south of the city. 

The history of Oaxacan food is deeply linked to the concept of adaptation. Our culinary identity has many chapters: the Mesoamerican native period, the colonial reign of Nueva España and the Mexico of the 20th century, which received another wave of immigrants who brought their gastronomic traditions and let them combine with the native and more tropical ingredients of these altitudes. That is the story of the salchicha ejuteca, a European style beef sausage that unexpectedly became one of the most desired foods on the Oaxacan snack table. While traditional corn-based products are a signature of Oaxacan cuisine, the salchicha ejuteca is an underestimated traditional element in the state’s food landscape. “Nobody knows for sure where the salchicha comes from.

Though Paris is littered with brasseries boasting classic French cuisine, Marseille lacks restaurants that solely specialize in our traditional fare – a mix of Provençal garlic, tomatoes, and olive oil and the freshly caught delights of the Mediterranean. When we lamented this at a dinner party the other night, a woman chimed in, “What about Paule et Kopa?” We had never heard of it despite its central locale. She raved that the supions à la provencale (garlic, parsley squid) were the best in the city. Then continued, “but I rarely share that for fear it will lose its simple charm.”

When El Chato, considered to be Barcelona’s oldest Basque restaurant, opened in 1941 in El Fort Pienc, the neighborhood was a decidedly industrial one. In fact, the restaurant’s main clientele for decades were Basque truck drivers who were dropping off or picking up goods in the area. Much has changed since the 40s. El Fort Pienc is now home to office workers as well as families, lured to the area by its proximity to the center of town. Meanwhile, Basque cuisine has gone on to become one of the world’s most celebrated, its home region filled with numerous Michelin-starred restaurants.

Mtkvari, the local name for the Kura River, divides Tbilisi. Until the launch of Fabrika – a disused Soviet-era garment factory turned into a trendy social-space-cum-hostel in 2016 – few gentrified souls from the city’s fancier shore crossed over to the left bank. Fewer still stepped out further than the central Marjanishvili neighborhood, making it past Dezerter Bazaar – the throbbing gastronomic heart from where most of the city’s fresh produce and meats originate. This is also where Leonid Chkhikvishvili buys fresh cuts of meat each morning for his restaurant Duqani Kasumlo, located even further north on the left bank in Didube. Here is a neighborhood where few travelers tread, except perhaps to quickly pass through to catch cheap intercity mashrutkas (mini-buses). But despite its overlooked location, Duqani Kasumlo has acquired semi-cult status for its kebabs in an area better known for its cluster of home improvement stores and the labyrinthine Eliava market, home to hawkers of used car parts and construction materials.

Barbacoa – pit-roasted lamb or goat – is a Mexico City weekend essential. Stands pop up all over the city on Saturdays and Sunday selling the soft-as-butter meat on a warm tortilla, topped with a sprinkling of cilantro and raw onion and one of the many smoky salsas that generally accompany this dish. Even more, barbacoa broth is a well-known hangover cure, among the ranks of menudo (tripe soup) and pozole (hominy and meat soup). Before the city’s Roma neighborhood became the hip, bohemian mecca that it is now, Moises and Norma Rodriguez opened El Hidalguense, an unassuming spot on one of the neighborhood’s quieter streets. Now, 30 years later, it is known far and wide for roasting some of the best barbacoa in the city.

The year is almost gone and, though many expected it to be free from the waves of chaos and change that the Coronavirus brought us in 2020, 2021 has proved to be just as challenging. But, at the same time, it has been more interesting than ever. It’s been a year of transition, with everyone trying to make the best of their circumstances and transform challenges into solutions. When it comes to eating out, this was also a year where we oscillated between feeling connected to community again, the thrill of finding new culinary projects and going back to the places and flavors that have always been comforting and safe.

More than forty years ago, on the corner of Porto’s Rua da Alegria, or “Street of Joy,” sat an old charcoal shop. In 1978, after many years working in a renowned local restaurant, Fernanda (Nanda) Sousa took over the shop with her husband and, together with another couple, they converted it into what’s locally known as a “pastoral house.” With barrels of wine scattered about and ham hocks hanging from the ceiling, it was the quality of the food, not the interior, that elevated Casa Nanda to restaurant status. Now, 40 years on and having stared Covid-19 down, Casa Nanda has reopened on Rua da Alegria after a months-long renovation.

“Those who don’t know Etienne, don’t know Marseille,” insists a French weekly in a piece about the cult pizzeria. They were raving about both place, Chez Etienne, and person, the enigmatic Etienne Cassaro, who transformed the worker’s canteen his Sicilian dad opened in 1943 into a local institution that endures today. Though Etienne’s light went out in 2017, his son, Pascal, continues to carry the family torch – alongside a long-standing staff who have been there for decades. Aptly located in the equally mythical Le Panier quartier, Chez Etienne is home-style cooking served in a homey setting. Inside a convivial room divided by stone archways, the tables are packed with regulars, tourists and politicians from nearby city hall (including Mayor Gaudin) who tuck their ties in their shirt to keep them from getting splattered with pizza grease.

“Bom filho à casa torna,” we like to say in Portuguese, a maxim that translates to “a good son comes home.” Can the saying be applied to a sandwich? In Porto, we would argue, the answer is yes, especially now that A Regaleira, the birthplace of the francesinha – Porto’s signature dish – is open again after being closed for three years. Even former A Regaleira regulars passing by the reopened restaurant might miss the fact that it has moved a few doors down from its original location. We could have sworn that the restaurant was in the same spot since 1934, but the original A Regaleira was forced to close in 2018 when the building housing it was sold.

Despite the fact that Porto has swelled with tourists in recent years, leading local establishments to evolve in order to cater to these visitors, there are thankfully many places that have swatted away all trends and remained faithful to their roots. In Miragaia, a typical Porto neighborhood that has resisted the pull of tourism, one can still find a place like this on each corner. A good example is Refúgio 112, which is located deep in the warren of narrow streets, where there are only houses and no awnings or anything notable to report. The restaurant is, as the name suggests, the refuge of Clarice Santos, or Clari for short. It opened eight years ago on the same day as the annual São João festival.

Anthony Bourdain liked to say the body is a playground, a sentiment we couldn’t agree with more, especially when digging into the cholesterol-laden acharuli khachapuri or wiping a ketsi clean of its spicy pool of kupati – Georgian sausage – grease with a piece of bread. Shots of chacha and glasses of wine make us swing, bounce, teeter-totter and sometimes fall, and in the morning when the fog and pain clears, we may remember that the body is also a fragile temple requiring more ministration than a sacrificial bowl of tripe soup can provide. In Tbilisi’s Mtatsminda district there is a sanctuary providing both solace to devotees of healthy eating and penance to gluttonous sinners like us. No ordinary hummus bar, this affectionate “eating apartment” is called Mama Terra – Veggie Corner.

The Chive Pocket from Delicious Jin I can use more green in my “feed,” in more senses of that word than one. The colors of the street foods, grilled foods, fried foods and other snack foods that I taste around the city tend toward the golden browns of just-baked pastry, the ruddy hues of slow-roasted meats and the deep browns of rich sauces. My website and social media accounts are often crowded with images from the same palette. And my daily diet, during hours-long forays on foot, is often undersupplied with greens. I don’t expect to find a street vendor’s handcart offering hand-tossed salads, so when I do sit down at, say, a Chinese restaurant, many times I’ll build my meal by looking first to the menu of vegetable dishes.

Lemongrass kölsch, jalapeño rye, blackberry pomegranate sour, sweet potato farmhouse. Beers at Big aLICe Brewing, in Long Island City, can be eye-catchingly colorful, but they also embody deeper stories, with local color not apparent at first sight. Big aLICe is a New York State farm brewery. That status, which mandates certain levels of collaboration with local growers and other producers, also dovetails nicely with the predisposition of co-founder Kyle Hurst toward wildly varied styles and flavors of beer. The brewery’s “two longest-standing relationships,” Kyle says, are with Native Coffee Roasters and Wilk Apiary; coffee and honey each figure in the regular rotation of Big aLICe beers.