I can’t think of a more comforting dish than soup. It can be as simple or complex as you wish, and as cheap or expensive as you can afford. Just open your fridge or pantry, and you’re sure to find something to turn into a liquid meal – vegetables, herbs, spices, meat, poultry, seafood, grains, legumes… the list goes on. If you’re looking for a restoring bowl of soup in Greece, one of your best bets is a late-night restaurant (many operate round-the-clock) or diner. These spots, some of which are located near or inside central food markets, are perhaps best known for serving patsa (πατσά), tripe soup, a hangover helper as well as fuel for people performing hard labor early in the day – like market workers do.

After the pandemic shook Porto’s restaurant sector like an earthquake, the city’s eateries are trying to rebuild themselves. Those who are still standing have opened their doors again and are now offering more than delivery and takeaway. In this city we live for contact with other people, talking face to face; nowadays that means imagining a genuine smile behind the mask. A well-known Portuguese expression may be one of the best descriptions for what restaurants are currently experiencing in the time of Covid: “Fazer das tripas coração” (“Making heart from the guts”). It means something like turning adversity into fuel, and in Portugal we use it to describe a superhuman effort. Because that’s what we’re all putting in currently, right?

In 2013, Anthony Bourdain and the Parts Unknown team arrived in Batumi, the capital of Adjara, to shoot the first segment of their Georgian adventure. The show’s producers invited Zamir Gotta, a Russian sidekick unfamiliar with the city, to join him. They visited a casino, strip club and mediocre restaurant for khashi, tripe soup, which failed to impress Bourdain. When the episode aired, local social media users flamed with disappointment over the Batumi portion in particular: “Casinos and strip clubs! That’s not Batumi!” While they aren’t the places we would have taken Anthony Bourdain, they are most certainly Batumi, along with the rainy summers and stifling subtropic air, the new five-star hotels and crumbling Khrushchyovkas (Soviet apartment buildings), a McDonald’s housed in an award-winning modern structure and a chacha-spouting fountain that dried up shortly after it was built in 2012.

The linguistic variations in Spain’s 17 autonomous communities are as diverse as the local culinary specialties. In Barcelona, we can find examples of both. Take La Esquinica (“The Little Corner”), an iconic tapas bar with a fantastic terrace in Nou Barris, a neighborhood with a large immigrant population. Here, many of the tapas’ names (as well as the name of the bar itself) end in -ica or -ico, a traditional suffix used in the Teruel province of the Aragon region that functions as a diminutive and has become emblematic of the area. Jose María Utrillas, who hails from Aragon, established the bar in 1972, on the corner of Montsant and Cadí, although his brother-in-law Paco managed the placed. But in 1997, after their building was plagued with structural issues, they moved the bar to its current location.

If you ask a Marseillais where to cavort on the coast, most will respond, without hesitation, “the Calanques”: turquoise coves tucked between towering limestone cliffs that can only be reached by foot, boat or paddle. Spanning Marseille and Cassis, this national park gets all the glory – and tourist campaigns – for its jaw-dropping grandeur. But, north of the city, you’ll find more intimate calanques that also merit a visit: the Côte Bleue. Unlike the barely inhabited Calanques National Park, the “Blue Coast” is dotted with fishing villages anchored in blue coves, each one appearing to have been carved into the limestone hills. Some of the secluded ports are connected by hiking trails that weave between beach pines and the Mediterranean.

From Gascogne’s prized ducks to the buckwheat gallettes of Bretagne, each chunk of France has its distinct food traditions. In Marseille, the capital of Provence, the recipes brim with the region’s olive oil, garlic and tomatoes as well as plenty of Mediterranean fish. On menus around town, you’ll find an anchoïade here or artichauts à la barigoule (braised artichokes) there, but it is hard to find a restaurant that is fully devoted to the Provençal classics. Chez Madie les Galinettes is one of the few. From alouettes sans tête (beef roll ups in tomato sauce) to soupe de poisson, the menu reads like a Marseille mamie’s (grandmother’s) cookbook. You’ll feel like you’re dining in a local’s home, thanks to the familial warmth of its ebullient owner, Delphine Roux.

Over the last three months, as the Covid-19 pandemic forced us indoors, the members of my family have put on an average of two kilos. We spent lots of time cooking and talking about food, planning out the week’s menu well in advance. We prepared everything at home: bread, pizza, noodles, cakes and biscuits. My daughters even made sushi! In supermarkets, yeast was nowhere to be found, and we witnessed frenzied scenes whenever flour arrived. But there are some foods that just cannot be prepared at home, and these were the ones we craved.

We went looking for Rogério Sá at his usual spot – his restaurant, Rogério do Redondo – but we were told at the counter that he just went “down there” to get “something” and will be back in a minute. “Down there” is with the men who fish in the Douro River. “Something” turned out to be shad – two fine specimens of the fish, in fact. “It’s in season,” Rogério tells us when he arrives. We know that fresh fish is worth the wait. The phone rings as we’re talking to Rogério, and he picks up. It’s someone calling for reservations – a party of six, and they’d like to pre-order the classic dish of rooster cabidela (where the meat is cooked in its own blood). “Let me talk to the cook to see if there’s any available, and I’ll call you back,” he says.

Old Carnide feels like Lisbon’s land that time forgot. Just a 15-minute subway ride from the tourist bustle of downtown, tucked away behind a sprawling mega-mall and phalanxes of high-rise apartment blocks, it’s a neighborhood of cobbled lanes and pastel-painted 18th-century homes, where children play beside the cream-colored medieval church and graybeards argue soccer and politics under shady lime trees. Come lunchtime, however, and the sleepy, village-like calm is shattered. Cars honk for parking spaces, and packs of besuited business types, chatty troops of workmates, extended family groups and multiple couples suddenly emerge onto Carnide’s narrow streets with one thought in mind: food.

From the leaf-thin fried liver of Edirne to mumbar, the spicy rice-stuffed intestines of eastern Turkey, Turkish cuisine is rich with organ meat delicacies. Sakatat, as offal is called in Turkish, is approached with a fair bit of reverence (and sometimes caution). But even the most die-hard işkembe (tripe soup) lover might shy away from şırdan, a uniquely Adana specialty. In appearance, this dish is more than a little… well, phallic. Made of the abomasum, the section of the sheep’s stomach responsible for producing rennet, this organ meat is cleaned (thoroughly!) and stuffed with rice and spices before being slow cooked in a rich red broth.

Lunch at Casa Guedes is one of our favorite culinary rituals in Porto: After snagging a seat at the bar during the midday rush, we sit, mesmerized, as Mr. Cesar nimbly cuts slices of roasted pork shank, then places them on bread and moistens it all with his secret sauce. While not the only item on the menu, the famous sande de pernil (roast pork sandwich) is Casa Guedes’s raison d’être. After taking in Mr. Cesar’s entrancing sandwich-making choreography, we order the upgraded version of the sande, which is topped with gooey queijo Serra da Estrela, a creamy sheep’s milk cheese. Seating at this humble and low-cost eatery used to be minimal, and Casa Guedes’s popularity had long outstripped its capacity – fans could be found waiting patiently in queues stretching down the block.

Location, location, location is a familiar mantra of New York real estate; invariably it comes to bear on restaurants and other food businesses, too. When e-commerce giant Amazon decided not to build a second headquarters in Long Island City, many food vendors were disappointed, sometimes bitterly, at the loss of a possible 25,000 new customers. With an eye on the lunchtime rush just across the Hudson River, in Manhattan, they wondered, why not in Queens? By contrast, continual development in Flushing, albeit on a much smaller scale, continues to displace many small businesses. The food stalls in the lower level of the celebrated Golden Mall shuttered in late summer for a renovation that was planned to last several months; it seems nowhere near completion.

When ordering a café in Marseille, keep your eye out for sugar packets and espresso cups lined in yellow and white. These diagonal stripes are the sign of Café Luciani, a logo inspired by the red and white panels on truck tailgates. Yet while those stripes implore you to be careful and hang back, Luciani encourages the opposite – they want you to dive head first into your cup of coffee The father-and-son coffee company began in 1863 as the Phocéenne de Torréfaction (the Phocaean Coffee Roaster), named after the lineage of the sailor who founded Marseille. Pascal Escudier’s locally roasted coffee was reputed for its “exquisite aromas” in an era when the petit noir was more about consumption than the quality of its composition.

For those not in the know, the bright yellow table behind the shelves at Indo Java Groceries in Elmhurst, Queens, may seem like nothing more than a curious design choice. But what they don’t realize is that this table is a sign of something great – it means that one of three chefs is in the building. Hailing from different places on the long landmass of Java, the world’s most populous island, these women are cooking meals that remind New York City’s Indonesian community of the tastes they miss from back home. The origin of these popular days, when customers can purchase food cooked on the spot, happened almost by accident: Inspectors from the city health department wanted to see a working kitchen since the grocery store was selling prepared foods.

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.