As night falls, the commercial life in Guadalajara’s popular neighborhoods doesn’t fade – it transforms. Everywhere you look, food stalls pop up, offering tacos, tamales, elotes, churros, and other tasty street treats, all glowing under hanging lights. These spots become local hangouts where people can grab a delicious bite before heading home. Cenadurías – literally “dinner places” – were among the first popular ways to serve meals outside the home. They have existed since the 19th century in streets, garages, and small eateries in traditional neighborhoods like Mexicaltzingo, Santa Teresita, Mezquitán Country, and Analco. These venues serve comforting dishes and mainly cater to workers and merchants finishing their day, providing a last chance to eat without complications before calling it a night. They also become go-to spots for families seeking simple, homestyle meals at affordable prices.

Stepping into Tetetlán feels like discovering a treasure that few others know about. Perhaps it's the sturdy stone wall facing the street, or the fact that the space is nestled among the imposing volcanic rocks that define this part of Mexico City, aptly called Jardines del Pedregal (Pedregal translates as “stony ground”). Or maybe it’s because there’s so much to explore inside: a restaurant, an art gallery, a boutique, a library, and a mindfulness center all coexist between the stones. And of course, there’s its famous next-door neighbor: Casa Pedregal, a stunning house designed by iconic Mexican architect Luis Barragán. Despite the many things going on in Tetetlán, the restaurant maintains a calm, inviting atmosphere. The walls are lined with artwork, and shelves filled with books infuse the air with creativity and inspiration – an energy that translates to the kitchen, too.

Right where the Urumea river meets the Cantabrian sea, the striking Kursaal Congress Centre, designed by Spanish architect Rafael Moneo in the late 1990s, faces the Bay of Biscay. It is here, at the end of the Zurreola Bridge, that Muka welcomes the curious and the hungry. Carrots served with spinach and almonds, artichokes marinated in olive escabeche, or beetroots prepared with curd and citrus are enough for chef Juan Vargas to steal some smiles at Muka, where he is determined to pave the way for vegetables in a city with a penchant for meats.

The numbers don’t lie: the Portuguese drink the most wine per capita of any nationality. Not surprisingly, you don’t have to look far to find the drink in Lisbon, a city where a glass of wine is sometimes cheaper than a bottle of water. But if you’re looking for a unique wine – perhaps something made by a small producer, a long-lost grape, or a bottle from an obscure region – in a comfortable or perhaps even stylish atmosphere, poured by someone who can tell you a bit about what you’re drinking, things get a little more complicated.

There are flowers all around us. Seeds and plants are scattered here and there. Herbs and fresh fruits rest in wicker and reed baskets. Sitting amongst all this glory is Stefania Salvetti, who is telling us about Paradisiello, where she lives. Meaning “Little Paradise” in Italian, Paradisiello is where Stefania has a home with 2,000 square meters of greenery, citrus trees and even chickens. The big surprise? What sounds like a glorious village outside of Naples is actually a quarter within the city, very close to the historic center. Il Paradisiello is a small, romantic, peaceful place just a few meters from the noisy city. A site where time seems to stand still, the air somehow more rarefied.

The interior walls of Kitchen Bon are painted a fiery orange. The restaurant is set back, inlaid like a jewel into Kostava, one of Tbilisi’s main avenues, and when open it glows invitingly amid the concrete – easy to miss, if you’re not looking. Chi, the owner, and her sous chef Kana gracefully navigate the small square open kitchen, lined on two sides by stools and countertops, deep-frying tempura, spooning rice, folding nori, pouring beer from a tap. An ever-present Stolichnaya vodka bottle stands beside the rice cooker, beading in the heat. Chi is sarcastic, warm, quick-tempered, funny. Her regular customers address her in tones of mingled fear and admiration; she’s one of those people you reflexively want to impress.

Inside Sei-Ko-En, a small strip mall restaurant on Sepulveda Boulevard in Torrance, smoke rises from the small grills. Japanese and English conversations can be heard over the sizzle of meat cooking. Just like at yakiniku joints around Japan, customers at Sei-Ko-En grill their own meat, which is accompanied by plates of kimchi and steaming bowls of yukgaejang (a spicy Korean soup with shredded beef). Yakiniku has its roots in Korean barbecue and this style of grilling meat was introduced to Japan by Korean immigrants, so it’s very common to see traditional Korean dishes served at yakiniku restaurants as well.

Editor’s note: In the latest installment of our recurring First Stop feature, we asked chef and author Brendan Liew about some of his favorite spots to eat in Tokyo. A chef by training, Brendan Liew has worked at restaurants including three-Michelin-starred Nihonryori Ryugin in Tokyo and Hong Kong and Sushi Minamishima in Melbourne. He’s currently at Warabi, a Japanese kappo omakase in Melbourne. He has also authored three books on Japanese cuisine: A Day In Tokyo, Tokyo Up Late and Konbini. You can follow Brendan on Instagram here.

In France’s oldest and perhaps most rebellious city, the food culture is a direct reflection of its character: fiercely independent, unburdened by the strict codes of Parisian gastronomy, and deeply shaped by its ancient identity as a bustling port. For millennia, ingredients, people, and traditions have washed ashore here, creating a culinary DNA that is not French, but Marseillais – a vibrant mix of Provençal terroir, Italian soul, and North African spice. This is not a city that asks for permission. It cooks what it knows, with what it has, for the people who call it home. Navigating this landscape requires moving beyond the idea of a simple "best of" list. For us at Culinary Backstreets, an "essential" Marseille restaurant is one that tells a crucial part of the city's story. It might be a family-run pizzeria that has become a neighborhood institution, a humble snack shack preserving a street-food tradition, or a modern kitchen where a chef’s dual heritage is expressed on the plate. The following collection is a guide to these vital places, curated from years of on-the-ground reporting. These are the spots that, to us, capture the true, eclectic, and deeply satisfying spirit of Marseille.

Moroccan cuisine, at least items like couscous and harissa, can today be found in nearly any supermarket. But New York, with all its culinary diversity, has never had a real Moroccan restaurant scene. The recently launched Moroccan Bites by Siham goes a long way toward filling that void. “[When I moved to New York] I would have loved to have a restaurant that I could be proud of and tell people about, but sadly, there was not,” says Rabat-born Redouan Lazrek, the restaurant’s co-owner and husband of Siham Bourhane, the chef.

At first glance, there’s not much to see in Mealhada, a town in Portugal’s central inland Bairrada region about an hour’s drive south of Porto. If there is a main feature here, it’s probably the EN1, the country’s original north-south highway, which slices the town in half, providing a conduit for a seemingly never-ending parade of large, noisy trucks. Yet the town’s roadside signs reveal something else: “Rei dos Leitões,” “Pedro dos Leitões,” “Virgílio dos Leitões,” “Meta dos Leitões,” “Hilário Leitão.” Mealhada is ground zero in Portugal for leitão, roast suckling pig.

In Seoul, permanence is elusive. The city reinvents itself with a restless energy that makes each visit feel like a first encounter. Viral trends come and go. Culinary hotspots emerge and vanish. Even longtime residents find themselves pausing at street corners, momentarily disoriented by how completely their familiar haunts have transformed in a short span of months. Seoul's thirst for the next big thing is evident in neighborhoods like Seongsu-dong, often seen as a global epicenter for pop-ups, where new fashion and design concepts emerge year-round. Seoul’s food scene mirrors this constant evolution. Trends flash by, like tanghulu – glazed fruit on a stick that seemed to pop up everywhere overnight – or espresso bars, which briefly captured the city’s coffee obsession before fading from view.

Editor’s note: Carolina Doriti, our Athens bureau chief, was born in the Greek capital, where she grew up in a family with a long culinary tradition. Having studied arts management, she pursued a career as a curator but quickly set her museum work aside to follow her true passion: cooking! Since then, along with her work with CB as both a writer and tour leader, Carolina has been working as a chef, restaurant consultant and food stylist. She is also the Culinary Producer of My Greek Table, a TV series on Greek gastronomy, broadcast on PBS across the US. She has appeared on various cooking shows on Greek and Spanish TV and gives cooking classes and workshops in Athens. The Greek Islands Cookbook is her second cookbook.

When Mezme, an excellent meze deli and meyhane tucked away on a tiny backstreet in the corner of Istanbul’s multicultural Kurtuluş neighborhood, first opened in 2020, it quickly became one of our go-to spots. Our hearts sank when the restaurant closed in early 2024, but we were delighted to find it recently reopened and charmingly renovated, with the friendly owner, chef, and lifelong Kurtuluş resident Sasun Estukyan back in his place helming the kitchen. Prior to opening Mezme, Sasun worked for five years as a cook at a retirement home in Harbiye, a nearby neighborhood. But he says he felt a call to start making the mezes that he grew up eating and helping prepare, staples of his aunt and mother's kitchens. These dishes blend classic Istanbul cuisine with that of the southern province of Hatay, from which his mother's side of the family hails.

When Tbilisi wine enthusiast Irakli Chkhaidze first pitched his unconventional business idea over a decade ago – a wine store where customers could drink bottles at retail price rather than marked-up bar prices – his entrepreneurial friends dismissed it as unworkable. After all, most wine bars derived their profits from significant markups on alcoholic beverages. Moreover, at the time, many locals showed greater interest in foreign wines than local varieties, having easy access to family-made Georgian wines. Yet the former economist remained adamant. “I had no money, but I realized I had to do it myself,” says the now-42-year-old. Describing himself as “familiar with figures but hating figures,” he abandoned his managerial position at one of Georgia's largest pharmaceutical companies to pursue an MBA in Food and Wine in Bologna, Italy.