Culinary Backstreets co-founder Ansel Mullins visited Osaka this past summer as part of a research trip for our newest food tours. Japan’s second-largest city is well known for its vibrant food scene, and delivers a powerful punch of personality, too. Here, Ansel shares some of his favorite food memories – from takoyaki to really excellent corn – and a bit of what we can expect from our new coverage in Osaka. In a fairly formal and reserved country, Osaka feels funky and laidback. That is reflected in the endless options for a quick delicious bite, but it’s the people, Osakans, who set the stage, and they are boisterous welcoming hosts. Belly up to a standing bar or settle into a tiny izakaya and you can expect to be engaged. For me, that always elevates the culinary experience to a higher level.

Tall flames and hot oil, stacked plates and searing pans, shouting and laughter: the kitchen of this trattoria may look chaotic, but it is a perfectly organized and harmonious chaos that well represents Palermo's vibrancy – the same energy that can be found in one of the old town markets or in city traffic. The same liveliness extends to the dining room, where a jovial and festive atmosphere is established among customers, waiters, and the restaurant’s owners. Waiters sweep in and out each time the cooks ring the bell, bringing traditional Palermo dishes to the tables.

On our culinary walk of Osaka, we taste our way through the historic merchant district of Kitahama to Kuromon Market to the lively entertainment area of Dotonbori. We stop at kombu (kelp) shops, miso producers, fishmongers, and street food stalls to dive into the flavors that define Osaka cuisine, with a particular focus on the savory fifth taste: umami. While Osaka is known as the "Kitchen of Japan," many outside the country are unaware of the colored history and diverse influences that have shaped its unique gastronomy. World War II destroyed much of Osaka, and the society changed significantly as well – but the spirit of the city remains intact in its markets, standing bars, and small independent restaurants.

After World War II, many Greek islanders left their homes and moved to Athens for work and a brighter future. Such was the case with Nikos and Irene Vasilas, who came to Athens from the island of Naxos during their late teenage years; Irene came from Apiranthos village and Nikos from Danakos, both mountain villages. Despite the fact they both came from the same island, the two of them met and got married in Athens, where Irene worked as a housekeeper and Nikos as a builder – or to be more precise, a “digger,” as they used to call those who specialized in digging into the hills for construction. In those post-war years, the neighborhood the couple lived in – which would eventually be named Polygono – was situated on the city’s hilly outskirts. It’s where Nikos built their home, which still stands right here.

The vast majority of the food in Bangkok is, without a doubt, Thai. But peek under the hood and you’ll find ingredients, cooking techniques, and dishes that can be traced back to places far beyond Thailand. Influences brought by Chinese immigrants – namely Hokkien, Hakka, and Teochew people – have done the most to shape food in Bangkok. Immigration from the Muslim world has also had a massive impact on the city’s cuisine. And even contact with Europeans has come to shape Thai food. The result of all this is the fascinating, delicious jumble of ingredients, cooking techniques, dishes, and influences that today we recognize as Thai food.

The streets of Mexico City, lined with vendors hawking everything form elotes to pan dulce, wind from leafy parks to old neighborhoods where music spills from crowded cantinas – here is a metropolis that sings a siren song to food lovers of every variety, making where to eat a hard question to answer simply. We’re talking more than just tacos. Comforting pozole, mole prepared every which way, the chocolate of legend, traditional cuisine abounds if you know where to look. The old, the bold, and the new collide, and local flavors mix with regional and international influences – as they have for centuries. You'll find cochinita pibil from Yucatán sharing the stage with Oaxacan tlayudas, and contemporary chefs adding an elegant spin to age-old recipes. Here, culinary traditions are both honored and reimagined.

On this full-day food tour in Osaka – Japan’s “umami town” – we’ll chase down the eats and flavors that make this city such a culinary capital.

I know it sounds like a cliché – New Orleans and gumbo – but no other dish so genuinely represents the food culture and the food love of this city. It’s a dish you’ll find on countless menus, from the most upscale to backstreet joints. You will also find it in most New Orleans homes. It’s the dish we make at Thanksgiving and at Christmas. It’s the dish we make when it gets cold and we need comfort food and the dish we make when we have company over and we want to give them a taste of New Orleans. So eating gumbo, a really good gumbo, at a restaurant is a very true New Orleans experience. As a visitor, you are doing exactly what locals do.

The last wood-fired coffee roaster in all of southern Italy is located, appropriately, in Bacoli. This area of Campi Flegrei, the Phlegraean fields of Naples (from the Greek word flègo, which means “burn”) is a part of the Gulf of Pozzuoli known since Roman times for its active volcanoes. It is here that Nicola Scamardella is carrying on his family’s tradition of roasting coffee with a wood-burning machine. Nicola is known in Bacoli as the son of Pasquale Scamardella, a man whose nickname was Pasquale della Torrefazione (“of the roastery”). In the 1960s, Pasquale and his wife Delia were working for a commercial coffee roaster in Naples.

In the United States, there is often a tendency to flatten cuisines to single dishes. For many years, in many parts of the country, Chinese food meant lo mein, and Thai cooking equaled just pad Thai. But in Little Thailand, Queens, diners have more and more opportunities to embrace this country’s regional culinary diversity. Hug Esan, run by a triumvirate of Esan women from Thailand’s northeast region (also spelled Isan), are on a quest to introduce New Yorkers to specialties from their home.

To properly introduce Bangkok, CB’s newest location, we turned to Austin Bush, who helped design our Bangkok culinary walk. An American photographer and writer (who frequently writes about Lisbon, his current home base), Austin previously lived in Bangkok for more than 20 years, from where he contributed to just about every major food and travel publication, as well as to more than 40 guidebooks for Lonely Planet. In 2018, he wrote and photographed the James Beard Award finalist, The Food of Northern Thailand. Its successor, The Food of Southern Thailand, was released in 2024. Here, Austin shares some of the ins and outs of dining in Bangkok, his visions for the new CB tour, and what makes the bustling Thai capital so great for exploring – and eating.

Today is Día de Reyes (Kings’ Day), also known as Epiphany, and in Catalonia, as in many places with Catholic traditions, we celebrate the Magis’ visit to the baby Jesus with a tortell de reis (roscón de reyes in Spanish), or kings’ cake. Made of brioche and shaped like a crown, the cake is filled with marzipan made from marcona almonds, wonderfully fragrant with orange-flower water and studded with jewel-like candied fruit – such as orange, cherries, melon or quince – as well as pine nuts and sugar. Most people purchase their tortell at a bakery and eat it for dessert at the end of their family lunch on Dia de Reis, as it’s called in Catalan. The Gremi de Pastisseria de Barcelona, a Catalan association of professional bakers, estimates that some 1 million tortells will be eaten in Catalonia this year.

When it comes to cultural identity, France carries the flag for universalism. This ideal aims to unite French citizens regardless of their ancestral roots, country of origin, or religion. You are French first, not a hyphen that encompasses multiple identities (i.e. Franco-Algerian.) In Marseille – a city which proudly differs from the rest of France – universalism isn’t universally practiced, since many Marseillais embrace their blend of cultural heritage. Franco-Congolese chef Hugues Mbenda does this skillfully at his delicious duo of restaurants, Kin and Libala. Both are housed in one location in the city center, a two-for-one-special born from a collaboration with Hugues’s partner, Mathilde Godart. By day, Libala serves up lip-smacking street food while Kin parades gastronomic plates at nightfall. Both mix Mediterranean and Congolese ingredients.

There’s one thing about the very popular Copacabana bar Pavão Azul that remains a mystery, even after 60-odd years of business: its name. Pavão azul means “blue peacock” in Portuguese, but even the owners don’t know where this curious name come from. Some customers who have been frequenting the bar since it opened in the 1950s say that it was named after the bar in the movie “Casablanca” – except that that place was actually called the Blue Parrot. What’s not a mystery is the bar’s popularity. Once just a regular old botequim – a small bar serving simple food – Pavão Azul was discovered by food critics thanks to its patanisca.

If you go to Rio’s Café Lamas to see where leftist organizers met during Brazil’s military dictatorship, go to Majórica to eat steak where the city’s business and political elites gather today. Located on a residential street in Rio’s Flamengo neighborhood, the restaurant from the outside looks like a three-story house, but for the neon red cursive sign with its name. It was founded in 1963 by two brothers from the Spanish island of Majorca. When we last interviewed the owners in 2015, it was being run by the daughter of one brother, together with (then) 79-year-old Galician-born Ernesto Rodriguez, who worked his way up from being the restaurant’s janitor back in 1965.