The award for “Europe's Best Emerging Culinary City Destination," granted to Porto by the World Culinary Awards this year, could not have come at a better time. The city is truly "emerging" as a gastronomic hotspot, with an increasingly diverse array of restaurants and concepts opening their doors in response to growing tourism and a steady influx of new residents. Porto has never felt more dynamic. The latest wave of local projects further underscores this evolution. Chefs, baristas, sommeliers, and other culinary professionals from various nationalities have chosen Portugal's second-largest city to lay down roots, enriching its food scene and adding new dimensions to a city that still has much more to reveal.

It has been another great year of dining in Los Angeles, with new restaurants to explore and old favorites to revisit. The L.A. food scene is going as strong as ever and we’ve had a lot of outstanding meals this year. It’s always a difficult task to narrow down the best bites of the year, but looking back at the past year, these are the dishes that left a strong impression and live rent free in my head. Los Angeles has a dearth of Portuguese restaurants, but that changed with the opening of Barra Santos, a tiny restaurant in the Cypress Park neighborhood. I would happily return to Barra Santos for one thing on the menu: bifana, the classic Portuguese pork sandwich.

It’s that time of year: when we share our Spotify Wrapped, post our favorite memories of the year on Instagram and, of course, reminisce about the incredible things we ate and drank over the past 12 months. Living (and eating) in Mexico City means there’s plenty to be grateful for – from revitalizing seafood cocktails to fluffy pancakes to, of course, fabulous tacos. Join us as we remember our Best Bites of 2024. It’s that time of year: when we share our Spotify Wrapped, post our favorite memories of the year on Instagram and, of course, reminisce about the incredible things we ate and drank over the past 12 months. Living (and eating) in Mexico City means there’s plenty to be grateful for – from revitalizing seafood cocktails to fluffy pancakes to, of course, fabulous tacos. Join us as we remember our Best Bites of 2024.

This past year has been an exciting one in San Sebastián. The emergence of new projects, driven by young talented people – some bringing ideas and flavours from abroad – makes even more thrilling the adventure of dining out in a city celebrated for its deep-rooted traditions and extraordinary gastronomy. While enjoying some of the iconic local dishes remains a must, it’s also a nice time to delve into what it's being offered by this new wave of talent, whether you’re up for some pintxo hopping or are looking to enjoy a nice time with friends or family at some of the city’s finest tables.

Living in Tokyo, there is no end to high-quality eateries, and we certainly endeavor to find the best of the best. Those that rise above the others are collected like gold dust. Whether it’s a quick bite on the go or a fancy sit-down meal, there is always something to entice us to the different suburbs of the city. Amidst the colossal amount of choice – which some might feel is overwhelming – here is a handy list of some of our faves from the past year. Latino is a new find for me, but it is an old haunt of my fiancée’s that she frequented when she worked in an office nearby.

In the grab-and-go section of Katsu Sando’s second L.A. location hangs a T-shirt that reads: “Krispy and thicc sandos bruh.” That’s not a typo. The extra “c” in “thicc” refers not only to the audibly loud crunch you get from the casual Japanese restaurant’s panko-crusted pork and chicken cutlets, but to the generous fillings and fat slices of honey-milk bread that make up its eponymous dish, the katsu sando. Katsu is a fried cutlet, an iconic element of Japanese cooking. But sando is not just a shorter way to say sandwich. It is the translation of a Japanese interpretation of a “Western-inspired sandwich” – a fitting star dish for this L.A. spot. The bread itself (shokupan), made with milk and honey, is meant to be an elevated version of fluffy American sandwich loaves like Wonder Bread.

Anyone who takes more than a fleeting interest in Georgia’s traditional cuisine beyond the inescapable khachapuri and khinkali will probably agree that walnuts are the real gastronomic workhorse of Georgian cuisine. This versatile ingredient is deftly woven into a range of delightful dishes from soups and salads to rich, creamy stews, of which the Megrelian kharcho is one of our favorites. A slow-cooked dish of beef or veal simmered in creamy walnut sauce tempered with fried onions, garlic, and a generous amount of spices including coriander, a local variety of blue fenugreek (Trigonella caerulea) and marigold flowers (often called “the poor man’s saffron”), Megrelian kharcho is a heavy, hearty dish. It’s usually served with corn grits, locally called ghomi, or the cheese-saturated version called elargi – a combination that often calls for loosening the belt after indulging.

Jibro fry, slices of tender and subtly seasoned goat tongue, was the dish that took our first meal at Newa Chhe to the top. Will we have the opportunity to taste it again? We began fortifying ourselves with the hearty food at this Nepalese restaurant (pronounced Knee-wah Chay) not long after it opened, in December 2023, in Sunnyside. The restaurant is a partnership between Radip (rah-Deep) Shrestha and three of his longtime friends: Bijay Khayargoli, Kunchok Sherpa and Pashupati Shrestha (no relation to Radip).

Each Mexico City market is a universe unto itself – a bustling hub of neighborhood activity and a feast for the senses that borders on the overwhelming. From food stalls serving up just about any dish from around the Republic to entire city blocks of plants and cut flowers to fresh produce and meat, the many local markets are a can’t-miss stop on every visit to the Mexican capital. Each one has its own specialties, its own rhythm and its own tricks of the trade. Our local guides have broken down a few of their favorite markets and here we dive into what makes each one unique. A mecca for the capital’s culinary explorers, San Juan Pugibet is likely the only market on the planet where you can pick up tofu (at Productos Orientales), ostrich meat (at Los Coyotes), and chicatana salsa (at Productos Oaxaqueños, made from Oaxacan flying ants!) on any given day.

Biting into a freshly-made globe of mozzarella, porcelain smoothness yields to a creamy interior and milk trickles down the cheeks. For any Neapolitan, this is true pleasure. And everyone knows the best spot for such an afternoon delight is at a cheese factory in the countryside – namely in the Caserta and Salerno provinces. There, some of the best Mozzarella di Bufala Campana DOP is shaped daily from fresh buffalo milk. For those of us stuck in the city center and craving that addictive bite of fresh mozzarella, one of Sogni di Latte’s two locations is our first stop.

At the edge of Los Angeles’s modern downtown stands a link to the city’s Spanish colonial past. El Pueblo de Los Ángeles was one of the earliest settled areas in what is now L.A. County, and today is home to such attractions as the last standing adobe house, the city’s first firehouse, and, most importantly, one of the oldest family-run restaurants in California, El Rancho Grande. Poised to celebrate 95 years of operation on the area’s historic Olvera Street, this family has grown with the city, preserving and sharing traditional foods since just before this area was designated as a Mexican-style tourist marketplace in 1930.

Casamento’s does not accept reservations, credit cards, or checks. Simply walk under the restaurant’s green neon sign and through the white door and you instantly know you’ve entered a special place, somewhere between Italy and Louisiana; the interior a cross between a shotgun house and the bottom of a public pool. The narrow series of rooms, lined from floor to ceiling in imported tiles, leads in a straight line from the front door to the bathroom in the back of the kitchen. The seafood joint makes for a physical, communal experience, an offer of what was and what remains in New Orleans. Don’t worry, you are in good hands.

Long before Neapolitans fell in love with dried pasta – a luxury food mainly reserved for the nobles until the late 1800s and only later a popular, filling meal – and earning their reputation as mangiamaccheroni (pasta eaters), they were called mangiafoglie – literally, “leaf eaters.” The moniker referred to the habit of consuming significant quantities of the vegetables that grow in the thriving farms at the foot of Vesuvius or in the countryside areas encircling the city center. Common folk cleverly found simple yet effective ways to amplify the vegetables’ flavor, often frying them or accompanying them with tomatoes, herbs, and other ingredients, while precious products such as raisins and pine nuts were – again – the prerogative of the noble class.

Prior to the popularity of French bouillon restaurants in Paris in the mid 1800s, (restaurants that served a simple piece of meat in a soup stock for a good price) there was the French traiteur. A precursor to the restaurant as we know it, a traiteur (the word can roughly be translated as “caterer”) offers prepared meals to go. During the 18th century, many city dwellers did not have kitchens in their homes, so the traiteur was paramount to everyday life in French culture. Today, there are over 10,000 traiteurs serving the French population. The traiteur, then, is French takeout, but immeasurably better. Typically, there is no seating on the premises of a traiteur, but occasionally there may be a few tables. The window displays showcasing the various dishes are a source of pride for the owner or chef and serve to lure passersby at lunch time.

Jokes and laughter can be heard from among the olive trees in a field on the coast of Arsuz, a village in the southern Turkish province of Hatay. Here, two dozen women are hard at work on the hilly land, with a view of the Mediterranean Sea on one side and the Amanos Mountains on the other. Seven days a week, from early morning to midday, the workers comb through the trees one by one, gathering the olives and depositing them on plastic tarps spread on the ground.