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.

Since we’re a company built around the idea that, when traveling, the stomach serves as the best compass, it’s no surprise that we believe that culinary experiences are the best kind of gift. And while we would be very happy to see you and your loved ones on one of our culinary walks or trips (you can purchase gift certificates here) we also want to use our annual gift guide to showcase some of our favorite products and treasures across our cities. From serious kitchen tools to adorably frivolous snacks and knick knacks, our correspondents, guides and editors have recommended a range of items that they eat, use or just love – often made by people they know.

In Sanayi Mahallesi – an Istanbul neighborhood where the streets are lined with hundreds of mechanic workshops and auto supply stores – most people are looking for spare car parts or a place to get their Fiat fixed. We, on the other hand, came here in search of döner. More specifically, we ventured to this area to eat at Ata Lokantası, a fantastic esnaf lokantası (tradesman's restaurant) that has been open since the late 1980s, and serves a rotating menu of comforting, homestyle dishes popular with workers in the area and white-collar office employees from the looming skyscrapers nearby. The menu features döner only on Fridays, and we heard it was excellent.

One of the staples of Mexican cuisine (and of bar menus everywhere), the quesadilla can be found on almost every street corner and in every neighborhood market in Mexico City. Those served at Mercado San Cosme in Colonia San Rafael, however, redefine the quesadilla. Indeed, while this neighborhood market is far from being the city’s largest or most famous, it’s worth visiting just for a chance to eat at Quekas, an eatery housed in the market that makes some of the best quesadillas we’ve had in the city.

New York City’s most international borough certainly delivers when it comes to baked goods. Queens is home to some of the city’s best bakeries with influences and recipes from around the world, making it a prime destination for anyone with a serious sweet tooth. From baklava to Black Forest Cake, Filipino tortas to freshly baked bread, you’ll be spoiled for choice. Here, our local experts have handpicked the best pastries, breads, and goodies in Queens to bookmark for your next trip.

Tokyo is a fast-paced city with many opportunities for work but also a plethora of places to destress and find comfort. In the heart of Kayabacho, a business district in central Tokyo, sits Latino, a prime destination for some of the best comfort food the city has to offer. On the surface, the name can be a bit misleading: the restaurant does have great Mexican food, a rarity in the city, but it also has a myriad of fantastic fusion curries. To get there, we walk past the office buildings and up a quieter street to a strip of restaurants serving everything from Thai to Korean. We hunt for the restaurant’s unassuming green awning and go in.

At the bottom of a quiet street in Colonia Reforma, a neighborhood located in the northern-central area of Oaxaca City which hides many of the city’s best-kept food secrets, we find Garnachas La Güera. While the area is characterized by its quiet, residential streets, this restaurant is a small paradise where joy, music and good food transport you to the tropics. Garnachas La Güera specializes in food from Juchitán, a village in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, close to Oaxaca’s southeastern coast and the border with the neighboring state of Chiapas. If Oaxaca is a state, Juchitán is like its own country within it.

Situated near a school, Tbilisi’s London Park brims with life, with children and teenagers enjoying the playground or relaxing on benches around a modest fountain. Although close to some of the city's busiest tourist streets, the park is flanked by unrenovated buildings and lacks a proper lawn. In a way, it has maintained the old atmosphere of Tbilisi: raw, unpretentious, yet joyful. Next to the fountain stands a small, glass-walled commercial space, often unnoticed by passersby who might not guess its purpose at first glance. This spot has had several incarnations – most recently as an Asian fusion food stall, before that as a shwarma booth, and originally as a café called London Bar. Now, the word “Rosa” is inscribed in both Georgian and Latin letters on its walls.

Along Via Vittorio Emanuele, one of the two thoroughfares that, together with Via Maqueda, bisects Palermo's old center to form its four historic districts, a small sign for a trattoria stands out on the corner of a building. La Casa del Brodo dal Dottore has been open here since 1890, making it the oldest eatery in Palermo and one of the longest-lived in southern Italy. La Casa del Brodo Dal Dottore translates literally to “The House of Broth From the Doctor,” because the specialty of the house is precisely meat broth and related boiled meat. For the first hundred years of operation, the establishment served nothing but broth: in the kitchen of the modest two-room eatery, cooks stirred broth in large pots atop cast-iron wood burning stoves. Customers would sit at a small table where they were served broth, boiled meat, tortellini or pasta in broth.

We’re in Os Papagaios, the restaurant Joaquim Saragga oversees in Lisbon’s Arroios neighborhood, where we’ve asked him to show us how to make one of Lisbon’s more iconic dishes: ervilhas guisadas, peas braised with Portuguese sausages, typically crowned with poached eggs. Come spring, Portugal revels in green-hued produce: fava beans, asparagus, artichoke, spinach and other leaves. Peas feature in this bounty, but the ubiquity of frozen peas means that the dish makes frequent appearances on tasca and restaurant menus during all times of year.

Özlem Warren is a native of Antakya, Türkiye and author of the award-winning cookbook, Özlem’s Turkish Table, Recipes from My Homeland. She is passionate about her homeland’s delicious and vibrant cuisine and has been teaching Turkish cookery at Milk Street, the Istanbul Culinary Institute and other institutions. She champions the cuisine of Türkiye in publishing and at food festivals worldwide, and you can find her recipes on her personal blog, Özlem’s Turkish Table.

The quick trip to France for indulgences not found in Spain is something of a tradition among the Catalan people. During the Francoist regime, many people used to drive to France to skip the dictator’s censorship and wait in long lines in the Perpignan cinemas to see classics of erotic cinema of the time – like The Last Tango in Paris – or to get books and magazines forbidden in Spain. Nowadays, you’d still be hard-pressed to find a Catalan who travels to southern France for the weekend and returns empty-handed, though now they’re like to bring back wine, an artisan pâté, or one of hundreds of wonderful French cheeses.

It’s a weekend afternoon in the packed Tashkent Supermarket in Forest Hills, Queens and amid the din three teenage cashiers speak wistfully about hometowns in Uzbekistan. They also tell us of the need to speak Uzbek, Tajik, Russian, and English to help customers navigate the cavern of delights on offer. In case the polyglot teens working here don’t make clear the diversity on offer, television screens hanging above the aisles do, flashing photos of specials including samsa, Central Asian savory pastries, and branzino filets – a favorite of several Mediterranean cuisines. An express lane exists “only for shawarma and plov.”

From the outside, La Tonina – a humble taquería in the San Rafael neighborhood that’s been in business for some 80 years – gives nothing away. It’s not until you step inside and the scent of fresh flour tortillas hits that you suddenly find yourself transported out of Mexico City and up to northern Mexico. La Tonina was founded in 1946 by Héctor Garza, a professional wrestler known by his lucha libre ring name Tonina Jackson (more on that later). Héctor was from the northeastern city of Monterrey – where wheat and flour tortillas are essential to the local cuisine – which is the reason why in his restaurant, corn never stood a chance.

Looking at the menu at Small Mart Cafe, it can be hard to make sense of the variety. First there are the bagels, led by the “New Yorker,” filled with smoked salmon, tomato, onion, capers, and cream cheese. Soon, you’ll come to the curry and chaat bowls, leaning into the flavors of India and Pakistan and including sides like samosas and crispy pakoras. Near the bottom of the menu, you’ll find po’boys – this is New Orleans, after all. The local sandwiches traditionally are filled with proteins like fried shrimp, oysters, or roast beef. At Small Mart, however, tradition isn’t much of a constraint.