Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节, zhōngqiūjié) lands on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, relatively near the autumnal equinox; in 2017, it falls on October 4 and coincides with the National Day holiday. Also sometimes called Mooncake Festival, it’s a public holiday in China and Taiwan on which families gather to give offerings to the full moon, float sky lanterns and eat mooncakes (月饼, yuèbing). A culinary tradition with legendary roots, mooncakes are sold everywhere from grocery stores to five-star hotels and come with competing origin stories that relate how these sweets came to represent the holiday.

Bar chats are on fire these days in Barcelona. As the controversial Catalan independence referendum draws closer, it’s not uncommon to witness spontaneous private discussions or overhear customers express passionate or indignant comments while reading the newspaper or watching the news on the bar’s TV. There is tension in the air, and bars, perennially popular agoras for debate, have become even livelier places. Many Catalans, whether pro-independence or not, will find themselves voting under difficult conditions on Sunday, October 1, in the controversial referendum organized by the Catalan government.

In the past five years, Mexico City has flourished as an international tourist destination, and the Roma and Condesa neighborhoods are the city’s crown jewels for travelers. A typical weekend in bohemian Roma or posh Condesa might include a late lunch of tuna tostadas at Contramar, followed by a drink at Cervecería del Barrio, a bar and restaurant overlooking the scenic Plaza Cibeles. Nightclubs and bars abound, as well as tacos to chow down at 3 a.m. when bars close. But the earthquake on September 19 put the brakes on the renaissance of Roma and Condesa. At least five buildings in the area collapsed in the 7.1 magnitude quake, and dozens more suffered damage so severe that residents were evacuated.

Ilioupoli may be an unassuming residential suburb southeast of Athens, but this neighborhood, whose name means “Sun City,” has at least one shining culinary star: Mikres Kyklades (Small Cyclades). Opened by Antonis Kovaios in 2005, the seafood restaurant is named after the most remote group of islands in the Cyclades, which includes such heavyweights as Santorini and Mykonos. Clustered south of Naxos, the Small Cyclades are what you imagine islands in Greece to be – clean blue sea, natural beauty and an abundance of fresh fish and seafood ¬– minus the crowds.

For decades, Abílio Coelho has served shots of ginja, our favorite cherry liqueur and a Lisbon staple. Our Culinary Crossroads walk in the city isn't complete without it. 

Turkey’s charming southern city of Antakya lies equidistant to the Mediterranean coast and the Syrian border, in the province of Hatay. The area is famed for its unique, spice-laden cuisine, though it is perhaps overshadowed by that of its neighbors to the east and west: Adana and Gaziantep, respectively. The former is practically synonymous with kebab while the latter is famous for, well, everything, and is often touted as Turkey’s undisputed food capital. But a recent two-day trip to Antakya made it imminently clear that its cuisine deserves just as much praise as Adana’s glorious grilled skewers and Gaziantep’s divine baklava. The integrity and autonomy of its rich cuisine comes as no surprise to anyone acquainted with this special city.

Next to some wooden shelves overloaded with spirits, a photograph of Natália Correia hangs on the wall. The photo’s placement makes it appear as if Correia, cigarette in hand, is surveying the small room, which is crowded with semi-broken tables. The late poet and upstart co-founded this tiny bar/café a few decades ago, and her presence is still felt here and in the neighborhood more generally: A nearby street, with a spectacular view of the city, is also named after her. Botequím is one of Graça’s oldest bars, located on the ground floor of Vila Sousa, one of the worker apartment complexes built at the end of the 19th century.

Our Bazaar walk wouldn't be complete without a stop or two at one of Istanbul's countless classic tea kiosks!

Some of the most successful street vendors in Southeast Asia have made their name from a single dish. The same is true in Queens – just ask anyone who has walked along Roosevelt Avenue late on a summer evening in search of the “Arepa Lady.” Surprisingly, it’s also true inside Bricktown Bagels, in Long Island City. By day the shop churns out bagels for morning commuters – from the subway station just up the street, it’s one stop to Manhattan – plus soups, salads, sandwiches and wraps. But when the ovens cool down in late afternoon, Bricktown becomes the base of operations for Khao Man Gai NY, where the chef Emorn Henshaw and her husband Eric serve the namesake Thai chicken-and-rice combo (pronounced Cow mon Guy).

In 2005, the city of Tbilisi bulldozed a riverside row of some the best restaurants in the capital to make way for a lackluster park and a gondola to take tourists to the ancient ruins of the Narikala Fortress, which overlooks the Old Town. City Hall justified this act of gastronomic destruction by stating the property had been illegally privatized under the previous administration, but everyone knew it was a land grab. And among the many restaurants it razed was Megrelebi Manoni, the best Megrelian restaurant in Tbilisi. Of all the regions that make up “Georgian cooking,” the western province of Samegrelo is the most distinctive.

Where the British have a Sunday roast, Cariocas spend their Sunday afternoons at churrascos, Brazilian barbecues. Starting in the mid-afternoon, Rio’s residents typically gather in squares and street corners throughout the city and load spindly grills with slabs of meat. As the evening draws on, skewers and sausages are washed down with copious amounts of beer, and people shake their hips furiously as sizeable loudspeakers blare out samba and Brazilian pop classics. It’s a long-established recipe for a good time. Churrascos of this sort are most commonly held in the working-class suburbs. But what’s a resident of Rio’s new, more genteel, middle-class neighborhoods to do on a Sunday? The answer is being provided by Praticità Carnes, a churrascaria with the suburbanite in mind.

The best pizza in Naples is a family affair, but perhaps not in the way you may think. Gino Sorbillo, the man behind the eponymous Pizzeria Gino Sorbillo, belongs to one of the oldest pizza-making families in Naples. In 1935, his grandparents Luigi Sorbillo and Carolina Esposito opened a tiny pizza shop with only four marble tables on Via dei Tribunali, the epicenter of Neapolitan pizza production. While this history is certainly interesting, the way that Sorbillo broadcasts it is what we delight in. Take, for instance, our favorite pizza, the Raimondo. Who is Raimondo? He’s one of Gino’s uncles; twenty-one out of the 23 pizzas served at Sorbillo’s are named after his father and his father’s 20 siblings (all were pizza-makers).

Tbilisi's main bazaar offers a vast array of goods, including a wide variety of the choicest pork cuts. We didn't say it was for the faint of heart! 

Although it’s the oldest wine region in Portugal, Dão in central Portugal does not have the high profile of its neighbor to the north, the Douro Valley. And yet, Dão is the birthplace of the touriga nacional, one of the finest grapes in Portugal, a country with more than 300 different grape varieties. Considering this claim to fame, we thought the overlooked Dão region deserved a second glance. If we had any doubts about making the trek out to Dão, they were put to bed by André Ribeirinho. A Portuguese writer and wine judge, Ribeirinho knows the best small-scale Portuguese wine producers and champions them on his website Adegga, a platform he founded to review wines and host wine markets.

In the world of wagyu (marbled Japanese beef), Kobe beef is king. However, the demand for this fabled fatty meat has so far outstripped the supply as to send prices forever skyward. Yet lesser known varieties can be every bit as good as, if not superior to, the more celebrated Kobe cuts. As with Kobe beef, the Yamagata variety is named after a place, in this case the mostly mountainous prefecture of Yamagata, which abuts the Sea of Japan in the country’s northeastern Tohoku region. But in order to be certified as Yamagata beef, simply being raised in the prefecture isn’t enough. True Yamagata beef can only come from castrated males of the Kuroge Washu (Japanese Black) breed of cattle raised within the prefecture.