Rue Fontange is a narrow street with small, inspired businesses that seem to complement one another. The vitrine of Vinyl is lavishly covered in white-marker script, through which we can still see wine, records, and meals by Oumalala (now serving here); across the street is Gallery Charivari, which when we visited was featuring Syrian artist Khaled Dawwa’s astonishing sculptures from his Compressés series, different takes on a heavy man slouching into a chair; further along lies the fine book selection of Histoire de l’oeil, with its garden and cabanon out back, a small red shed we can also see if we walk straight through Caterine restaurant next door to its dining patio, which feels like a continuum of the same garden.

Let’s face it, it’s hard to find a calm spot in Palermo’s city center. Some evenings, one simply wants to exchange the honking of cars for the uncorking of wine bottles, hidden away from the splendid excess the city has to offer. Such an escape exists at Bottega Monteleone, located on a small, quaint pedestrian walkway, which bears the same name as the wine bar. In this tiny bottega, you’ll be treated to an abundance of wines and Sicilian specialties, as well as the hospitality of the bar’s owners, Katharina and Angelo. The Bottega pays homage to the different geographical origins of the owners. Its appearance is unmistakably Palermitan but its history is reminiscent of an old factory (in this case actually a garage) turned into a chic bar – typical of the former East Germany, where Katharina grew up and studied.

Los Angeles winter is typically mild, sunny and dry (notwithstanding this past winter), so here it isn’t the warmer weather we await for every spring. Still, for a multitude of reasons, spring is a season many Angelenos celebrate. For me, spring signals the arrival of wildflowers and the beginning of spot prawn season, two uniquely Californian events that I anticipate each year. As California’s official state flower, the poppy flowers in Antelope Valley are the most popular wildflowers, but the poppy reserve tends to be way too crowded – especially on superbloom years. I like to head to Malibu instead for my wildflowers. The drive north along the ocean on Pacific Coast Highway is one of the most beautiful in L.A. – we could even already see some wildflowers along the way.

Spring in Naples is the sweetest season. As in many Italian and Mediterranean cities, the sunlight is gentle and temperatures are mild, which makes walking the ups and downs of the hilly city more enjoyable. And, should the blue of the sky be shaded by the clouds, the white-and-blue celebratory flags which anticipate the long-awaited local soccer team’s victory at the national soccer championship – defeating the Neapolitans’ famous superstition – restore the appropriate shade at every corner of the city. If it’s still too early – for most of people, at least – to take a swim in the gulf or cruise it on a kayak, this is the perfect time to explore Naples on foot, discovering its unexpected green soul.

In the song that became almost an anthem of Porto, the famous songwriter Rui Veloso describes the city where he was born in phrases like “of this beautiful and darkening light” and “seeing you abandoned like that in that brownish timbre.” Certainly, Veloso, one of the best-known artists in Portuguese music, wasn’t thinking about Porto during the springtime. Portugal’s second city is completely transformed when the season of flowers arrives: the weather and the mood gets sunny, lively, and colorful, an invitation for locals and tourists to go outdoors. Flowers bloom in parks, and tables in cafes and bars are crowded with people. It is the prelude of the effervescent life of the city taking shape. The portuenses (as the locals are called) know how to enjoy the city when the temperatures get warmer and the days get longer.

Almost before we’d sat down, tea and rice pudding had arrived at our table. “This is the way I was raised,” Sami Zaman explained. We’d arranged a time to speak with him at his namesake Afghan restaurant in Astoria, Sami’s Kabab House, and we’d quickly discovered that refreshments were an essential prelude to our conversation. Sami is always “working, working, working,” he tells us, but during our visit he also had a smile and a greeting for everyone who stepped into his kabab house. Between spoonfuls of pudding, we asked about the roots of his hospitality.

Editor’s note: Longtime CB contributor Carolina Doriti was born in Athens, 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 as CB’s Athens bureau chief, 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. Salt of the Earth is her first cookbook.

At a booth bathed in the winter sun, a group of coworkers happily munch burgers and frites. Behind them, a toddler claps with glee as his mom hands him a meal in a colorful box. Two teens bypass the counter to punch in their order at the giant phone-like kiosk. Customers in cars wait in line at the drive-thru. Despite all these trappings of a fast-food joint, and the Golden Arches on the sign outside, this is no McDonald’s. Even if it was born from one. L'Après M is a fast-food restaurant, professional integration project, food bank, and community center, all rolled into one unique spot. Its name (the M stands for “McDonald’s”) refers to its previous tenant.

Marseille is home to the biggest Armenian community in Europe, with cultural centers, churches, and several neighborhoods with a significant Armenian presence. Most fled the Armenian genocide of 1915-1922, joining a smaller and older Armenian community of merchants that settled in Marseille starting in the mid-nineteenth-century. The different waves of Armenian immigrants and refugees, coming to some 80,000 people, maintain ties to Armenia, family, and culinary traditions, and many eventually thrived. Armenian cuisine is rich and varied, and yet what is available in Marseille’s city center in terms of actual restaurants and takeout doesn’t reflect that. Because Armenian cuisine is a home cuisine, it is often in private houses that we enjoy the traditional dishes like kabab karaz, meatballs in sour cherry sauce, or manti, clusters of small, open raviolis of spiced meat.

Cheese has a very long, storied past in Catalonia, as we wrote in the previous parts of this series. But what do the present and future of Catalan cheesemaking look like? The 21st century has seen cheesemaking flourish dramatically in Catalonia, thanks to increasing interest in and appreciation of culinary traditions and trends worldwide, not to mention the financial crisis of 2008, which led many people to make career changes or to take up a more DIY ethos. All of this, combined with that old Catalan inclination toward modern design and creativity, has made for a heady mix. The new generation of cheesemakers comes from a wide range of professional backgrounds; many are college-educated and well-traveled, and accordingly, they have specific aesthetic, gastronomic and nutritional criteria.

Editor’s note: In the latest installment of our recurring First Stop feature, we asked travel writer Caroline Eden about some of her go-to spots in Istanbul. Eden has written for the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Financial Times, among other publications, and has filed stories from Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan for BBC Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent. Eden is also the author of the culinary travelogue Black Sea: Dispatches and Recipes, Through Darkness and Light (Hardie Grant; May 2019) and co-author of Samarkand: Recipes & Stories from Central Asia & the Caucasus (Kyle Books; July 2016), a Guardian book of the year in 2016 and winner of the Guild of Food Writers Award for best food and travel book in 2017. You can follow Caroline on Instagram and Twitter @edentravels.

In most countries around the world, it’s safe to say that steak is a minimalist affair – a dish that, in some cases, combines perhaps no more than beef and salt. In Portugal, however, people tend to go in the other direction. “It’s a steak that’s pan-fried, and served with smoked ham, bay leaf, garlic and white wine,” says Manuel Fernandes, when we ask him to describe the country’s signature steak dish, bife à portuguesa, “Portuguese-style steak.”

Mount Everest Deli may appear, to many of its customers, interchangeable with its neighbors – Globe Smoke & Convenience, Seneca Deli Corp., or any of the dozens of Ridgewood bodegas that are instantly familiar to any New Yorker. Passersby on Myrtle Avenue dash in for a pack of cigarettes, a tube of off-brand super glue, or a turkey bacon-egg-and-cheese on a roll. But inhale deeply while shopping there and you’ll smell masala. Peek behind the deli counter and you’ll see momos – Himalayan dumplings – tumbling onto the griddle. Mount Everest isn’t just a corner store. It’s a distinctive, tradition-bending urban Nepalese restaurant.

Sicily’s rich, volcanic soil has borne many fruits: grapes, figs, peaches and citrus, to name just a few. It has also cultivated fiery debates and regional rivalries about details of traditional recipes; culinary wars whose significance is usually lost on most non-Italians. One such debate concerns the proper way of pronouncing one of Sicily’s most beloved snacks: the arancini (plural) – stuffed rice balls, battered and deep-fried. Whereas the west of the island refers to it as arancina, the east calls it arancino. Cue Spaghetti Western music. Over the centuries, Palermo has experienced and absorbed various cultures and their cuisines. The influence of Arabs and North Africans play an especially prominent role, dating back to the period of 827-1091 A.D.

Aghmashenebeli avenue – the main street on the left bank of the Mtkvari River – is well-known for its Turkish eateries and the presence of Barbarestan, a popular Georgian restaurant. But a handful of new food joints have opened recently, serving mainly Indian and Middle Eastern food, and sometimes a mix of both. One of these new spots is Beirut Saj, which opened in April 2022. The venue is easy to miss when walking along the never-ending Aghmashenebeli avenue – its entrance is discrete and you have to take a few steps down to enter. A hint that you’ve arrived at the right place is the sight of barber shops. A Turkish barber is located upstairs, and next door, in the basement, is a Lebanese barbershop called Miami.