Bāozi (包子), or steamed buns, are a basic, on-the-go meal. It’s rare to come across a shop selling these buns for more than 1.5 RMB (US$0.25), and yet, the past five years have seen a dramatic rise in the stature of this humble dish – thanks mostly to celebrity chef David Chang, whose Momofuku pork bun has become world-famous. They even got a domestic boost in 2013, when President Xi Jinping visited a local 60-year-old baozi shop in Beijing. (Now, thanks to an hours-long queue to try the “President Special,” that chain is looking to go public.) Legend has it that baozi date back to the Three Kingdoms period (A.D. 220-280) and are credited to Zhuge Liang, a renowned military strategist who was also an eccentric foodie. He invented both this steamed bun and our favorite breakfast treat: the jianbing

Though Brazil is rich in mother earth’s most colorful produce – like passion fruit, guava, papaya, collard greens and sweet abóbora pumpkins – residents of Rio nonetheless have a steady love affair with hot dogs, which are pronounced “HOH-tchee DOH-geey,” or literally translated into Portuguese as cachorro quente. Vendors across the city pile the bunned favorite with a set of toppings as elaborate as they are consistent from one cart to the next: hard-boiled quail eggs, green peas, corn, potato straws, stewed onions and Parmesan cheese. “Tia” was a young mother of three with a husband whose blue-collar salary as a cop meant life was a hustle in their working-class neighborhood of Freguesia. “I had to take them all to school, prepare breakfast, the school uniforms,” she said. “I got no rest.” Her hot dog vendor days began in 1982, when her daughter was a newborn, and she had what she now says were two decades of busting her chops before the cachorro quente da Tia would become one of the most in-demand snacks in this periphery neighborhood of Rio. “Thank God,” she says of her success in her hot dog business, which now encompasses both a quiosque and a store, with 16 employees in total.

Metin Akdemir is a filmmaker based in Istanbul. In 2011 he made a short film about street vendors in the city. The film, “Ben Geldim Gidiyorum” (“I’ve Come and I’m Gone”), won several awards in Turkish and international film festivals, and we think it’s a very valuable piece of work that captures a side of Istanbul’s culture that is slowly disappearing.

Portuguese regional food can be found easily in Lisbon, but at Grupo Excursionista e Recreativo Os Amigos do Minho, it is one of its raisons d’êtres. This warren of rooms that occupy a 19th-century tile-clad building not only works as a restaurant; the small cultural association has been a point of encounter for internal migrants moving from the northernmost Portuguese region of Minho since the 1950s. For all that time, this humble spot has kept the Minho culture alive in the capital, as well as renting out the space to young music promoters and cultural producers. Here you can experience rowdy parties with northern-style dances, live performances of the “concertina” (a typical accordion from the region) and, most importantly, group dinners with local, traditional food.

As the towers of Tokyo’s Nihonbashi financial district began to proliferate and grow taller, developers took special care to preserve and in many cases not displace the area’s mainstream department stores, art galleries and varied restaurants, and so traditional establishments were often incorporated into the new buildings. The Mitsui real estate group, which opened the two Coredo Towers in 2014, made sure to include time-honored restaurants in the new setting, including an amazingly good, classic Edo-mae sushi bar lured from an outdated setting, an outpost of a Kyoto home-cooking restaurant and a dazzling array of famous sweets shops. The developers were also clever enough to include a classic izakaya, or pub-style establishment, enticed away from the Tsukiji market. Every evening, office workers pour out of local mega-buildings and pack into Nihonbashi Suminoe to enjoy the collegial atmosphere and flavorful charcoal-cooked fish. Sakaya means a location in which to purchase sake, and “i” means to stay in a place and feel at ease. Thus, i-sakaya becomes “izakaya” when pronounced correctly, and it’s the perfect way to describe Nihonbashi Suminoe.

Tapioca—a chewy pancake and tasty street snack staple in Rio made from yucca root, which is widely used in Brazil. One of the many humble, delicious snacks to be found while wandering Rio's streets.

The rustic family favorite Can Pineda has been holding down this corner of Barcelona’s El Clot neighborhood since 1904. It was not a restaurant originally, but a typical wine shop and canteen, where plenty of life could be found amongst the wooden barrels that now slumber peacefully on their perch up above the dining room. At that time, the place was frequented by local factory workers, who would come for a glass of wine to go with a simple meal or to drink while warming up their lunch boxes. The then-owners would put a pine branch on the door to signal the arrival of the vi novell, or new wine of the year, and from the pine, pi in Catalan, came the name Can Pineda, which translates roughly to “The Pine House.” Today, El Clot is part of the new high-tech 22@ district, which is focused on innovation and research but maintains in its oldest streets the spirit of the village (Sant Martí de Provençals) that once flourished here, with its own market (dating back to 1889) and walls that remain from Barcelona’s first Industrial Age. Can Pineda sits right in the middle, a small but welcoming eatery with just 30 seats, decorated with the characteristic blue azulejos tiles, those wooden barrels and a few excellent hams hanging behind the bar.

The manousheh (plural manaeesh) is one of the defining staples of Lebanese food. In a country known for its divisions, the universally loved manousheh might be the breakfast food that unites all Lebanese. A manousheh is a round flatbread cooked in a big oven or on top of a saj (a domed oven prevalent in the Levant), traditionally topped with zaater (a mix of thyme, olive oil, sesame seeds and sumac) or salty white akawi cheese. Manaeesh can be sliced or folded and, much like pizza, they can be thin or thick. In modern times, toppings have come to include a whole range of different ingredients, and there are even now dessert manaeesh that are topped with Nutella. Manaeesh are so popular that there is not one neighborhood, town or even remote village where they are not made.

You get to Bar do Alto by taking a zippy mototaxi up the snaking streets of the Babilônia favela and then walking 10 minutes up jagged staircases that eventually bear right. On the route, you’ll pass by slices of life that make favelas a museum of Rio, where the city’s symbols and icons are on display in the bare and human way that’s made possible by close quarters of self-made dwellings. There are the evangelicals raising their voices in weeknight prayers. Shirtless men with leathered skin that speaks to long day jobs, now tipping back tall evening bottles of beer. Children playing soccer as overheated cops in bulletproof vests slump on nearby benches.

When we picked up a cab from Meşhur Unkapanı İMÇ Pilavcısı recently, it turned out the driver had just been there for a refuel himself. Sensing a captive yet interested audience, he held forth all the way to Beyoğlu about where to eat well and cheaply – without stomachaches ensuing – in Istanbul. We’re always happy to discuss the finer points of kuru fasulye (stewed beans), but this driver seemed to have a particularly deep interest in the subject. After debating the merits of various canned brands (“Yurt” brand or nothing, in case you were interested), he dived into the subject of soup.

This small, charming <em>mezedopoleio</em> gets its name, which translates to “Captain Michael,” from Nikos Kazantzakis’s eponymous novel. The tribute to Kazantzakis makes sense: The eminent writer and philosopher was a native of Crete, as is the family that opened this eatery some 50 years ago. <!--more--> In the 1960s, Kapetan Mixalis was more café than mezedopoleio (the Greek equivalent of a tapas bar), offering coffee, backgammon (<em>tavli</em> in Greek), card games, live music by locals, philosophical discussions and a friendly atmosphere from morning till night. It became a meeting point for Athenian intellectuals, actors and musicians. Famous personalities sat for hours at the sidewalk tables, quaffing wine and a traditional Cretan drink called <em>tsikoudia</em> (a grape-based brandy) and eating cold cuts, spoon sweets and other simple preparations that didn’t require cooking.

While much of the West celebrates Christmas in an orgy of shopping for presents that climaxes after a single dinner, Georgians commemorate the season with a 30-day binge of feasts that pretty much begins on December 17, Saint Barbara’s Day (Barbaroba), and peters out by January 19, the Orthodox Epiphany (Natlisgeba). Unlike Americans, Georgians don’t consume stuff for the holidays – they annihilate food. The best, if not most chaotic, place to stock up on victuals is the Dezertirebi Bazroba (“Deserter’s Bazaar”). Located near Tbilisi’s central train station, this raw, disorganized, 2,000-square-meter warren of unprocessed agrarian pabulum is the city’s largest open-air market.

Locals shop for fresh citrus in the winter at the Keramikos market in Central Athens. Our Culinary Secrets of Downtown Athens explores areas like this.

Editor’s note: This is the second of our two-part series on kings’ cake. The first, on the version found in Mexico City, appeared yesterday. Today is Día de Reyes (Kings’ Day), also known as Epiphany, and in Catalonia, as in many places with Catholic traditions, we celebrate the Magi’s visit to the baby Jesus with a tortell de reis (roscón de reyes in Spanish), or kings’ cake. Most people purchase the 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 880,000 tortells will be eaten in Catalonia this year.

Ice cream at Ali Usta, an institution on İstanbul’s Asian side, sworn to be the city’s best by many faithful customers who brave lines around the block lines in the summer.