“The future is in water and grain,” says Natia Kalandarishvili. She is the co-founder of Graminea, a minimalist but inviting shop in Sololaki whose mission goes beyond just selling the best sourdough in town. The bakery uses endemic Georgian wheat for their bread flour in an effort to support rebalancing the national wheat market – an unusual approach in a bread-heavy cuisine which relies primarily on imported wheat. Natia and her friend Salome Zakaraia started Graminea in February 2023. Now head baker, Salome was previously a makeup artist by profession, working on film sets. But like many others during the Covid-19 pandemic, she started baking sourdough while she was stuck at home.

It’s a bit of culinary magic. Plain old black-eyed peas are transformed into a fluffy white cloud, before somehow changing once again, this time into a crimson, crispy fritter. This is acarajé, and as a dish with origins in Bahia, the homeland of Afro-Brazilian spirituality, other types of magic can also play a role. In Lisbon, you can witness the results of this transformation at Acarajé da Carol. “There are other people [in Portugal] making acarajé, but they’re not from Bahia!” the eponymous owner – full name Carol Alves de Brito – tells us. Bahia, Carol’s homeland, is the region of Brazil with the strongest links to Africa. Salvador, the state’s capital, was once a major destination in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and today it’s the largest Black city outside of Africa.

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.

On a warm, sunny weekend afternoon in the spring of 2022, we visited a street fair on Myrtle Ave., a major thoroughfare that cuts through Ridgewood, Queens. The roadway was closed to traffic, in favor of street food vendors, for many blocks; the only bus in sight was a 1950s coach, which we boarded to peruse the vintage advertisements and the lounge-like seating at the rear. But despite our appetite, none of the street food vendors tempted us. We continued walking eastward, beyond the street fair and into the adjoining neighborhood of Glendale, until we were drawn toward the sight of a familiar, eternally hungry, cartoon character holding a hamburger.

Situated on a pleasant corner in the heart of Kurtuluş is an unlikely yet warmly welcomed addition to this beloved neighborhood's excellent food scene: Horo Burger, which only features Sloppy Joes on its menu. While the name of this American classic conjures pleasant memories of family dinner for some and horrifying flashbacks from the school cafeteria for others, Horo's take on the Sloppy Joe is faithful yet elevated, just as put-together as it is messy.

Athens’s central and largest food market is located off of National Road, between downtown Athens and Piraeus port, in an industrial area called Rendis. It covers about 60 acres of land and was inaugurated back in 1959 when the city realized that the two existing markets of Piraeus and central Athens were not enough to cover the population’s needs. But there was also a vision of developing Rendis (which back then was an agricultural zone, with lots of farmers working the fields in the area) as the main source of food supply for the city of Athens. Moreover, the location that was picked for the market was convenient, as it is easy to access both from the north and south of Attica. For visitors today, it’s best to drive there or take a taxi, and once you approach the market, you’ll notice the huge trucks heading towards it. Larger shops selling vegetables, fruit, seafood, meat and hundreds of other food products line the entrance and wind around the main market gate.

As a singular city that differs from the rest of France, it is no surprise that Marseille has its own lingo. Parler marseillais (Marseille speak) is mostly Provençal, the original dialect of Provence, peppered with Italian, Arabic and other languages spoken in the multicultural city. We call the fervent fans of our football team OM “fada,” Provençal for crazy. Tarpin, which means “very” in Romani Caló, is used on the daily by the hyperbolic Marseillais. When the fruit vendor rounds up your bag of peaches, that is the “bada,” Provençal for the “extra bit.” It makes a fitting name for a baker known for her bite-sized treats.

“Can I have some wine? I’m a little sober now,” calls chef Katy Cole to sommelier and server Ben Ward-Perkins over the buzz of conversation and clinking cutlery. We’re two hours into the brunch service. He fills her glass, and she tips it back, taking a quick gulp. “I didn’t know it was going to be that kind of morning,” she says, laughing. “I’m in a good place.” It may be drab and drizzly outside in the backstreets of Meguro, but it is always warm and sunny inside Locale, Cole’s little farm-to-table restaurant.

"I've lived in Fresh Meadows all my life, and I never knew this was here." Kevin Sims has heard similar sentiments many times. He's the manager of the Down to Earth Farmers Market in Cunningham Park, which hosts some 20 vendors on Sunday morning and early afternoon, from April through December, at one edge of the park. Considering that Cunningham comprises 358 acres of athletic fields, hiking and biking trails and picnic grounds, and is just one part of a 2,800-acre corridor of greenspace in the wide-open spaces of eastern Queens, a once-a-week farmers market might easily be overlooked.

In Japan, a bowl of noodles is more than just a tasty dish – it can speak to you of regional pride and culinary craft. It's art, distinguished by the broth's depth, noodle texture and the symphony of toppings. While Tokyo leans towards a subtler, often chicken-infused broth, head north to Sapporo and you'll find bowls brimming with a miso-rich, hearty concoction, tailor-made for warding off the chill. In Hakata, the Fukuoka district gifts us with tonkotsu ramen, where pork bones are simmered down to a broth that's as unapologetically porky as it is irresistible. In this city, every slurp is a testament to Japan's noodle mastery, where wheat noodles become the perfect vessel for each region's signature flavors. Wheat noodles, buckwheat noodles, green tea noodles, hot noodles, cold noodles – you can have them every which way and any time of the year. Below, we’ve shared our picks for where to find the best noodles in Tokyo, based on years of slurping.

Editor’s note: In the latest installment of our recurring First Stop feature, we asked writer Marti Buckley about some of her favorite spots in San Sebastian. Marti is the award-winning author of Basque Country (Artisan, 2018) and The Book of Pintxos (Artisan 2024). She is an experienced speaker, chef and journalist with an expertise in Spanish and Basque cuisine, vermouth, wine and European travel. She has lived in San Sebastián, Spain since 2010 and has been writing for nearly two decades. You can follow Marti on her blog and Instagram.

The bright refrigerator display case illuminates a long line of pastries filled with cream pastry and topped with fruit, cannoli filled with ricotta, chocolate and fruit cakes, cassatas and almond cookies. "Sicilian pastries are unique in the world," says Riccardo Costa proudly. Alongside his father and sons, Riccardo runs the historic Pasticceria Costa, a true Palermo institution that opened its doors in 1960, a classic bar and pastry shop where you will find Sicilian confectionery excellence. "It all began with my father, Antonino," says Riccardo. Flash back to the post-war years; 1946, to be precise. Antonino Costa was only eight years old and to escape a destiny of hunger and poverty in a city still destroyed by bombs, he began to work as an apprentice, first in a bakery and then in a pastry shop. At the age of eighteen, Antonino Costa opened his own confectionery workshop to supply the various bars in the area, but it was in 1960 that he opened the historic pastry shop that bears his name, on Gabriele D'Annunzio Street.

The smell of clean clothes with a lavender sachet from grandma’s closet; the family farm in nearby Lleida province during summer with apple trees and wild aromatic herbs growing all around; peaches washed in seawater during a beach day; an afternoon snack of popsicles while playing under the pine tree in the garden. These are just some of the memories that neighbors left in the mailbox of Mamá Heladera in Barcelona’s Poblenou, where owner Irene Iborra turns them into gelato flavors – an initiative that was recently awarded by the Barcelona City Council as best new innovative business (XVII Premis Barcelona Comerç). Mamá Heladera sits next to Tío Che, a classic horchateria and ice-cream parlor on Rambla del Poblenou that opened in 1912.

After winning over hearts and stomachs with his first restaurant, Madereros, in the quiet San Miguel Chapultepec area, chef Mario Espinosa set his eyes on the incredibly charming neighborhood of Santa María La Ribera for his next adventure. The project? The mushroom-centric Tencüi, which means “connect” in Náhuatl, a traditional Uto-Aztecan language spoken by peoples native to central Mexico. As fans of Madereros and after months of hearing about the wonders coming out of the kitchen at Tencüi, we finally made it to Santa María to taste the menu for ourselves.

Just a few blocks away from Tbilisi's busy central railway station and its spaceship-like architecture, the area where Constitution and Ninoshvili streets meet was, until recently, an overlooked residential corner of the Georgian capital. But its centrality and the presence of several large unused historical and industrial buildings dating back to the 19th and early 20th centuries meant that the arrival of investors and new businesses was only a matter of time. The neighborhood has indeed been changing fast during the past few years. Part of a huge parking lot used for driving lessons is now home to outdoor courts for games of paddle (similar to pickleball), while the remaining space will be transformed soon into a brand-new park. Several of the area’s old buildings, meanwhile, now are home to some of Tbilisi’s more interesting new culinary enterprises, making the crossroads Constitution and Ninoshvili one of the city’s emerging neighborhoods to explore.