Behind the counter at Le Bon Pain in Queens Village, more often than not, is Ghislaine Clervoix, a woman in her 80s who has owned the place for more than 30 years. Ghislaine chats in English and Haitian Creole with her regular customers, a few of whom she’s known for decades and introduces as her “old-school friends.” Diminutive loaves of French bread are the namesake of the bakery, and plenty of customers come in to buy them fresh; the Clervoix family also bakes large quantities for supermarkets around Long Island and Queens. On a recent visit, though, the signature bread seemed like an afterthought to most customers, who were clamoring for the bakery’s patties.

For every level of society inside and outside Mexico, cantinas serve as both toxin and tonic for drink, song, jocularity, wit, mayhem and mishap. Tio Pepe, now thought to be the oldest such bar in the old Aztec capital, has provided both in equal measure since way before it received its present name in 1878. The cantina is nowadays a refuge for Mexican politicians, as the nation’s state department and the city’s supreme court sit in front of it. On a Tuesday at noon, we found a huddle of operatives gathered in a booth arguing amid cocktails. We sat down with Don Sebastian Alvarez, who took up bartending at Tío Pepe in 1987, a witness to the ebb and flow of politicians, luminaries and troublemakers passing through the doors.

At first glance, Manolis, located in a quiet, residential corner of Chalandri, a neighborhood far from the bustling center of Athens, looks like your typical Greek family taverna: the large dining room is clad in wood paneling and brick, with various old-fashioned paintings, drawings and old photographs covering the walls. But if you look a little closer, the slogan written on the blackboard over the bar – “1977 was the year that Taverna O Manolis and punk rock appeared in the world” – hints at the restaurant’s penchant for music. In fact, the ties between Manolis and the music world are so strong that some of world’s top musicians including Nick Cave, the band Depeche Mode and Moby have eaten at this family-run spot. How many tavernas in Greece can boast that?

While English speakers “bring home the bacon,” Spaniards “bring home the bread.” Indeed, bread plays a central role in Spanish and Catalan cuisine, acting almost as an essential ingredient in its own right, rather than simply playing the role of sidekick to other dishes. In Catalonia there are hundreds of bread varieties that are readily available, yet it is the rustic pa de pagès, “farm bread,” that is king. Take the iconic pa amb tomàquet, bread rubbed with tomato, olive oil and salt, used in sandwiches and as an accompaniment for tapas and meals. While all sorts of loaves can be used for this humble yet essential dish, afficionados consider pa de pagès to be the best.

Thirty-year-old João Cura and his wife, 29-year-old Sofia Gomes, may be young but they have long had a wish to open their own restaurant. Yet it was never totally clear where or when they would fulfill this dream: both are originally from Coimbra, a city in central Portugal, and worked for years in Barcelona. The couple finally found a perfect spot, in Porto of all places, to open Almeja, which fittingly means “to want or to wish for something very much” in Portuguese. Talk about a dream come true.

CB has teamed up with the creators of “Native Dish: United Flavors of NYC,” NYC Media’s new food TV series, to offer a behind-the-scenes look at some of the New Yorkers featured in these short videos. The series, which aims to celebrate New York City immigrants from all over the world, focuses on one individual and one dish at a time as a means through which to explore the myriad cuisines represented in the city and the people who make them. While each episode features a general overview of the participant’s life story, particularly as it relates to food, we are expanding that narrative by providing the full interview transcript, albeit condensed and lightly edited. This month we are spotlighting Jeannie Ongkeo and her recipe for Tam Mak Hoong, a Lao green papaya salad drenched with savory anchovy sauce.

While on a culinary walk in Queens, we stop by a tortillería that uses high-quality corn and the traditional nixtamalization process to make their delicious tortillas. But tasting homemade tortillas is just the beginning on a global journey through the United Kitchens, where immigrants from all over the world, including Tibet, Colombia, Ecuador and Argentina, share their flagship flavors.

Ivane Tarkhnishvili Street is a 300-meter stretch of blacktop in the Vera neighborhood that links the lower part of the quarter to the upper part. We used to drop off clothes for dry cleaning here and meet for coffee at Kafe Literaturuli, two establishments lost to the dustbin of time. For several years, we had no reason to venture to this part of the hood, until a friend tipped us off to a new place that opened last September. It’s called Pepperboy, and it is the one restaurant in Georgia that will take you on a wildly delectable ride through pan-Asian cuisines.

Istanbul’s Kadıköy district on the city’s Asian side has long been billed as a calmer, more laid-back alternative to some of its swarming, chaotic European counterparts, and it seems everyone’s figured that out by now. Though the rocks that straddle a long stretch of winding, serene shoreline still make for one of the most relaxing hangout places in the city, the pedestrian Mühürdar Caddesi running through the heart of Kadıköy is choked with foot traffic on the weekends, while a staggering number of bars and coffee shops have appeared on the scene within the past two to three years. In the district’s affluent, picturesque borough of Moda, where rents get higher as one approaches the Marmara Sea coast, these new establishments are rapidly altering the classic character of the neighborhood, as espresso bars replace tuhafiyeler (haberdasheries) and sahaflar (used bookstores) close down to make way for Irish pubs and burger joints.

Our Born on the Bosphorus walk in Istanbul pays a visit to a third-generation candymaker in the market at Üsküdar whose lokum (Turkish delight) is made with only the best fruits Turkey has to offer: apricots from Malatya, oranges from Finike, and peaches from Bursa.

Manuel Azevedo and Francisco Moreira, now both in their 70s, have been friends since childhood. Such a close connection has afforded them the trust and togetherness required to run O Buraco, the restaurant in Porto that the duo have presided over like generals for almost 50 years. In fact, it was right after completing his military service that Manuel, a native of Marco de Canaveses, a city within the greater Porto municipality, came to Porto proper in search of work. “I picked up the newspaper, saw the ad, applied and was hired as a waiter,” he tells us. On February 4, 1971, he entered O Buraco (“The Hole” for the first time; he hasn’t left since.

We humans can cry for many reasons – out of happiness, sadness, anger and frustration. But for someone who hails from the northwestern Spanish region of Galicia, there’s something else that can easily bring tears: morriña, which basically means homesickness, similar to the Portuguese concept of saudade. So it’s no surprise that Galician bars and restaurants abroad often have names related to this pining for home. Bar Bágoa (“bágoa” means tear) in Barcelona is no exception. This humble Galician bar has made something of its homesickness, continuing to thrive among the fancy restaurants and gastro-pubs on Carrer d’Enric Granados in the Left Eixample neighborhood.

It almost never snows in Naples. Yet in the last decade, the city has seen an invasion of snowflakes. We’re not talking about an atmospheric phenomenon – rather, it is Pasticerria Poppella’s il fiocco di neve (“the snowflake”), a true gastronomic prodigy that has quickly become a “new classic” of Neapolitan pastry, as evidenced by the long lines at the bakery every day of the week. Ciro Poppella is quite a character: not only an important figure in the Sanità neighborhood, where Poppella is located, he’s also an icon of Naples. The inventor of the snowflake, Ciro is a living example of how there are no limits to what you can achieve when you believe in a project.

The late Christos Kaskavelis began his career as a traveling salesman of sorts: he owned a portable canteen, a common sight at farmers’ markets around Athens. Moving daily from one market to the next, he prepared coffee and snacks for the market vendors, delivering their orders on his traditional metal tray. Yet Christos harbored a special passion for koutoukia, or basement tavernas, those hidden, underground, low-budget eateries that offer a laidback atmosphere and are packed come wintertime. Places where the chatter of patrons combines with the Greek music playing in the background to create a pleasing din. For Christos, this was the best type of taverna, and it was his dream to one day open his own.

We grew up in a household where drinking soup directly from the bowl was frowned upon, done only surreptitiously when Mom was looking away or as an act of impish rebellion, a bold unshackling from the spoon and its torment. Yet it took little prodding from Isis Iturriaga, founder and proprietor of Sanadoras La Caldería, to lift our earthenware bowl with both hands to eager lips and down the last of our impeccable caldo de hongos (mushroom soup) in three great gulps. “You are in your home,” she reiterated as the chipotle-infused liquid began to spark our insides. This is her mantra for the place, a plinth at the core of her being.