A small group of sommeliers, oenophiles, and at least one intrepid food and beverage writer are gathered outside Grape Wine Boutique in Istanbul’s Teşvikiye neighborhood. More than once does a passing car feel the need to honk as the crowd, tasting glasses in hand, spills into the narrow street from the even more narrow sidewalk. As the first cork is pulled, a nervous energy spreads among the group.  We’ve gathered to taste the first official vintage of Mesashuna Wines, the only licensed winery in Turkey’s northeastern Artvin province, a rugged region not far from the border with Georgia.

While the pandemic has forced many restaurants in Lisbon to shutter their doors, even if only temporarily, and fight for their survival, it left chef Marlene Vieira with a related yet slightly different dilemma: Her latest venture, Zunzum Gastrobar, was scheduled to open in March, before being postponed indefinitely due to the Covid-19 lockdown. The delay worried Vieira – so much work had already gone into the project. As the city started coming back to life, the chef assessed the situation and felt it was better to open in the beginning of August rather than waiting for September, when the reopening of schools and other measures might bring new challenges to everyday life. “Now it’s a relaxed time, people are on holidays or feeling less stressed,” she says.

We're always glad for a second bite at a wonton. At Maxi's Noodle, in Flushing, this Hong Kong delicacy is notably larger than its Chinese forebears. The dumplings and fish balls at Maxi’s are hefty, too, each large enough to require two delicious bites, if not three. The size wouldn't matter, however, if the wontons weren't wonderful – the pale pink of fresh shrimp, combined with a little pork, gleams from within their translucent wrappers. The restaurant's namesake, Maxi Lau, 33, was born in Hong Kong. In 1997, not long before the handover of the territory from the United Kingdom to China, her family emigrated to the United States. They settled on Long Island, in the eastern suburbs of New York City, but the family did most of their shopping in Flushing – home to New York's largest Chinatown – and often ate dinner there, too. It was a "second home," Maxi says.

If there were ever such a thing as an oracle for gentrification, Eka Janashia believes her father could qualify as one. We’re sitting in Eka’s chic café, Satatsuri, with its earthy brick walls and warm wood floors – a space that used to be the family head’s modest two-bedroom ground floor apartment in a rather rundown corner of Marjanishvili. The district was established in the early 17th century by German migrants who were invited  by Tsar Alexander I to settle in what was then part of the Russian Transcaucasian Empire. 

“Can I have some wine? I’m a little sober now,” calls chef Katy Cole to sommelier and server Ben 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.

The area around Mis (meaning “Pleasant-Smelling”), Kurabiye (“Cookie”) and Süslü Saksı (“Fancy Flowerpot”) Streets is as eclectic and appealing as these monikers would suggest, at least as far as we're concerned. This corner in the backstreets of Istanbul's Beyoğlu district is home to a trifecta of our favorite local haunts: Müşterek, its sister meyhane, Meclis, and a bar on the floor above, called Marlen. It’s also an area that has maintained the gritty yet lively character of the city's longtime entertainment hub in spite of profound changes that have threatened to strip it of that title.

In Turkish popular lore, the residents of Kilis, a town in Southeast Turkey near the Syrian border, are known for two things: kebab-making and smuggling. We haven’t been to Kilis, so we can’t vouch for the smuggling bit (although these days the town is featured regularly in the headlines as a hub for fighters being hustled across the border into Syria). But based on the food we’ve tried at Öz Kilis, a wonderful little spot on a quiet backstreet in Fatih run by two Kilis natives, we can report that the kebab-making reputation is well-deserved. Not just any kebab, mind you. Clearly an unorthodox and clever lot, the people of Kilis have a distinctly different approach to cooking meat. While a wide swath of humanity stretching from the Balkans to the Hindu Kush makes their kebabs by putting meat on a skewer and cooking it over a fire, the people of Kilis are famous for their “pan kebab,” a thin disc of ground meat that is cooked in a shallow metal dish that’s put in the oven.

In Portuguese, it’s now known as Efeito Time Out, the “Time Out effect.” An iconic fresh market – for example, Lisbon’s Mercado da Ribeira – is renovated and rebranded, given a new life, albeit one that has little to do with the traditional Portuguese market. In 2014, the Time Out media brand took over control of more than half of Lisbon’s central market, renaming it Time Out Market Lisbon, and essentially turning it into a food hall, one that is largely frequented by tourists. On the market’s opposite side, the neat rows of produce, fish and meat vendors remain, but just barely. It would be easy to heap blame on the Time Out group, but the truth is, across Lisbon, fresh markets are dying.

Tanini Agapi Mou may be one of the most ambitious wine bars in Athens’s growing wine scene. But nothing about it feels pretentious.   Plants hang from the ceiling and windows, growing wildly and draping the store in green. The furniture is simple, with tables crafted by independent producers out of highly-sustainable birchwood. The music that fills the room is a mix that spans genres, but is a pleasant background sound to the clinking of glasses. The employees don’t wear uniforms, and when they talk about the menu, their enthusiasm is real. 

Il Grottino (meaning “The Little Cave”) is a small wine bar located in an area of Naples still not explored by many tourists. Despite being situated in the heart of the old town, the upper Decumani area is off the beaten track and feels like a small oasis (hopefully for a long time to come). Here, we are just a few meters from the Naples Cathedral, and after feasting our eyes on its baroque beauty, Il Grottino is the perfect place to rest and enjoy a glass of wine and a bite. Il Grottino was born in 1980 thanks to Antonio De Luca 64, and his wife Maria, 61. When he was 10 years old, Antonio, the son of a carpenter, started working as a shop boy in a local delicatessen.

All things considered, bread is a relatively new arrival in Japan, having found its way there in 1543, when the first Portuguese ship arrived carrying missionaries and merchants who had come to spread the word of God and seek new markets. These Europeans brought with them commodities both tangible and intangible. When the Sakoku Edict, which essentially closed Japan to all international contact, came into effect in 1635, some of these commodities remained in one form or another. The vast majority of Japanese would never encounter bread during the subsequent Tokugawa Era (1603-1868), though the concept of doughy baked goods – pan in Japanese, from the Portuguese pão – remained.

There might be a menu at Bota Feijão, but we’ve never seen it. The only decision to make at this restaurant located just outside central Lisbon is whether or not you want a salad (the answer is yes) and what kind of wine to drink (the answer is sparkling). “We serve suckling pig,” says Pedro Pereira – the second generation in charge of Bota Feijão – by way of explanation. And it really is as simple as this. Pedro and his family spit-roast suckling pigs in-house, serving them with a couple simple but delicious sides. If they do have a menu, it’s not a very long one.

“Lobio saved Georgia in the nineties,” quips Aleko Sardanashvili as he plonks a round clay pot of the simmering red bean stew in the middle of a loaded table of food. It groans under the weight of an assortment of Georgian feasting staples - khachapuri, lobiani, tomato and cucumber salad, sauteed potatoes garnished with greens, jonjoli salad, pickled chilies, fried chicken, tkemali plum sauce and more. We’re at Aleko’s marani (or wine cellar) in Racha – one of Georgia’s most sparsely populated regions, located in its northwestern frontier. It used to be a six-hour long circuitous route by car to get here from Tbilisi until a spanking new road launched last year cut travel time to Racha by 1.5 hours. Since then, visitor numbers have sharply increased to Georgia’s smallest wine region, a place that offers the ability to dip into family wineries in vineyards slung along the slopes of its lower valleys and drive up to high ridges for magnificent views of the snowcapped peaks of the Greater Caucasus massif, all in one afternoon – although the reverse order is more advisable, for obvious reasons.

When you think about where to send a visitor who is only in Athens for a week – or worse, only a night – it’s difficult to pick the perfect place. It should have wide-ranging hours, not only to keep the options open, but to ensure that those who dine early will be able to make it. It should be centrally located, but not too central, bringing the visitor to an area of the city they might not go to otherwise, but one that doesn’t require a car or an inconvenient bus transfer. The space should be pleasant, with inside and outside tables, and preferably stuffed with locals.

If there is one thing that we learned throughout our time in Diyarbakir, it is that everyone here has their favorite liver place. We traveled to this southeastern Turkish city in the hopes of discovering the “best liver,” the best example of the ancient city’s delicacy, but upon arrival realized just how insurmountable a task that was. Discovering the best liver in Diyarbakir is like trying to discover the best slice of pizza in New York. Instead, we contented ourselves with a sampling. We started our “liver tour” – as we came to call it – near the entrance to Sur, the ancient center of Diyarbakir (named Amed in Kurdish). Sur is a storied place – it has been settled since 7500 BC, according to archaeological records, and has housed empires from the Hittites, to the Persians, to Alexander the great.