A visit to a pastelaria in Lisbon in the lead up to Easter brings with it new surprises. Alongside the usual pastries and cakes, you’ll spot folares, loaves of sweet bread, some topped with hardboiled eggs, and many surrounded by a colorful assortment of almonds. This type of bread, which contains ingredients forbidden during Lent, has long been associated with Easter and the feasting that occurs on this holiday. “After the winter months and the long fast during Lent, the Easter brings an intense activity in terms of culinary preparations and the exchange of cakes, namely the folares,” writes Mouette Barboff in her book A Tradição do Pão em Portugal (Bread in Portugal).

It’s said that the massive gold Buddha statue at Bangkok temple Wat Traimit was once hidden away – its value concealed from an approaching army under a thick layer of plaster. It was only when workers were relocating it in the 1950s that the statue fell and the plaster exterior cracked, revealing a core of solid gold. If Wat Traimit has another hidden treasure, we’d argue that it’s Khun-Yah Cuisine. Enter one of Bangkok’s most visited temples and wind through tour buses and rows of tourists, guides, and Buddhist monks to the eastern edge of the compound; keep your eyes peeled, and you’ll see an almost garage-like space and a sign. This is Khun-Yah Cuisine.

For Eli Berchan, it certainly seemed like the universe was telling him to open his Lebanese restaurant, Sumac Mediterranean Cuisine, in Hollywood. Prior to coming to Los Angeles, Berchan was living in Lebanon and working in event management and organizing destination weddings. At the end of February, 2020, he had come to Southern California to attend an industry conference. “The last day of the conference was Covid day one, and I ended up being stuck here,” Berchan recalled. Since he wasn’t able to go back to Lebanon, he rented a place in Hollywood, and soon found out the owner happened to be Lebanese. Berchan was doing some private cooking to get by and sent his landlord, Ferris Wehbe, some traditional Lebanese food he had prepared to thank him.

It's a grey early spring day in the bustling coastal district of Üsküdar on the Anatolian side of Istanbul. The holy month of Ramadan is in its last days, and many Istanbullites are fasting until the evening. Some of those who aren't are waiting in a long queue outside of the local kent lokantası (“city restaurant”) for a late lunch, and this is the best deal around. 40 TL (US $1.05) gets you a main course with meat, a side or two, and a bowl of soup. Today, the menu is döner, buttery rice pilaf, and lentil soup, and we've arrived with an empty stomach. This restaurant is among the more than 15 that have been opened and operated by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) since 2022, and they have become increasingly popular and necessary as Turkey's rampant inflation and soaring food prices have hit the city's residents hard.

Walk down a given street in Tbilisi and you will smell the seductive aroma of fresh bread wafting out of old cellar bakeries, baked in cylindrical ovens just like it always has. Listen to the refrain of “matzoni, matzoni,” being sung by women lugging bags packed with jars of the fresh sour yogurt at eight in the morning in every neighborhood. We used to boast how Georgia’s food culture and Tbilisi’s restaurants were some of the world’s best-kept secrets, but the word is out, and we’re good with that. Georgia has a bottomless, wild culinary spirit full of rewarding surprises, and we’ve been diving into it for more than a decade here at Culinary Backstreets. For us, it doesn’t matter whether the khinkali we eat are meat-packed grenades or pesto- and mushroom-stuffed buttons. Either way, they’re Georgian. All they have to be is tasty. We’ve collected a sample of our most essential Tbilisi restaurants, so you can get your own taste of Georgia.

Even for someone like myself who has lived in Japan for a long time, sliding open the door of an unfamiliar place can still be a little intimidating, as what lies beyond is invariably a complete unknown. Still, the effort is almost always worth it, as it provides entry into a whole new world, and more often than not, one where time has stood still. This is especially true in the suburban areas outside of Tokyo, where things are generally more dated, and in many ways, simply more real, offering a sense of what daily life in the Japanese capital is like. These are not soulless suburbs but rather little cities on the edge of the big city that have more than enough options for everyday living – a mix of shops and eateries, plus lots of apartment buildings and small, two-story homes. There is a whole world of bars and restaurants to be found here, each place a unique spot to have a drink, enjoy some food, and soak up the old-school atmosphere.

“I'm a big pizza eater,” Francesco “Ciccio” Leone confesses. “But what I like most is being together with friends, conviviality.” The broad-shouldered Palermo native, 50, greets everyone who enters his establishment with a welcoming smile. It was during a dinner party held at his home that he came up with the idea for the name of his pizzeria. “The name came about by chance,” he recalls. “My friends would come to my house to eat, they would say, ‘Ciccio, pass me this; Ciccio, pass me that,’ and so I thought of calling the pizzeria Ciccio Passami l’Olio, which means ‘Ciccio, pass me the oil.’”

Perhaps the most glorious and satisfying aspect about calling Istanbul home is the infinite potential for discovery. Even on streets we've wandered down hundreds or thousands of times, we still find ourselves noticing small details, like a hand-painted apartment sign; a grand, winding staircase at the entrance of an old building; or the fading blue address numbers that were replaced years ago but can still be spotted here and there in Istanbul's older, central neighborhoods. What took us aback recently was the discovery of a restaurant on a main avenue that passes through the edges of Pangaltı, Kurtuluş, Bomonti and Feriköy – a small büfe hidden in plain sight, open for over 40 years but with no social media presence or even (until recently), a single Google review.

Suriname and Guyana are next-door neighbors on the northern shore of South America, yet within the Queens culinary scene, the visibility of these two countries couldn't be more different. When we arrive in South Richmond Hill, at the terminus of the elevated A train, signs welcome us to Little Guyana, and at many local markets, bakeries and restaurants, it's no challenge to find Guyanese food. Surinamese food is another matter. Outside of private kitchens, until recently the only reliable source of such specialties as pom and baka bana had been the yearly Sranan Dey festival in nearby Roy Wilkins Park.

Bangkok’s bustiling energy is largely attributed to the endless latticework of diverse food found along street corners or tucked away in high rises – a unique culinary world reflects the city’s rich multicultural heritage. One street stall in particular, Amin Mutton & Chicken Biryani, embodies the soul of Bangkok’s Thai-Muslim community and carries nearly a century-old legacy. For generations, an iconic eatery simply named Muslim Restaurant served as a culinary institution, gathering local families, neighboring students, and the Muslim community around tables filled with humble dishes. Its closure in 2020 left a void in the community, but not long after, a few former staff members took it upon themselves to keep the legacy alive.

If you turn the corner onto Calle Pelota and see a swarm of people in the street, wine glasses in hand, dive right in. You have officially left the tourist pintxo routes in Bilbao's historic Casco Viejo neighborhood and entered the realm of the locals, who storm the streets daily in search of a good spot for a drink and a bite before lunch and before dinner. Many believe that the fame of Basque pintxos – small bites offered on the counter of almost every bar – is the result of a culinary phenomenon, but it really comes from a social one. When you step through the door of Taberna Basaras, you have found one of the best places to take part in it. This tiny tavern – barely a counter, half a dozen stools, and many, many bottles of wine – offers a concentrated essence of what the Basque people expect when they go out to potear – the habit of meeting with pals to go from bar to bar: Friendly atmosphere, rich wines, and simple but tasty snacks.

Kirk and Kerry, brother and sister, are the heart and soul of Frady’s One Stop Food Store, a Bywater neighborhood institution that has been around in some shape or form since 1889. After a typically busy lunch rush, the duo sit at a table outside the yellow-painted shop, watching over their quiet corner of New Orleans. They shout hello to an older neighbor as he totters by. Kerry notices his limp and asks Kirk about it.

When chef Alexis Peñalver was looking for a location to open La Pubilla, he found this gem adjacent to the Mercat de la Llibertat in Gràcia and decided to keep the name of the original establishment. Pubilla is a bygone word in Catalan for the eldest daughter destined to receive the family inheritance in the event that there were no male heirs. Nowadays a pubilla (the prettiest girl in town) is named reina de la fiesta at many festivals in Catalonia.

Oaxaca’s deep culinary heritage is, like in many places, a result of its geography: a big valley formed by small ones, all surrounded by mountains, rich soil and warm weather. In fact, this valley reminds us of a clay pot, where many ingredients are mixing, aging and melting together to become something new over the heat of the fire. Oaxaca’s best restaurants are firmly rooted in this unique geography and layered history of the state. Here, food is more than just sustenance; it's a living link to the past and an expression of community – and it’s a source of immense pride. From the foundational significance of corn, prepared in countless forms, to the complexity of its celebrated moles, Oaxaca is all about depth. To highlight this profound connection between land, culture, and cuisine, our local team has rounded up their essential spots in the city, for tlayudas, memelas, mole, and beyond.

In Bilbao, some might tell you that the art is inside the Guggenheim Museum, but most would argue it’s found at the counter of a good tavern. Here, the pintxo de tortilla (AKA Spanish omelette) is enough to stir emotions just like a Chillida sculpture – and yes, it can make or break a bar’s reputation. That’s why, even though it might seem simple, serving tortillas in this city is a serious matter. Manu Urra and Andoni Ibarguren knew that when they opened Txintxirri in 2019, but they didn’t hesitate to make this pintxo their calling card. They pulled it off – even through a pandemic. “And it has evolved so much. When I look at the ones I made back then, I don’t like them at all. There’s always room to improve, and I’m still working on it,” Ibarguren admits.