A beautiful taverna on the seafront of Elia Beach near Nikiti. Good food is a family affair for female founder Giota Koufadakis and her niece Vergina. The food is Greek, of course, but with adaptations, and Giota proves that Greek cuisine is more than souvlaki and moussaka by cooking great tasting dishes with fresh produce and passion. Mpoukadoura is well known throughout the region. If only the whole country was dotted with tavernas just like Giota’s.

Karen Torosyan is a champion pie maker, bringing glory to anything and everything that can be wrapped in pastry, reinvigorating this aspect of our culinary history. Salmon coulibiac, a pork pie with foie gras, sweetbreads, a genuine Beef Wellington with foie gras and mushrooms...these are all dishes that would be in danger of disappearing in the era of global cuisine. Torosyan is a true artist, no question about it.

An object lesson in tradition. Daniel et Denise is a bouchon. And bouchons are the soul of Lyon's gastronomy. The chef is Joseph Viola, who has studied with great chefs such as Michel Guérard and Jean-Paul Lacombe (Léon de Lyon). Come for the omelette du curé with crayfish tails, the terrines en croûte, fish quenelles, pan-fried calf's liver and Bresse chicken with morels. A “rich” cuisine, as the French say: rich in taste, rich in sauces, rich in pleasure.

Chef Seong-il Kim is a wise man. It might seem effortless to produce beautiful food. It can be much more difficult to do this within the context of the traditions of a country or a particular region. At La Yeon in Seoul's famous Shilla Hotel, Seong-il Kim serves steamed cabbage with crab meat, braised abalone with barley porridge and perilla seeds, Hot Pot Royal with seasonal fish, slices of Korean beef, and vegetables in beef broth. The focus is on the quality of the principal ingredients, such as the meat. It's all about subtlety; familiarity for Koreans and new horizons for foreigners.

Owamni is the first permanent site from James Beard award winner Sean Sherman and his partner Dana Thompson. Sherman is known for his Sioux Chef educational popups and the Indigenous Food Lab, which seeks to address the health and social issues of indigenous communities by reinvigorating Native food cultures. Owamni’s location, by the Owámniyomni falls on the Upper Mississippi, is sacred to the Dakota people. Sherman uses only ancestral ingredients, which means no dairy, wheat, cane sugar, beef, pork or chicken. Instead, he serves a “decolonized” menu based on Native American cuisine’s “three sisters” - corn, beans and squash - featuring lake trout and white bean tostada, cedar-braised bison, apple and leek taco, and preserved rabbit with fermented blueberry.