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Sisters Maria and Teresa Solivellas serve six-course meals based on the traditional Mallorcan/Mediterranean diet, including locally sourced fish and lamb, and seasonal vegetables. Horitzó, 21, 34/971-515-226 This appeared in the October 2014 issue. Tom Downey explored Mallorca beyond the beach and found...shoes? Read the full story here

Run by Alfons Schuhbeck, Germany‘s most famous chef, you are virtually guaranteed an incredible dining experience. Come hungry and opt for the five-course meal to indulge your culinary senses. Schuhbeck is famous for his love of spices and interesting flavors. Service is attentive but never intrusive. Not sure what to order? The highly trained staff can advise you, especially when it comes to wine pairings.

This brick-vaulted restaurant and bar is a great venue for jazz fans and the line-up of live acts on Thursday and Fridays nights includes well-known Italian musicians. You can eat a full meal here (try the Risotto Caruso with clams, shrimp and prosecco) or just order a snack and there’s a decent selection of wines.

The Alley on Bitters is a great place to wander. It occupies the land where a 19th century dairy farm once stood, and there’s still a great deal of character and old school charm. Meander past arts & crafts shops, antique dealers, and boutiques, and maybe even stay for a meal at Meadow Neighborhood Eatery + Bar, which serves seasonal Texas and Southern dishes.

The beef is local and grass-fed, the french fries and french toast are good, the people are nice, and it’s got views of a little bay. We ate one meal here, then another, and another. Sometimes when you find a good thing, you stick with it. Especially when you’re traveling with a 5-year-old.

Dar Roumana is widely celebrated as having the best restaurant in Fes, and with good reason. Its charming courtyard dining room—decorated with cream-colored upholstery and tropical plants that complement the building’s original hand-cut zellij tiles, carved plaster, and painted-wood ceilings—is also rave-worthy. Arrive early enough to sip its signature pomegranate fizz from the crow’s nest, then settle in to indulge in a menu that fuses the flavors of Morocco with the finesse of classical French cuisine. Perennial favorites are the roast pumpkin salad with goat cheese, chilies, and coriander; braised local rabbit in mustard; and an elegant, bitter chocolate tart that could cause even the bistros of Paris to bristle with envy. Top tip: For a romantic winter meal, reserve the table by the fireplace.

You can only drink two martinis at the hotel bar at Dukes Hotel in Mayfair. The bartenders won’t serve you any more—that’s how potent they are. This is the place to come in London if you secretly wish you were a member of a gentlemen’s club, and if you want a martini made with all the fanfare—the drinks trolley brought to your table, the bottle, straight from the freezer, shaken as you sit and watch. There are cheaper places to drink, that’s for sure, but do they have green leather armchairs and white-jacketed bartenders and portraits of distinguished 19th-century gentlemen looking at you approvingly from the walls? There’s also a cognac and cigar garden.

Arriving alone and hungry in the Philippines, I checked into my hotel and immediately asked for a dinner recommendation. After some thought by the staff, I was directed to Zubuchon for some authentic Filipino food; but not just any food: Lechon. And not even just lechon, but what Anthony Bourdain suggested is the “best pig...ever.” This perfectly prepared pig keeps its moisture generously covered and insulated with a layer of pork belly fat. Unfortunately, for some reason, I was not able to purchase a piece of pork less than ½ kilo. So, that is what I ordered. Perhaps I should have given the menu a closer look and ordered from the selection of “Fast Meals” that appear to be better suited for one. Before I ran off with my ½ kilo of pig, the server suggested I also try a Kamias Shake which paired with the pork better than any wine pairing I have had with a meal! The tart, but not quite sour, beverage brought out all the nuances of the lechon. Back at my hotel, I was unable to stop myself from eating all ½ kilo of meat - and heading to bed that evening completely stuffed. Try the lechon in the Philippines. And make sure you have Zubuchon at least once!

The terraced organic garden that steps down the hillside in front of the Stanford Inn (above Mendocino Bay) provides some of the vegetables and herbs for the innovative cuisine in the hotel’s Ravens’ Restaurant. A stroll through the farm, with a visit to the donkeys and horses and llamas, helps work up an appetite for the vegetable-based whole-food meals that raise the bar on all-vegan fine dining. Innkeeper Jeff Stanford puts his ethics on the plate: Vegan for both health and philosophical reasons, Stanford collaborates with certified nutrition consultant Sid Hillman and the Ravens’ chefs to create dazzling meals, including one of the most innovative and tempting brunch menus I’ve ever encountered. The Inn, a large boutique hotel with panoramic ocean views, an organic farm, luxury amenities, and a bookstore and wine shop, gains additional points for being dog-friendly--even in a special dining area.

The sun sets over Istanbul as I am coated head to toe with aromatic clay and served fresh fruit sprinkled with pistachios under the heavenly dome of a 457 year old hamam. Tenderly, my attendant washes me before lathering my body with olive oil soap and encasing me in a plume of ticklish bubbles. Like a mother to a child, she washes me again as the call to pray of the Blue Mosque and Aya Sophia echo outside. This is ‘life’ at the Aya Sophia Hurrem Sultan Hamami. The hamam is named after the famous 16th-century Ottoman icon Hurrem, or Roxolana as she is also known. Hurrem went from slave girl to favored concubine, to legal wife of the most popular Sultan Suleiman. She gave birth to princes and princess and greatly influenced the politics of the Ottoman Empire. The hamam was built by Ottoman architect, Mimar Sinan to honor her in 1556. It is nestled between the Blue Mosque and Aya Sophia. The hamam offers 5 star packages with 5 star services that leave you completely blissed out. I had the uber-relaxing 90 minute Ab-I Hayat Package consisting of wash, body mask, scrub, bubbles and 40 minute oil massage. Whilst other hamams are cheaper, you won’t be disappointed here. Private changing rooms and massage rooms, golden bath bowls, silk and cotton towels, tasty blackberry sherbet drink—the personalized service is truly special. With the motto, “Some rituals never die” the hamam’s luxuries will leave you feeling like Sultan Hurrem herself.

To Limeños, nothing goes with fresh fruit juice better than sandwiches, at dinner, or after dinner, or in the afternoon, or even in the morning. In fact, sandwiches don’t have to count as a meal in Peru, while it’s perfectly acceptable to call a pitcher of thick papaya juice “dinner.” Juice bars are everywhere, but it’s best to go to a reputable place, such as La Lucha, where you can trust the quality of the water used and the restaurant’s sanitation. It’s more expensive than your average hole-in-the-wall—though it’s still less than $3 for a freshly pressed mixed passion fruit, mango, and orange juice—but you pay for quality. For a Peruvian specialty, try the exotic lucuma “juice” with milk (more like a butterscotch-maple smoothie). And remember that in Spanish when you order “tuna” you’re actually ordering sweet prickly pear, not fish juice. The sandwiches made from giant hunks of rotisserie pork, chicken, homemade hot pepper, olive, and creamy golf sauces are also some of the least expensive and filling meals in the area.

Amsterdam isn’t exactly known for its stellar food, so finding delicious Dutch food on a busy tourist street at an affordable price on my latest trip was a big surprise. A few friends and I wanted to try Dutch food on our last night in Amsterdam, so we decided to try a place we had passed earlier on Leidsekruisstraat, a street near the popular Leidseplein that’s lined with tourist restaurants. Between the three of us, we had eaten dozens of meals in the Netherlands. Very few of them were memorable, so we weren’t getting our hopes up. But inside De Blauwe Hollander, we discovered the magic that is hotchpotch. Hotchpotch is a traditional Dutch dish made of potatoes mashed with vegetables and garnished with meat or with cheese croquettes, pictured above. I tried the vegetarian hotchpotch with carrots, but kale, sauerkraut, sausage, bacon and liver are common ingredients. It may just be the best meal I’ve had in Amsterdam, and for under 20 Euro each including a shared bottle of wine and dessert, it may be also be one of the better dining deals in Western Europe.

Jimmy’s Corner is long and narrow, as if some great prophet looked at a hallway and said, I see a dimly lit saloon here, complete with an extended bar and walls plastered with photos of boxers. Opened in 1971 by erstwhile pugilist James Lee Glenn, Jimmy’s sits midblock on West 44th Street, between Sixth Avenue and Broadway, in Midtown Manhattan. Which is what makes this no-frills bar unique. It’s a classic American dive, and the only one around, a relic from when the Times Square area was more depravity than Disney. Bartenders, who can spot a near-empty glass with the eyes of a hawk, are friendly but gruff. Case in point: As a 50-something woman with spiky bleached blonde hair mixed me another whiskey soda, I nodded to the boxer-bedecked wall behind the bar and said to my friend, “They don’t really like boxing much here, do they?” The bartender looked down the bar, pointed her finger at me, and bellowed with a thick Russian accent, “He make feeble attempt at joke!” She might have been right. If you go to this watering hole, make sure you’re thirsty (drinks are cheap) and your jokes are not so feeble. This appeared in the August/September 2013 issue. Image courtesy of Shanna Ravindra

With only 48 hours to spend in Istanbul, you really don’t want to have a bad meal. Doing my research before we left, one place that kept turning up with names like “Best Meals of 2012,” My Last Meal on Earth Would Be,"—plus recommendations from trusted friends—was Çiya. After a leisurely morning wander around the seaside neighborhood of Ortaköy, we hopped on a ferry, grabbed a glass of hot tea, and headed to the Asian side of Istanbul. In Kadıköy we found young buskers playing traditional music on almost every corner, and vegetable and fish sellers shouting the praises of their wares. And all of the sidewalk cafes were full. Çiya is spread out over three locations. We had the difficult choice of choosing one of them. We picked Çiya kebap. We ordered a thin and spicy lahmacun—a kind of turkish pizza—to start and then moved on to our meaty mains: Ayvalý Taraklý, an intense dish of tiny lamb chops smothered in a pomegranate and fresh quince sauce; a classic kebap plate with hand-minced lamb with lots of fresh mint; Kağıt Kebap, a spicy hand-minced lamb and hot chili pepper kebab. We were seated on the second floor with a view of the original Çiya Sofrasi, and we watched as plates from the two restaurants were passed back and forth. After all that food, the sun broke through the clouds, and we headed back out to the streets—to the crowds of Sunday shoppers and the sounds of the muezzin call.

Come summer, locals flock to the tranquil patio for al fresco dining. The new chef is the likable Marc Quiñones, whose kitchen churns out Southwestern food with molecular gastronomy. Commence your meal with the award-winning tortilla soup or green chili scottish salmon tartare. For dinner, the seasonally changing menu features dishes like organic chicken with goat cheese polenta, and strawberry brined duck breast.