Someday soon, perhaps, lumache alla romana (plump snails braised in a spicy tomato sauce with mint) will disappear entirely from menus across Rome. At one time, snails were the centerpiece of a local ritual: Hungry Romans headed to suburban fields and vineyards to collect them in late June and cook them into this earthy, mildly piquant dish celebrating the feast day of Saint John the Baptist. It was a tradition unique to Rome, and snails were one of the things that defined cucina romana.

But Romans don't seem to care for snails anymore. Or liver and sweet caramelized onions. Or noodle soup with delicate hunks of tough-to-clean skate. Or many of the staple ingredients that once made Roman cuisine distinct. The city's trinity of traditional dining venues—the elegant ristorante, the rustic trattoria, and the bare-bones osteria—now competes with French bistros, gastropubs, all-you-can-eat promotions, fast-food chains, and an alarming number of mediocre burger joints offering plenty of variety but little substance. A proper Roman dinner once followed a prescribed ritual, a timeless pattern—the antipasto, the primo, the secondo, the contorno, and the dolce—and meals were long, wine-fueled events, portions were manageable, and when you booked a table it was yours for the night. Now, on the increasingly rare occasions when Romans go out for traditional fare, they eat fewer courses, drink less wine, and spend less time at the table. Trattoria owners are obliged to adapt or perish. Restaurants now serve super-sized pasta portions, they turn tables, and, thanks to the E.U.'s globalized food system, dishes often aren't made with the fresh, local ingredients that defined the flavors of the past.

The traditional foods of Rome are as worthy of protecting as any chapel or ancient relic.

There are a handful of culinary preservationists keeping the city's cuisine alive, thankfully—chefs and restaurant owners who are carrying on the traditions of their family-run restaurants. One is Claudio Gargioli. He's in his kitchen six days a week, buttoned into his gray chef's coat, emerging occasionally to greet regulars. You can see him from the dining room, moving around a broad iron stove, tossing pasta in warped aluminum pans, and seasoning gently simmering pots of oxtails. Since Claudio's father opened his eponymous trattoria, Armando al Pantheon, in 1961, three generations of Gargiolis have transformed this small family business into a Roman landmark known for its soulful renderings of cucina romana. When I sit in the dining room watching Claudio work, twirling his comforting spaghetti ajo, ojo, e peperoncino around a fork, the place, like the hulking mass of the neighboring Pantheon, feels gratifyingly constant, resistant to the evolution overtaking so much of the city.

Over the centuries, cucina romana has become a pillar of Rome's cultural patrimony, but by embracing a global approach to food, Rome risks losing this fundamental part of its identity—the incredible dishes that used to define the city's cuisine. The traditional foods and flavors of the city are a direct link to the past and are as precious and worthy of protecting as any piazza, chapel, or ancient relic. Here are some of Rome's classic restaurants and the timeless dishes they are saving.

Six Roman Classics

Trattoria al Moro: Lumache alla Romana

Lef: Andrea Wyner | Right: Matt Taylor-Gross

Trattoria al Moro; Rome

Helmed by four successive generations of Romagnolis since the 1920s, Trattoria al Moro serves this classic dish of snails cooked in a rich tomato ragu.

A ten-minute walk from the Pantheon—and about 300 feet from the Trevi Fountain—a window-paned door admits visitors to the time capsule that is Trattoria al Moro. Helmed by four successive generations of Romagnolis since the 1920s, the place began humbly, slowly building a reputation among actors at the nearby Teatro Quirino. In time, it became the haunt of local artists, performers, and filmmakers, including Federico Fellini, who cast Mario Romagnoli in his 1969 film Satyricon. It remains a destination for well-heeled, decades-long regulars who, in typical Roman style, receive special pampering from the notoriously aloof owners. Third-generation Franco Romagnoli and his children Elisabetta and Andrea are unwavering in their commitment to tradition, and they serve a huge array of forgotten classics in their three wood-paneled, overcrowded dining rooms. Lumache alla romana, snails cooked in a sauce spiked with anchovies, chile, and mint, is served exclusively around the Feast of Saint John the Baptist. The slightly spicy dish is now virtually absent from Roman tables, as snails, eels, and other fringe foods have fallen out of fashion.

See the recipe for Lumache alla Romana »

Checchino dal 1887: Garofolato

Andrea Wyner

Checchino dal 1887; Rome

Amid Tex-Mex restaurants and budget sushi, this trattoria stands apart, promoting traditional Roman fare like this veal cutlet slowly braised in a clove-spiked tomato sauce.

Leaving the centro storico and heading south to Testaccio, Checchino dal 1887 is where the Mariani family preserves and promotes historic dishes in the shadow of Monte dei Cocci, an archeological site composed of tens of millions of discarded terra-cotta jugs that were used to carry olive oil from Andalusia to Rome. Chef Elio Mariani serves one of the last surviving examples of garofolato, a dish named for its main seasoning, chiodi di garofano, cloves. Veal or beef eye of round (whichever is available from their purveyor that day) is simmered in a tomato sauce perfumed with a healthy dose of the dried spice, which isn't used as much as it used to be. “I think that cooking traditional food and continuing to do it against all odds is important,” Mariani says. “It's a safeguard that protects the very definition of being a real Roman.” His neighbors around Monte dei Cocci include American-style brunch spots, a budget sushi restaurant, and a place that doubles as a Tex-Mex restaurant and discoteca.

See the recipe for Garofolata »

Armando al Pantheon: Pere Cotte con le Prugne and Spaghetti Ajo, Ojo, e Peperoncino

Andrea Wyner

Armando al Pantheon; Rome

This Roman trattoria serves classic dishes like pears and prunes baked in red wine.

In the past, spaghetti ajo, ojo, e peperoncino (pasta coated with garlic and chile-infused oil) was a regular late-night staple. Long meals would end with this simple, subtly spicy dish, which was served after dessert. “It signaled the end of a meal,” says Claudio Gargioli, the chef at Armando al Pantheon. Now, he features it on his menu alongside popular primi like carbonara, gricia, and cacio e pepe, because a full-on Roman meal doesn't end with pasta anymore; it ends with dessert. Popular local sweets on the dessert menus around town have themselves been replaced by generic pan-Italian favorites like panna cotta and tiramisù, but remaining true to its roots, Armando al Pantheon serves the old-school Roman classic of pears and prunes baked with red wine. It's a rare example of the waning local custom of eating fiber-rich, digestion-aiding desserts that showcase the simple, sweet, and caramelized notes that were once typical.

See the recipe for Pere Cotte con la Prugne »
See the recipe for Spaghetti Ajo, Ojo, e Peperoncino »

Mordi e Vai: Fegato alla Macellara

Andrea Wyner

Mordi e Vai; Rome

This Roman market stall serves a wide range of meat-and-offal–centered dishes, including this calf's liver sandwich on crusty bread, slicked with caramelized onions and cherry tomatoes.

Mordi e Vai in the Testaccio Market attracts budget-conscious Romans hungry for hearty local flavors. Mara and Sergio Esposito and their son Giuliano opened the stall in 2012 when the Testaccio neighborhood's market was transferred to a modern building beside the former slaughterhouse. They make a dazzling range of meat-rich and offal-heavy recipes culled from the Esposito family archives, including fegato alla macellara (“butcher's style” liver cooked with onions and tomatoes), a nod to Sergio's previous gig at his family's butchery stall. The earthy and sweet onion-laden dish is a flavorful reminder of Testaccio's past, when slaughterhouse workers used every part of an animal. Liver, once a common ingredient, has fallen out of favor as Romans swap organs and poor cuts for more impressive, expensive ones.

See the recipe for Fegato alla Macellara »

Trattoria da Cesare: Minestra di Broccoli e Arzilla

Andrea Wyner

Left: A Roman trattoria | Right: Minestra di Broccoli e Arzilla

A restaurant near the Spanish Steps in Rome advertises traditional Roman cuisine. Across the city, Trattoria da Cesare serves an iconic fish and romanesco soup.

In the Gianicolense district, Leonardo Vignoli and Maria Pia Cicconi of Trattoria da Cesare serve a menu guided by the seasons, a feature of the cucina romana that is no longer a given. During the cool months, when romanesco is in season, da Cesare makes minestra di broccoli e arzilla. The soup, made with skate and romanesco, used to be a fixture on the Roman table, but as a greater variety of fish became available in the capital, skate, which is bony and cartilage-riddled, was abandoned for less labor-intensive species. Serving this delicious relic of Roman cuisine is particularly meaningful for Leonardo. “For me this recipe means anchoring a part of history in the present,” he tells me. “Often, if we change too much and too quickly without remembering where we come from, we risk putting the past on a shelf to collect dust and be forgotten.”

See the recipe for Minestra di Broccoli e Arzilla »

Hawk Krall

One of the best things to ever emerge from the deep fryer

Welcome to Hawk’s Illustrated America, a monthly series following illustrator Hawk Krall’s journeys through the back roads of the U.S. in search of our country’s most obscure and delicious regional specialties.

Part Native American, part Southwestern and Tex-Mex, part state fair-style deep-fried joy, frybread tacos are an oft-overlooked, sometimes controversial, and insanely delicious example of a regional American food born from cultures accidentally coming together.

Imagine the ground beef, lettuce, and grated cheddar of a hard-shell taco wrapped in the puffy embrace of an unsweetened funnel cake, with the occasional touch of Southwestern ingredients like blue corn or green chile. As with a good Philly cheesesteak or giant pastrami sandwich, it’s impossible to eat a frybread taco neatly, but when it’s done right you don’t mind the dribbles all over your shirt, and you’ll wonder why you can’t get anything like it outside the frybread belt between Arizona and South Dakota.

But if you have your pick of places, start with Navajo Hogan in Salt Lake City, which makes some of the nation’s best.

Navajo Hogan started as a video game arcade and pool hall called “The Farmers Place” in a cinder block box near the local high school. The business didn’t do too well, so in 1989, Marcie and Bill Espinoza changed the focus to food, and opted for frybread tacos as a way to differentiate themselves from the area’s Mexican restaurants and to honor their Mexican and Tewa Pueblo heritage. Then they brought in local artists to design the logo and paint murals—including famed Navajo artist Andrew Warren—and paid them in tacos.

It’s impossible to eat a frybread taco neatly, but when it’s done right you don’t mind the dribbles all over your shirt.

Frybread is a staple of the Southwest, found everywhere from sit-down restaurants to state fairs, roadside stands and legit Najavo pow-wows. It’s a simple dough fried until puffy and crisp, and when you cover it in honey butter and powdered sugar, or chokeberry wojapi, or mutton stew, or ground beef or green chile (the latter are typical frybread taco trimmings), it’s quite possibly one the most delicious things you can ever put in your mouth.

Navajo people originally used maize for their breads, until processed white wheat flour was forced on them by U.S. government rations, from which the modern frybread was born. Many Native Americans now deride frybread as a symbol of cultural appropriation and oppression, especially for the health problems associated with consuming it regularly (Native American reservations report some of the country's highest concentrations of diabetes).

But for some, frybread is a longstanding symbol of Native culture and pride, from Inuit assaleeak, similar to the Navajo version, to sopapillas, popular from Chile to Mexico and the American Southwest. And in the case of the frybread taco, frybread becomes a vehicle for binding diverse cultures together. You can get almost anything under the sun on frybread—hamburgers, hot dogs, deli sandwiches—but nothing has outdone the popularity of the taco.

Hawk Krall

Outside Navajo Hogan

Navajo Hogan does both sweet and savory frybread, including the Tex-Mex classic of ground beef and pinto chili beans as well as the more Southwestern green chili frybread taco. The beans start with pintos, ground beef, a secret blend of spices, and little to no tomatoes, that are simmered all day long in a big pot. They’re simple and classic, but with a powerful depth of flavor that comes from the experience of making beans for decades.

For their tart and spicy green chili, the Espinozas make an annual trip back home to Albuquerque to stock up on New Mexico chiles, which they mix with pork, garlic, and onion. Navajo Hogan also does shredded beef and chicken tacos, and all of these options come topped with the standard dressing of chopped tomatoes, iceberg lettuce, shredded cheese, sour cream, and the salsa of your choice. For something more Navajo, there’s Mutton stew, a Navajo comfort food favorite, hearty, satisfying with a pleasant gaminess; it’s a special on Saturdays that often sells out before noon.

In addition to the standard white flour, Hogan also offers blue and red corn frybread for any of their dishes, something you don’t see too often, inspired by a trip to the Blue Bird Flour Mill in Colorado, where the Espinozas get all their flour and pinto beans. And you really can’t leave without trying the dessert frybread, which starts with the same dough as the savory kinds but adds a blizzard of powered sugar, cinnamon, honey butter.

I’ve tried to recreate their frybread at home, a dead simple recipe with only four ingredients—flour, baking powder, salt, and water—to no avail. The Espinozas insist part of their magic is the super-fine, high-gluten Bluebird flour they use, but it’s mainly about technique: nailing the consistency after years of practice. Navajo Hogan makes each taco by hand fresh to order, which is crucial for good frybread. They stretch balls of dough in a process called “flapping,” similar to tossing pizza dough, and drop them in clean fryer oil for a few minutes. They also prick a hole in the middle of the bread while it fries to “release evil spirits” and ensure it cooks evenly.

Navajo Hogan has been going strong for more than 25 years, and they haven’t expanded the business except for a few catering gigs and a 2013 pop-up in Philadelphia with their son Marcos, a food writer, and local chef Lucio Palazzo. Hundreds of people lined up for a taste of their tacos then, and Marcos says he’d love to expand the business to Philly full time. “People still don't really know about it, and nobody (besides me) is really preaching its gospel.”

Navajo Hogan
447 3300 S, Salt Lake City, UT
(801) 466-2860

Hawk Krall is an artist, illustrator, and former line cook with a lifelong obsession for unique regional cuisine, whose work can be seen in magazines, newspapers, galleries, and restaurants all over the world. He focuses on editorial illustration, streetscapes, and pop-art style food paintings.

Pamela Farrell

Mussels from the White Horse Inn

Under the low-slung winter light that embraces England in January, I pick my way through a pot of local mussels at The White Horse Inn. This time of year, the best meals along England’s Norfolk coast are strictly mussel-bed-to-table. And as I look out through the restaurant’s cathedral-like glass conservatory, just yards away I spot the beds where my own meal fattened on a feast of rich North Sea nutrients for the last 18 to 24 months.

Norfolk has long been a summer retreat famous for sailing on the “broads” and beaches that wrap halfway around the county. But in the stillness of winter, cold-water mussels take over menus along the north coast, making February and March the perfect time for a quiet retreat. Many restaurants close in January while decorators smarten up the dining rooms, and chefs return from their post-Christmas sabbatical simmering with new ideas even as they carry on the traditions that have drawn visitors out of London to taste what’s cooking out on the edge of England.

“We try to keep it simple,” Fran Hartshorne, The White Horse head chef, tells me in typical English understatement as I’m halfway through her mussels with a particularly Anglo flare: a little celery, a little English thyme, a splash of white wine, and lashings of rich English double cream (that’s 48% butterfat to American heavy cream’s 36%).

On Monday nights, I discover the particularly English passion for the spice of cuisines from warmer climes. Mussels are robed in almond milk, raisins, and ras al hanout or turn Thai with chiles, ginger, and lemongrass. Then there’s “The Local”: the north coast’s session pale ale, Brancaster Best, swimming with a triumvirate of Norfolk bacon, Dapple cheese, and Colman’s (native to Norfolk) mustard.

Pamela Farrell

Cyril and Ben Southerland harvesting their mussels

But it all starts in those beds just at the bottom of the restaurant’s garden. “We’re slaves to the tide,” jokes Ben Southerland, the fifth-generation mussel farmer in a family business that stretches back a good century. He and his father Cyril still keep those beds alive with mussels like no others.

Until the 1990’s, most of these mussels left the county and headed off to industrial cities like Nottingham or Leicester. “They were a working man’s pleasure,” says Southerland, and as the day ended, factory workers grabbed bags from market stalls to take home for dinner. But then, chefs along the Norfolk coast became interested in making the most of what they could get locally. And word spread that this quiet English county had some amazing food on the menu.

These bed-grown Norfolk mussels are distinct from industrially produced rope-grown mussels that spend their life constantly suspended deep in the water column. Because they live most of their lives right where the land meets the sea, Norfolk mussels drink up high tide and dry out in low. They adapt to the ebb and flow and have a hearty character that gives them a slightly longer shelf life once harvested.

Then when it’s time for harvesting, “it’s all done in the same way it was in my great grandfather’s time,” says Southerland. While rope-grown mussels are mechanically harvested, and while national dealers trade in tonne-size bags, “we are handpicking more or less every mussel,” and grading each by hand to ensure “only the best go to the customer.”

Jamie Maxwell

A mussel and dashi canapé from Titchwell Manor

Southerland also supplies an old school friend, Eric Snaith, chef-owner at Titchwell Manor. Snaith plays with the classic British dish, beef and oysters, dressing a slow braised beef shin with “that salty taste of the sea” mussels offer. And in one-bite canapes, mussels come out of their shell, get a splash of hot and sour dashi, and are served on spoons for a single bite.

Farther west along the coast, at Michelin-starred The Neptune, chef-owner Kevin Mangeolles confesses that when it comes to mussels, "I never really liked eating with my hands, so I thought I'd refine it a bit." He whisks seaweed butter into mussel broth and serves the meaty bivalve as a garnish for sea bass alongside potato gnocchi.

It’s hard to beat a winter’s afternoon tucked up in front of the fire with a massive pot of mussels and something choice from the cellar of The Hoste. (The small is big and the large is incredible.) It’s the definition of snug at this sixteenth century “hostelry”—a good old-fashioned word that delivers food, drink, and a place for weary travellers to rest.

As the winter winds come in off the North Sea, these restaurants make me feel a little like a medieval pilgrim. They offer rooms as well as the local speciality done perfectly. (At the Deepdale Cafe, a kind of casual roadside place where you can get the mussel lunch deal along with sausage rolls, jacket potatoes, and tea and cake, you can stay over with friends in the hostel or book the heated shepherd’s hut.) The tide rolls out, you rock up to a casserole of steaming mussels fresh out of their bed, and then roll off to your own.

Where to Get Your Mussel Fix

The White Horse Inn
Brancaster Staithe, Norfolk PE31 8BY
+44 (0) 1485 210262

Titchwell Manor
Titchwell Manor, Titchwell, Near Brancaster, Norfolk PE31 8BB
+44 (0) 1485 210221

The Neptune
85 Old Hunstanton Road, Old Hunstanton, Norfolk, PE36 6HZ
+44 (0) 1485 532122

The Hoste
The Green, Burnham Market King's Lynn, Norfolk PE31 8HD
+44 (0) 1328 738777

Deepdale Cafe
Dalegate Market, Main Road, Burnham Deepdale PE31 8FB
+44 (0) 1485 210200

Daniel Holzman

The counter at Ippuku

In Asia, drinking-food (and drinking properly with food) is an art form. So welcome to Asian Drinking Food Adventures, where Dan Holzman, chef-owner of The Meatball Shop, and Matt Rodbard, author of the Koreatown cookbook, seek out the best food from bars, izakayas, pojangmachas, and then some.

Grilled chicken is one of the single best foods known to man. Name a non-vegetarian nation that doesn’t boast a delicious grilled chicken recipe? Nearly impossible. And of all the nations, of all the grilled chickens, one stands above the rest: Japan.

In Japan, there is no job unworthy of mastery and attention to detail. In Japan, an artisan can bring art to any craft, from cooking knives to getting drunk, elevating it from mundane to spectacular and worthy of notice. And when that attention is turned to the otherwise ordinary task of grilling chicken, an artform called yakitori (translation: “grilled bird”) emerges.

A single chicken can yield 33 cuts of meat, and in Japan people eat virtually everything but the feathers. The cuts are then skewered on wooden or metal skewers, sometimes with vegetables, sometimes alone. And then the grilling over charcoal begins, meticulously turning, dipping, seasoning and basting—each skewer cooked to its absolute optimal potential—and immediately served piping-hot.

Daniel Holzman

Ippuku in Berkeley

Chicken grilled this carefully needs nothing more than a dusting of salt, but some parts get glazed with tare, a sweet and smoky barbecue-like sauce made from soy sauce, mirin, and mizuame (Japanese maltose). Sometimes the chicken sticks are served with a dollop of yuzu koshu (chile and Japanese citrus rind), or a small pile of chile pepper and a lemon wedge.

The best yakitori we’ve had this side of Japan (and possibly even including Japan) isn’t exactly a secret (it’s on a busy street in Berkeley, CA). It’s also not cheap, or particularly hospitable. But damn does that chicken commit itself to memory. Welcome to Ippuku.

Over five years ago in his influential San Francisco Chronicle column, restaurant critic Michael Bauer wrote about the restaurant with a bit of astonishment. “This is the first place I know in the Bay Area that serves shochu, sake, and beer, but not even one wine,” he noted in his three-star dispatch.

This was way back in 2010, which in retrospect seems like the Dark Ages given the recent renaissance of traditional Japanese soul cooking in the Bay Area. Today, the currents of shochu and sake flow swiftly—and as equals alongside craft beers in the dozens of sushi bars, izakayas, and ramen shops that stretch from the south bay to Berkeley and beyond. But Ipukko still stands out.

Matt Taylor-Gross

Chicken meatballs and miso-butter sweet potatoes

Ipukko’s 2009 opening was the work of Christian Geideman, a Bay Area pioneer and master of the ancient Japanese practice of getting shitfaced and eating wonderful things deep-fried and served on sticks. And it was on a recent winter evening that we found ourselves in town, and in the mood for what his restaurant ultimately does best: chicken.

After settling in our booth, having walked past a prominent “no photos” sign and an advanced-level selection of Japanese whisky beyond the usual Nikka and Yamazaki, we rubbed our chilly hands and got down business. First off, a round of massive mugs of Sapporo (which arrived almost instantly), and then lots of chicken.

Dan took control of the menu, and what landed on the table felt like an omakase on steroids; you’ll be glad to know that there were no steroids used in the Hoffman Farms poultry that landed plate after plate after plate. Teba (wing), shiro (intestine), nankotsu (cartilage), sunagimo (gizzard), negima (chicken and negi, a mild Japanese leek), toriniku (white meat chunks) were among the many courses that were equally exquisite, each bite representing the ideal preparation suited for an exact cut.

There was a respite from the chicken when ginnan (ginko balls) arrived, and other tasty vegetable course interspersed throughout the meal were equally delicious. We include a recipe for steamed sweet potatoes with miso butter, which captures the flavors of the Japan in one giant tuber. But our favorite two dishes of the night were the tsukune (meatballs, for which Dan has an obvious affinity) served traditionally with a raw egg yolk floating in a shallow dish of tare. The recipe we developed is both easy to execute, and more approachable than, say, our our absolute favorite: bonjiri, chicken tail, which is really more the terminus of the bird’s GI tract. Yes, out of all the chicken’s wonderful cuts, we loved the ass. And ordered it over and over.

See the recipe for Chicken and Ginger Meatballs »
See the recipe for Sweet Potatoes with Miso Butter »

Ippuku
2130 Center Street, Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 665-1969

Daniel Holzman is the Brooklyn-based chef and owner of The Meatball Shop. Matt Rodbard is a writer living in Brooklyn and the author of Koreatown: A Cookbook.

Philipp Engelhorn

A member of the Kituyi family sorting through the day's catch.

Zoya Village, Kitale, Kenya — December 25, 2005

The children, giggling, scooped up handfuls of the winged termites—known as “white ants”—that were pouring out from the ground in droves. My friend and I had driven seven hours on a dusty road from Nairobi to a small village in the brush of western Kenya to meet with the Kituyi family, one of many who have made a tradition of gathering these insects, most abundant during the rainy season, and eating them fresh or fried and mixed with rice.

It was dusk, the ideal time to summon the bugs. The family led us to the harvest site by their home in the wide Rift Valley, where they laid down wooden branches and built little mud traps around the holes of the ant mounds. As they began drumming against the wood to imitate the sound of rain, the ants rushed from the ground, forming jittery piles in the little traps.

Following the example of those around me, I snatched the insects from the ground or the air by their wings and took a taste. The flavor was slightly sweet and the texture surprisingly pleasant. With the children scampering about, all of them home from school for the holidays, there was a jovial air to that evening meal, maybe because of the kindness of the Kituyis, or maybe because my dinner, for the first time, was flitting through the air and flapping in my mouth.

Kate McCulley

Nicaragua's Little Corn (pictured here) and Big Corn islands were British colonies until the late 1800s, remaining culturally distinct from the Spanish-influenced mainland.

It's not easy getting to Little Corn Island. The challenge is part of the charm. At least that's what my girlfriend, Danielle, and I tell ourselves as we step onto the ferry, neither of us quite noticing that it isn't really a ferry, but a working ship transporting thousands of gallons of gasoline. As the boat chugs into stomach-turning swells, diesel fumes fill the cramped passenger hold.

Seeking fresh air outside, I watch three men trolling for fish off the back of the boat, each clutching salt-crusted hand-lines. On a bench between greasy fuel drums, a gray-haired German man in wire-rim glasses has wedged himself into a child-sized life vest and stares grimly at the heaving horizon. One errant spark, his fierce look says to me, and we all go down together.

Ten miles and two-and-a-half hours later we enter the calm of Little Corn's protected harbor. Just as we do a springtime squall opens overhead. The rain falls in gray curtains and a dozen teenage boys scramble onto the ship with wooden planks they use to roll the gasoline barrels off the deck and plunk them into the glassy water below.

Danielle chose Little Corn Island as a vacation spot where the two of us could escape New York's pressure, structure, and noise. There are no taxis honking on this one square mile of land, no streetlights flashing. Electricity runs only at night. We've come for the sounds of waves, the rattling of wind in the palms, and not much else.

What we weren't expecting on this dot of sea-sprayed jungle and sand is compelling food. In most resort destinations, isolation brings overpriced and underwhelming tourist fare. But here, where the local languages include Spanish, an English patois, Garifuna, and the indigenous Miskito, we find a cuisine that is both proudly self-sustaining and utterly fresh. The majority of the food is grown on the islands—bananas, tomatoes, breadfruit, cassava, other tubers—or fished from the surrounding clear turquoise waters. Soon we find ourselves on an unexpected culinary expedition, slurping down fresh coconut juice and inhaling simply prepared ceviche at every turn.

Off the boat, we take refuge under the covered porch of the first restaurant in sight, Miss Bridget's, remove our packs, and grab a table. We order two cold Toñas and some curried yellowtail snapper, which comes with a side of crispy golden tostones (twice-fried plantains). As with most meals over the next five days, lunch blurs the lines between a commercial transaction and simply eating at someone's home. The bathroom for customers is next to the family's outdoor washboard and drying lines. The veranda at Miss Bridget's, we realize as we sip our beers, is also simply Bridget's veranda.

We dip our tostones in the curried milk and are stunned. The silky-spicy sauce, the flaky fresh snapper, the crunch of the tostones—how is this food so good? As we sop up the last drops of broth, a man in an American-flag T-shirt at an adjacent table introduces himself. This is Bridget's husband, Elvis, a fisherman, who offers to take us trolling for barra (barracuda), king fish (king mackerel), and snapper. Fish and shellfish are plentiful on Little Corn. Spiny lobsters dominate the market—their season runs from midsummer to early spring and is an economic cornerstone—and during the annual August Emancipation Day festival, locals catch blue forest crabs and cook huge pots of crab soup packed with plantains and yucca, all swimming in a rich coconut broth. Elvis tells us that Bridget will cook whatever we catch. The melody of his baritone has the ring of gospel. How could we say no? We make a date for later that week, sling our packs on our backs, and head into the rain-cooled jungle.

Michael Ames

At Derek's Place on Little Corn's north shore, Rachel Rebeca Sambola López preps a pot of rundown soup with fresh coconut bread on the side for sopping up the rich broth.

There are no cars on Little Corn—the only “highways” are paved wheelbarrow paths through the Village and Caribe Town. For back roads, miles of dirt trails crisscross mango forests and dead-end at rocky bluffs and coconut grove beaches. Mangoes litter the forest floor in rotting piles—we pick the good ones for tomorrow's breakfast, a kind of island grocery shopping I could get used to. The revolting noni fruit is also ubiquitous. These “hog apples” rot in mucus-colored stains on the ground and smell uncannily like blue-cheese dressing warming in the sun. But the noni fruit is also a sworn tonic for hangovers. At Yemaya, the island's lone upscale resort, they are blended with coconut and cinnamon into a palatable but pungent noni-colada.

Aimless walks and random snacks give structure to our days. We wander into Miss Esther's kitchen, a home-bakery hybrid, where a TV on a high shelf plays cartoons and we buy oven-warm coconut bread that smells like toasted coconut oil. We hide in the shade at Alfonso's as his wife presses star fruits into juice from trees in their own backyard. We follow the sounds of reggae to the weekly baseball game, where women sell us peppery fried chicken behind the bleachers and an 8-year-old boy plies the crowd with his mom's spiced beef patties, stuffed in golden-orange cornmeal pockets. Habana Libre, a Cuban standout near the harbor, serves the most delicious ceviche we have ever tasted.

Justin Walker

Nicaraguan "Rundown" Seafood Soup

Meant to be a catchall for the day's available seafood, rundown showcases whatever's freshest at the fish market along with tubers in a slightly sweet coconut milk broth.

At Derek's Place, the mini-resort of Ewok-esque bamboo palapas that we call home on the island's north shore, a cook, Rachel Rebeca Sambola López, introduces us to the local version of “rundown.” The dish is common throughout the Caribbean, but recipes differ; in Jamaica, rundown is a slow-cooked coconut custard. On the Corn Islands and along Nicaragua's east coast, it is more like a Creole bouillabaisse, a heady broth of spices and fresh-pressed coconut milk simmered with whatever seafood the cook finds when she “runs down” to the harbor market.

“This is our food,” López says with evident pride. The golden broth she makes starts with a coconut milk base cooked down with onion, garlic, sweet pepper, curry leaf, chiles, and fresh oregano. Cassava and breadfruit are added, and finally the different types of fish she bought earlier that day at the market.

“Rundown is a hearty food,” she lilts in her Garifuna song. “When you eat, it sits heavy in your stomach.”

We try a second version at Darinia's Kitchen, where Darinia Jeanneth Bonilla Estrada has turned her modest patio into a cozy and casually charming destination. Hers, a consommé of fish broth and salty-sweet clarified coconut milk, is an elegant interpretation. She adds herbs, carrots, shrimp, and, on the night we visit, two types of fresh-caught local fish.

On one of our last days, we meet up with Elvis, as planned, to go fishing at dawn. Danielle reels in a fearsome-looking 15-pound barracuda, and with fillets to spare, we head back to Bridget's. The cook suggests barra Caribbean-style—seared and flash-roasted in spiced coconut milk, the same flavors as rundown, but prepared sans broth. After we order, we see Bridget walk out the back door with a young green coconut and a huge machete. This is slow food. We order two more Toñas and sit back. There is nothing more to do, nothing else to see. We look out at the harbor, look back at one another, and think long and hard about nothing at all.

See the recipe for Nicaraguan "Rundown" Seafood Soup »

Naomi Tomky

The tea bushes at Amba share land with fruit trees, both for the estate's remarkable jam and to encourage biodiversity and healthier soil.

Sri Lanka, a small island off the southern tip of India, shimmers with natural beauty. Sandy beaches stretch forever and high green hills cascade toward the warm Indian Ocean. And from the Buddhist temples on high hills down to the sea-level remains of a Dutch colonial fort, verdant slopes show off the country’s most notable export.

Tea is big business in Sri Lanka, and the local tea trade sings a siren call to tourists. Guide books recommend trips to plantations. Tea the Sri Lankan way is a whole Thing to Experience, like the island’s hulking crabs and lacy-edged hoppers. Unfortunately, most of the tea factories dotting the traveler’s path leave a bad taste in the mouth—literally and metaphorically. What the guide books leave out—what I had to experience first-hand—is that most of that tea, broken down by clanking machines that wither, dry, and roll the leaves, just isn’t that good. Neither are most of the formulaic plantation tours, or, for that matter, the way those plantations treat their workers.

But for those willing to go the extra mile (or three) to try the extraordinary, there is Amba Tea Estate. In 2010, as part of the redevelopment of the struggling farm, new owners brought on Beverly Wainwright, a former aid worker, to makeover the operation. With an eye toward social justice in a land steeped in political and ethnic tension, Amba blends high quality tea with the goal of improving lives of its employees.

Naomi Tomky

A young tea leaf and bud

Tea plantations are known for paying workers comically low wages while not investing in their growth. In 2014, Amba became the first tea estate in Sri Lanka to share revenue with all employees. It trains tea workers in multiple tasks, giving them new skills—and opportunities for better jobs down the line. A tour of the estate and stay at the bungalow offers visitors a genuine chance to learn about this remarkable beverage and the dramatic landscape that produces it.

The extra mile pays off. With its hand-rolled orange pekoe, Amba is making some of the best tea in Sri Lanka. Where most commodity tea is sold at bulk auction in the city of Colombo, Amba sells directly to specialty shops like Harney & Sons and Canton Tea Co. It has more in common with the single origin coffee you buy in hip cafes than a bag of Lipton.

I had no plans for my morning in the slow-moving hill station of Ella when I sat down for breakfast at Waterfalls, my hotel. I dug into my fresh buffalo curd (think the flavor of fresh cream with the texture of yogurt), but it was the mango-ginger jam I spread on my toast that changed the course of my day. When I asked Waterfalls’ proprietress about it, she wove me a tale of the tea estate “right nearby” that produced it, called Amba.

“Ten kilometers away” means very little when it comes to travel in Sri Lanka. Gazing out from the porch as she pointed, I wondered if I could walk across the valley faster than my driver could get me there (driving oneself as a foreigner in Sri Lanka can be near suicidal, and renting a car with a driver is almost the same price as the car alone). After an hour of bumpy driving down single-lane dirt switchbacks and just a few close encounters with buses, we arrived at Amba—thanks mainly to the magical combination of GPS on my phone, rough directions (turn at the bus stop, look for the sign for Misty Mountain Hotel), and dumb luck.

Naomi Tomky

Karuna shows a full-grown leaf

Tea leaves sunned themselves on screens atop the corrugated metal roof of the factory building at Amba. My plantation guide, Karuna (who’s also the field manager and the fifth-generation of a family working this estate), gently chided me for not removing my sandals when entering—shoes introduce dirt to the slow process of withering, the first step in converting the leaves into tea. Workers tend constantly to a wood-fired dryer. A machine rolls leaves, but only some of Amba’s products ever see the inside of it: Many of Amba’s higher grade leaves are rolled by hand, protecting the delicate buds, and limiting breakage for a more delicate and nuanced brew. From picking to packing, there’s hardly a moment when someone isn’t carefully handling the leaves.

If that sounds expensive, that’s because it is. The price difference between Amba and bulk tea nearly stupefies. An extended withering time and stringent quality standards means a price gap between $5 and $85 for 100 grams.

A sip of amber-hued, hand-rolled OP1 black tea (a grade based on the size and leaf used) buzzes with honey sweetness and a spark of citrus, even when I drink the tea neat, and it lacks the bitter bite of lesser Sri Lankan brews I choked down elsewhere. Even for an amateur taster, the difference is palpable on the tongue: smooth as the glimmering tea leaves from which it comes, refreshing as cool coconut water sipped straight from the fruit on a muggy Sri Lankan afternoon.

Picking tea leaves is thankless work, and it is—when done right—precise, skilled labor. Amba is the rare place on the island that produces green tea. While black tea can be mechanically sorted post-oxidizing, leaves for green tea need to be pre-sorted for top-quality leaves (just the top two leaves from a branch) prior to processing, since they don't go through the oxidation process. That means picking with nearly 100% precision. At a bulk tea facility, a manager told me that he aims for pickers to get 70% of the picked tea to be those top-notch leaves, but in reality, he’ll settle for 50%, because at least then he’s gathering in tea. When it comes to Sri Lankan tea, the best comes from the bud and top two or three leaves on a shoot, all at a Goldilocks stage of maturity: old enough that the bud is unfurled, not yet woody with age.

Naomi Tomky

White Champagne stars tea brews while an hourglass keeps track of the steeping time.

As I strolled through the tea fields at Amba, I paused to gaze at guavas and mangos, poke at the coffee cherries, and peel bark from a cinnamon tree. All are inter-planted among the rows of stately tea trees, serving a secondary function by helping fix nitrogen in the soil. (A stark contrast from the tea-bush monocultures of other plantations.) Amba also packages their cinnamon and coffee and makes jam from the fruit.

After wandering and tasting my way through the jam-making facilities, I sat down to a tasting in a century-old plantation house with white-washed walls and fat chairs made of old wood and leather. A tea expert came out and walked me through each of the teas and other brews: a black “thieves” tea (named because it was originally made from lower grade leaves taken home--stolen--by workers on the estates), white Champagne tea stars, a lemongrass tisane, and my favorite, the OP1: a light-bodied black tea hand-rolled into delicate needles that gently unfurl in the pot.

It was a luxurious experience—open to anyone who can find the estate, and, theoretically free—if you don’t count the $50 (US) that I spent on tea, jam, cinnamon, mustard, and other related gifts at the store on our way out. In return, I’d been free to take photos of everything from the nearby hills (including Lipton’s Seat, a tea country emblem) to the mango-ginger jam recipe that inspired the trip in the first place.

I left Amba with regret that I couldn't stay longer: I could have used a day to wander the estate in its entirety, another to hike the hill and watch the sunrise. A third to watch the jam-making, a fourth to see the hand-sewing of the pouches in which the tea is sold by residents at a nearby psychiatric hospital. And, perhaps, a week to sip tea and sink into the slow pace of life in the hill country.

Visiting Amba

Amba Estate is about 45 minutes from the town of Ella, which is well served by buses and trains. To get to the estate, there are buses from Ella, or you can hire a tuk tuk or driver. Call ahead to check for availability on the tours, though they are given most mornings at 11 a.m., at no cost.

What Else to Do in Ella

Barely more than a football-field length strip of shops, Ella mostly caters to tourists hopping off the train for a quick stop: the town itself offers little activity. But a breakfast of fresh woodapple juice and buffalo curd at the Curd Shop will set you up for a day of hiking to Ella Rock for panoramic views of tea country. Follow it up with a drive to (or a stop on your way back into Ella from Amba) Ravana Ella waterfalls—but hold on tight to your fruit: The monkeys won't hesitate to steal that mango right out of your hand.

Where to Stay

Amba also offers lodging on the estate for those in search of a very rural getaway. For more of a small-town feel, Waterfalls is in the town of Ella, about 45 minutes away.

Where to Buy Amba Estate Tea

Harney & Sons
A Thirst for Tea
Canton Tea Co.
Single Origin Tea

Naomi Tomky is a Seattle-based food and travel writer. Learn more about her at The GastroGnome.

Alex Testere

All the ways to eat Baltimore

Let’s get this out of the way: Baltimore’s nickname may be Charm City, but when it comes to food, the world pretty much thinks of it as Crab City. And when visitors to Baltimore say crab, they’re usually thinking of one of two things: whole steamed crabs and big crab cakes.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with either of these. If you’re visiting Baltimore, you really should feast on at least one big platter of steamed blue crabs (Bo Brooks down by the water is a reliable bet, while C. J.’s way out in suburban Owings Mills is a little-known sleeper). Crab cakes of wildly varying quality can be found in just about every restaurant in town, but the version served at the Faidley’s stand in Lexington Market is the city’s standard-bearer. Don’t skimp: get the top-of-the-line all lump cake, not the cheaper backfin or regular version. It’s a massive sphere the size of a baseball composed of big nuggets of blue crab meat bound by just a touch of mayo and mustard and a sprinkling of crushed Saltines—and that’s all a crab cake needs.

But if you want to do Baltimore right, there are plenty of other ways enjoy the local crab, for Baltimoreans are prone to put crab meat inside of or on top of just about anything. Crab pretzels are a relatively recent innovation, but they’re now omnipresent on local pub grub menus. For a representative take, visit the Silver Spring Mining Company in Cockeysville, which claims to have invented the thing. It’s a soft, chewy pretzel layered with crab dip and cheese then tossed in the oven till everything is hot and melted into a thick, gooey mass.

Alex Testere

Half and Half Crab Soup

If you prefer your crab in soup form, the city offers two signature versions. The one known simply as crab soup is a tomato-based broth loaded with chunks of vegetables—potatoes, onions, corn, beans—and plenty of blue crab meat. There’s also cream of crab—a thick, rich white soup studded with blue crab meat and a dose of Old Bay. If you can’t decide between the two, just order a “half and half.” When combined in a single bowl, the two soups merge into a pale orange bisque-like blend that’s downright delicious. You can try the combination out at Seaside Restaurant south of Baltimore, an easy detour when you're heading to or coming from BWI Airport. Downtown near the water in Fells Point, a cup of half and half at Kooper’s is a great prelude to one of the tavern’s hefty burger.

Alex Testere

Crab Fluffs

The crab fluff is virtually unheard of outside of Maryland and somewhat controversial within it (some locals love it, others don’t see the appeal). It's a crab cake that’s been battered and given a dunk in the deep fryer, resulting in a crisp golden sphere with gooey crab inside. The “hard fry” or “fried hard crab” carries things a step further. Cooks take a whole blue crab (sometimes steamed, sometimes uncooked), stuff a crab cake into the cleaned body cavity, then dredge the whole thing in a thick seasoned batter and deep fry it. Greasy, spicy, crunchy, and decidedly space alien in appearance, it’s definitely a form of novelty food. But you won’t find anything like it in Charleston or Boston. Something of an old-school indulgence, hard-fried crabs are getting increasingly rare, but they’re still battering up both crab fluffs and hard fries at Bo Brooks Restaurant and out at Ocean Pride in Lutherville.

Alex Testere

Fried Hard Crab

Baltimore’s cuisine may start at crabs, but it by no means ends there. Just stop by Attman’s Deli, which is located on a stretch of Lombard Street that bears the nickname “Corned Beef Row,” once the heart of Baltimore’s Jewish immigrant community. Attman’s one of the last of the old guard delis still standing, and while its fare is decidedly New York in style, amid the corned beef and knishes you can find an authentic Baltimore treats known as the coddie.

Alex Testere

Coddie

These are flattened potato patties flavored with salt cod, shaped by hand and deep fried till golden brown. Typically served with saltine crackers and yellow mustard, coddies were once a popular afternoon snack in the city’s soda fountains, where they sold for a nickel apiece. They’ll run you $1.69 each at Attman’s today, but for a quick, filling snack that’s still quite a deal.

Alex Testere

Berger Cookies

Even older are Berger Cookies, which have been local favorites for more than a century. Henry Berger immigrated from Germany to the in 1835 and opened a bakery in East Baltimore. Sometime in the 19th century the firm began selling what quickly became its signature cookie: a thin, oblong disk of shortbread, one half of which is hand-dipped in a thick layer chocolate fudge. Berger’s distinctive red boxes can be found in groceries and convenience stores all over the Baltimore area, and you can pick them up at the Berger’s Bakery stall in the Lexington Market, too.

For me, though, Baltimore’s premier local treasure is pit beef. The beef in question is a roast—usually top or bottom round—grilled directly over a hot charcoal fire, the pit man turning each hunk repeatedly so the outside gets a crisp char but the beef remains rare in the middle. It’s shaved to order on a big slicer, the tender folds of beef piled high on a roll. Some locals dress theirs with mayonnaise or barbecue sauce, but the traditional toppings are sliced raw onions and “tiger sauce,” a punchy blend of horseradish and mayo.

Alex Testere

Pit Beef

Most pit beef joints are small, somewhat casual operations—many just cash-only takeout stands. They first sprang up in the industrial district on the east side of Baltimore, but in recent years they have migrated westward around the I-695 Beltway. Chaps Pit Beef, the city’s best known purveyor, remains the lone holdout along Pulaski Highway, which once was dotted with stands.

These days, the epicenter of Pit Beef is the junction of I-70 and I-695. At Pioneer Pit Beef, a tiny yellow building with a steep-sloping green roof location, customers enter through one door, place their order at the counter, and exit with their foil-wrapped prize: tender, juicy beef loaded up on a Kaiser roll. Just two exits south on I-695, Kirkwood Pitbeef piles its beef—and its pit ham, pit turkey, and barbecue pork, too—on a smooth-topped roll. Both stands serve their iconic sandwiches with splendid boardwalk-style hand-cut fries.

Alex Testere

Lake Trout

Equally distinctive, though now seemingly in decline, is the curiously-named lake trout. Insiders note that it’s neither trout nor from a lake (it’s actually ocean-caught whiting, which itself is the local market name for silver hake). The bone-in fish are rolled in a cracker or cornmeal batter, deep fried, and served with white bread and hot sauce. Generally it’s a take out food, wrapped in foil or in a styrofoam box, and most versions are spicy and quite bone-laden, requiring a practiced maneuver to slip the meat off the spine without winding up with a mouthful of bones.

The Roost on Reisterstown Road was once the city’s best-known lake trout outlet, but after a several years of slipping it’s now gone for good. Your best bet for finding lake trout is to keep an eye out for a sign in a storefront window, for it’s sold in fried chicken and seafood spots all over town. The many fishmonger stands in the Lexington Market are good options, too. Be sure to wash it down with a half and half. Not to be confused with the soup, it’s what people elsewhere else call an Arnold Palmer—a blend of lemonade and iced tea.

The closing of former icons like the Roost suggest are just one of many warning signs that Baltimore’s distinctive local foodways are at risk of fading away. In just the past few years, many of the old stalwarts of the local seafood scene have closed their doors, too, like Gunnings Seafood in Hanover and Sterling’s in the Lexington Market. The last Polock Johnny’s, once a small local chain featuring polish sausage dogs, closed its doors around in 2013, though the company’s wholesale operation still supplies sausages to local restaurants and bars.

Caught between competing culinary forces, Baltimore’s dining scene seems at a turning point. A steady influx of tourist-oriented chain restaurants has brought a relentless drive toward standardization and accessibility. At the same time, there’s the natural tendency for those who grew up eating local fare to turn their eyes and culinary ambitions elsewhere—toward the fine-dining scenes of DC and Philly, toward the exotic promise of far-flung cuisines from around the globe, toward the latest sensations on Twitter and Instagram.

But we often don’t see the value of what we have until someone tries to take it away. There’s good reason to hope that, as local Baltimore cuisine fades, the city will embrace it even more strongly—and so will visitors from everywhere else. And with so many delicious options before us, why not be on the safe side and go explore them right now?

Bo Brooks
2780 Lighthouse Point
Baltimore, MD 21224
410-558-0202

C. J.’s
10117 Reisterstown Road
Owings Mills, MD 21117
410-363-6694

Faidley’s
203 North Paca Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
410-727-4898

Lexington Market
400 W Lexington Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
410-685-6169

Silver Spring Mining Company
11100 York Road
Cockeysville, Maryland 21030
410-527-0500

Seaside Restaurant
224 Crain Highway North
Glen Burnie, MD 21061
410-760-2200

Kooper’s
1702 Thames Street
Baltimore, MD 2123
410-563-5423

Ocean Pride
1534 York Road
Lutherville, MD 21093
410-321-7744

Attman’s Deli
1019 E. Lombard Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21202
410-563-2666

Berger Cookies
2900 Waterview Avenue
Baltimore, MD, 21230
1-800-398-2236

Chaps Pit Beef
5801 Pulaski Highway
Baltimore, MD 21205
410-483-2379

Pioneer Pit Beef
1600 North Rolling Road
Catonsville, MD 21244
410-455-0015

Kirkwood Pitbeef
6220 Baltimore National Pike # 3
Catonsville, MD 21228
410-744-0387

Jacqueline Raposo

You're never far from water on the Azores.

There’s no avoiding the ocean when you traverse Sao Miguel. The largest of the nine islands in the Azores—the Portuguese archipelago one third of the distance between Europe and the United States—“Saint Michael” covers around 290 square miles. The soil is volcanic, the result of hundreds of thousands of years of violent eruption that ended in the 17th century, leaving behind active hot springs, rolling hills cut by winding roads, and the bright blue of the Atlantic around every corner. Trees and flowers grow lush and lavish, making “The Green Island,” as locals call it, a popular stop for migrating birds and the watchers who follow them. Between land and sea, Sao Miguel’s isolation and robust environmental health yields a bounty of unique foods not found anywhere else.

Around 140,000 people live on Sao Miguel, most in row houses extending from the cobblestoned center square of each municipality, then stretching out and up into the hills. My father was born and grew up in Povoação, one of Sao Miguel’s six vilas—municipalities built around the largest craters shaped by the volcanoes—on the west side of the island. He emigrated as a teenager with his parents and siblings, but still returns regularly to see extended family there.

Jacqueline Raposo

There's always fresh fish here

The first time he took me, I gorged on super-sweet bananas, green figs fresh off the tree, and sun-speckled oranges from my grandparents’ small backyard orchard and impressive garden. Sardines, caldo verde (kale and potato soup), blood sausag,e and soft goat cheese graced our plates on a regular basis. Cows teem on the island, and their meat made hamburgers as juicy as an 11-year-old American girl could ask for. I remember once running through the banana trees and turning a corner to find my grandmother calmly sitting and plucking the chickens I had fed that morning. I was getting an education on where food came from years before “farm-to-table” became a stock term for food writers. Economic hardship and physical isolation impose challenges on the Azores, but that same isolation means that offers incredibly unique experiences, too, like slow-cooking big pots of stew with the heat of the volcanic ground, or pulling wild honeysuckle from the side of the road to sip while on a long, meandering drive.

Ponta Delgada, the capital city of the Azores, plays home to the airport, mall, lone movie theatre, many government buildings, and countless churches. It’s the center of shipping, tourism, and commerce. But it’s also where most restaurant owners on the island stock up on both imported and local foods at a gem of a market nestled between narrow roads, a few blocks from the sea.

Jacqueline Raposo

One of the vendors at Mercado da Graça

The Mercado da Graça (R. do Mercado, 9500-326) is not particularly large, nor particularly beautiful. It resembles an abandoned indoor car park. There are no prepared food stalls or tchotchkes. Much like Azorean cuisine itself, it does not try to be fanciful or photo-ready. Instead, the locally-grown and imported foods you can get there reflect the honest cooking of the island: fresh fish, meat, herbs, fruit, and vegetables are steamed, roasted, or broiled together for rich, earthy results.

My cousin Rita once owned several restaurants on the island, and now plays tour guide to those needing a smiling face and an easy translator. On my most recent visit back “home,” she’s surprised I’ve never visited the Marcado da Graca before and offers to show me around. It’s 11 a.m. on a Tuesday, and the bustle has long since died down. Most cooks get in there early, she says, as she calls out warmly to those she’s worked with in the past.

We start to explore.

Annona Fruit

Jacqueline Raposo

Annona fruit

The islanders call it “coracao negro,” or “black heart”, since it darkens to a harsh black as it ripens and then expires. A transplant to the islands from the Philippines, it’s grown on Pico, a neighboring island, too. Once you slice it open, it’s easy to remove the black seeds and eat the pulp with a spoon. The ripe fruit has a custard-like texture and is incredibly sweet, like a cross between a mango, a pineapple, and a banana.

Bananas

Jacqueline Raposo

Bananas

Bananas grow everywhere and easily all over the island—the trees produce huge bushels with little tending from human hands. Much smaller in size than American versions, their thick yellow skins yield extremely concentrated flavors reminiscent of the small red bananas of South America. Unlike the half-dozen an American family might pick up at one go, it’s common to find an entire bushel hanging in a garage, being plucked progressively as they ripen. They’re generally eaten without fanfare off the bunch a few at a time; an on-the-go snack for those who work long hours from home.

Pineapples

Jacqueline Raposo

Pineapples

Azorean pineapples are a thing of beauty. The islands aren’t tropical: While the temperature hovers at a moderate 50-75 degrees or so year-round, there are very few months of full sun, and the humidity is harsh and chilly rather than warm and balmy. So Azoreans, with the ingenuity that comes from isolation and economic necessity, learned to cultivate pineapples (originally brought over for ornamental purposes) in greenhouses. They speed up the ripening process by light smoking, concentrating the sugars and ripening the pineapples at a smaller size. The result is a compact, floral, bracingly sweet fruit that is most common simply sliced at picnics and formal celebrations alike. Pineapple jams are a common gift-shop purchase, as well as boxes of whole pineapples ready for taking directly on a plane and home.

Sardines

Jacqueline Raposo

Sardines

Because of its volcanic history, the irregular sea floor surrounding the Azores provides many cliffs, reefs and plateaus for an abundant variety of fish. Red snapper, bluefish, and a variety of tuna come to feast on the abundant anchovies and sardines that the Portuguese are best known for. At the market, the fishmongers will boisterously make sure everyone knows their fish are fresh, and if you wake in the dark and head to the docks surrounding the entire island, you’ll find proof of that. Because of this, Azorean food relies much more heavily on fish than continental Portuguese. Because of their abundance and robust health, every restaurant on Sao Miguel will have plump sardines on their menu, most often simply grilled with salt and served with lemon and boiled potatoes. Sardines are an extremely affordable fish that are easy and quick to fry up, so everyone knows how to cook them at home, perfectly filleting and removing the bones before feasting.

São Jorge Cheese

Jacqueline Raposo

Cheese

The island of São Jorge started producing one of the most recognizable Portuguese cheeses centuries ago, when the robust cattle that fed alternatively on pastures of grass and legumes produced so much high-quality milk that islanders soon found they could produce far more than they ate, and started exporting. The raw milk is aged for a minimum of three months, producing a semi-hard, yellow cheese with a mild tang and a subtle grassy aroma. Aged longer (usually around nine months), it becomes slightly crumbly, far deeper in peppery and musty flavor, and leaves an almost puckered feeling in the mouth. On São Miguel, São Jorge cheese is most often served at the beginning of a meal, sliced thin, next to Portuguese rolls. It’s also a common quick breakfast or lunch sandwich.

Chouriço

Jacqueline Raposo

Chouriço vendor

When most people think of Portuguese sausage, they think of linguiça first, but in the Azores it's all about spicy chouriço. We eat a lot of it, and it's everywhere. Similar to Spanish chorizo, the smoked and dried links are dark with pepper, paprika and garlic; a bit smokier and darkly flavored than linguiça. Growing up, my grandparents used chouriço exclusively in their caldo verde (the most popular Portuguese soup, with pureed potato, thinly-sliced kale and rounds of sausage), and most restaurants on the island do the same. It’s also commonly served as an appetizer on slotted ceramic dishes, under which aguardente—a liquor similar to moonshine or gin—flames, giving the sausage its final outward char before getting sliced and eaten.

Minhotos (“Little Yams”)

Jacqueline Raposo

Minhotos

While pineapples need to be grown indoors, the cool winter winds, moist ocean air and limited sun means that hearty vegetables do particularly well on the island. Minhostos (or what my dad just calls “Azores yams”) are grown most often in Furnas; the municipality with the hot ground and boiling springs. They're less sweet and far starchier than most yams, and are commonly served simply peeled and fried. Other favorites are purple yams, which are also sliced thickly and fried in oil until sweet and crisp.

Beef!

Jacqueline Raposo

Beef

It’s not uncommon to drive in a low gear up and around a winding road, and then come to a dead stop behind a herd of cows casually walking down the road. Cows outnumber humans in the Azores, and they’re often rotated to pastures every few days that are only reached by using the same narrow roads everyone else uses. Because of the vast amount of green, thriving, fertile land, all of the beef on the island is grass fed, incredibly rich and marbled, and is slaughtered continually for local use. It’s mostly prepared in stews or broiled and served with a fried egg on top.

Fresh Herbs

Jacqueline Raposo

Fresh herbs

Most Azoreans have a garden; even those in row houses will grow a few tomatoes or herbs with whatever light they can find. And because of the simplicity of the cuisine, fresh herbs are grown on a large commercial scale to accommodate those who use more than they can grow. Like the meat and fish bread or caught nearby, the herbs are also kept as simply grown and organic as possible. Mint, sage, rosemary and especially parsley are often added to the end of dishes to bring some brightness to the otherwise hearty cuisine.