The oldest Filipino restaurant in Iceland does not have a Filipino name. The sign outside says “Matstofan,” but locals will tell you the place is called “Dússabar,” after co-owner Dússi Grönfeldt. The only hint at a foreign presence is written in slim letters, barely visible from across the street: “Filipino taste.”

At Mezcalito Oaxacan Cuisine in Rocklin, the mole takes two days and nearly two dozen ingredients to complete. The recipe reads like a catalog of the Mexican state of Oaxaca’s agricultural bounty: plantains, green apples and raisins; warm spices and half a dozen kinds of chiles; a liberal dose of sparsely-sweetened chocolate. The ingredients are roasted and ground to make a harmonious blend.

The Sustainable Food Story’s ‘Soup-er Seeded’ meal starts with a rainbow of carrot soups – orange, yellow and purple edging towards black. A scrawl of tahini garnishes each serving like an artist’s signature. When the bowls empty, they are replaced with plates of quiche scattered with sorrel. Rhubarb compote floating on clouds of sheep’s yoghurt and meringue rounds off the meal.

From outside the blocky building it shares with the local library, Safnahús Borgarfjarðar passes as the kind of low-tech local museum one finds in any small town around the world. You know the type—glass cabinets full of staid-faced porcelain dolls, phased-out farm tools, empty eggshells arranged by species—the dust-coated debris of obsolescence.

When the light is just right, one can see a resemblance between Sacramento and Amsterdam. Both cities are tree-lined and pancake-flat, with robust bicycle cultures and the infrastructure to match. Soon, there will be another Dutch detail in Sacramento: the sweet scent of stroopwafels — syrup-filled waffle cookies — wafting on the breeze. Follow that scent and you will find neither a brick-and-mortar bakery nor a food truck but a bakfiets, a front-loaded cargo bike that is as quintessentially Dutch as tulips and wooden clogs.

Josefina Magallanes’ food stand is a fixture outside Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Midtown Sacramento on Sundays. As her menu advertises, she specializes in homemade tamales, but her accompaniments range from drinks to dessert. In the winter she ladles out hot champurrado, a corn-based chocolate drink that thickens to a pudding when it cools. Come summer, she switches it out for fresh juices: red hibiscus, green chia seed, amber melon. Coolers and boxes of single-serve chip bags surround her table, and when she sits in her low-slung lawn chair, she nearly disappears behind them.

Summary document for the annual conference of the Global Food Safety Initiative, prepared on site in Tokyo.

Cru Chocolate’s packaging means its candy bars are well-suited for artistic display — their labels designed to evoke the Surrealist tradition of Central America, featuring motifs symbolizing their cacao’s country of origin: Guatemalan macaws, Haitian butterflies, Nicaraguan jaguars. They stand out even in the packed west wall of Andy’s Candy Apothecary, where craft chocolate bars are showcased, labels out, like paintings in a gallery.

A collection of recipes and vignettes collected on the field in Capiz, Philippines.

It takes its name from a mythical fairy king, ruler of the pagan pantheon. It was served at the great banquets of Romans conquerors. The first English settlers to America considered it so precious that they carried it on their long voyage across the ocean. And yet modern British gardeners are more likely to call it a weed and toss it in the rubbish heap than to serve it for supper. Such is the fate of Good King Henry.