About a year ago, in Washington’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood, an independent grocer called Bestway changed hands. The new owner is In Suk Pak, a South Korean by way of Pennsylvania. He renamed the store Bestworld, replacing the second word of the big-block letters out front. Then he rejiggered the store’s product mix to fit the neighborhood’s changing demographics, adding gourmet chips and high-end beers, and Asian items like wasabi peas and dried seaweed.

The Southwest border is a place where people and cultures collide and inevitably blend into one another. For El Paso artist Peter Svarzbein it was the perfect setting to introduce a food experiment that compliments his latest project. He combined his experience as a Jew growing up on Mexico's doorstep to create a new twist on an iconic dish. On a July afternoon, the kitchen at Chabad Lubavitch in El Paso was hotter than a desert full of burning bushes. No surprise, considering the amount of cooking that went on that day.

In December 1988, when Ashok Bajaj opened the Bombay Club here, the city was gearing up for the inauguration of President George H. W. Bush. For Washington, that’s pretty much where the celebrating ended. That year the District of Columbia had surpassed Detroit as the country’s murder capital, with a record 372 killings. The city was not, to put it mildly, recognized for its hospitality, and it extended little welcome to the newly arrived Mr.

In a recent interview with world-renowned Spanish chef José Andrés, we discussed creativity and inspiration, his open and collaborative style of leadership, the many secrets to his success, philanthropic efforts in the U.S. and around the world, and much more.

Here's a fact: Nearly everyone in America loves Chinese food. Who among us doesn't have childhood memories of takeout dinners served in the distinctive white boxes, followed by a humorous reading of fortune cookies? And Chinese restaurants, with their lengthy menus and Lazy Susans, have been a ubiquitous part of the American landscape for decades. In order to get into the finer distinctions of Chinese cuisine, researchers at the Beijing Computational Science Ressn't difficult to find Northeastern, Sichuan, Yunnan, and Xinjiang restaurants -- all on the same block.

The jovial tug o’ war and children’s ice-cream-eating contest wouldn’t look out of place at any town fair. But the family festivities in the battle-scarred Syrian city of Aleppo had a surprising organizer: al-Qaeda... The attempt to soften Islamic State’s image comes as it struggles to win support in the areas of Syria that are outside government control. Many residents view the group as a foreign force more concerned with imposing Islamic law than with fighting against President Bashar al-Assad and his allies.

One of the other reasons why our product appeals to Chinese consumers on a base level is because it incorporates Chinese cultural elements in the beers themselves and also incorporates Chinese literature and historical references in the naming and branding of the beers. Two good examples of this would be our Iron Buddha Blonde Ale and our Little General IPA. The Iron Buddha Blonde uses tie guan yin wu long tea during the brewing process, which gives the beer a floral note at the end. The name "Iron Buddha" is one way to translate the tie guan yin (铁观音), or the iron goddess of mercy.

Gastrodiplomacy is an increasingly popular form of public diplomacy that uses food as a means to communicate culture; this tactic of culinary cultural diplomacy shares the uniqueness of a country's cuisine as a manner of edible nation branding. As I was noshing outside a snackautomat, a Dutch version of the since-forgotten automat that Horn & Hardart's made popular decades ago in America, I dreamed of Dutch gastrodiplomacy to America via the snackautomat.