Alex Kapranos: This is the hangout of Russian and Filipino sailors. We sit down for kimchi dumplings and pancakes. The spicy fermented cabbage makes you sweat instantly. In the humid air, it's refreshing.

Alex Kapranos: I glance at the cakes. Amazing. A dark, gooey pecan pie, sugar-dusted lemon tart and a dense chocolate thing. Oh, yes! Let me eat cake!

Alex Kapranos: The Bura wind blows from the peaks of the Dalmatian Alps to the Adriatic, dry, cold and inescapable. It is what gives Croatian prsut ham its distinct character.

Alex Kapranos: Utrecht is a small university city, like a pretty miniature Amsterdam without the red light tourism. The counter-culture is high street: a few innocuous coffee shops politely selling pre-rolled joints, their heavy-headed customers sedately watching the World Cup.

Alex Kapranos: The wooden sign tells me that it is an offence to eat these mussels or sell them to anyone else who may want to eat them.

Alex Kapranos: At Mr Chow, Beverly Hills, they don't like to give you a menu. "I could go down to the vault, see what I find," sniffs the waiter.

Alex Kapranos: It is worth going to Lisbon just to eat Azeitao cheese. The ancient, muslin-wrapped rind looks like the skin of an Egyptian mummy. The top has been sliced off and a tiny spoon stands in the runny interior.

Alex Kapranos: The head waiter squeezes us into a heaving bench below a wrought-iron two-headed Byzantine eagle clutching a light bulb in each claw.

Alex Kapranos: Every bookseller I chat to about Sawney recommends that I have a snack in the pink-painted Reading Lasses, the fantastically named women's studies bookshop and cafe.

Alex Kapranos: The shabby quirkiness and character of Bertaux cannot be franchised and replicated on every high street.

Alex Kapranos: Everything on the menu of In N Out is very fresh and, since it pays its staff more than twice the minimum wage, there isn't poisonous resentment among its workers.

Alex Kapranos: Sixty years ago, Sam Goldwyn stood astride the parapet in the vicious mid-afternoon California sun and yelled at his writers to drop their cocktails and get back to work. I am in the Formosa Cafe on the corner of Formosa Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard, Hollywoood.

Alex Kapranos: The beat of the World's Most Dangerous Polka Band bursts through the swing doors of the Polka Lounge.

Alex Kapranos: I can't work out where the food is from. Maybe the Middle East? There's yoghurt, parsley, lentils and lemon on the menu, but also a long list of vodkas.

Alex Kapranos: I eat with these guys every day. Their eating habits are as familiar as the songs we play at night.

Alex Kapranos: The most decadent burger in NYC. Ground and charred to order, topped with a tranche of home-made foie gras and a reduction of red-wine-and-black-truffle sauce to dip it into.

Alex Kapranos: Fifties cookbook Technicolors pulsate from the stacked glazes. Greens, yellows, pinks, hundreds and thousands like interference in the cathode rays.

Alex Kapranos: Anything that walks ends up on the grill. It is a euphemism that summarises the Argentinian attitude to culinary and sexual encounters.

Alex Kapranos: Our Brazilian friends have taken us to the Porcão barbecue restaurant.