What are your strategies for sniffing out good restaurants?

We tend to dismiss the places that are the newest thing on the block. And obviously, you don't want a restaurant with tour buses in the parking lot. Otherwise, we just keep an eye on where local people seem to be gravitating. We've also found that if you do ask people for help, like the hotel concierge or a clerk in a shop, you have to make sure they understand that you're looking for something seriously local and good. Often people will just send you to the fanciest place in town because they think the food won't offend your tastes.

You visited ten countries in three months. By the time your journey ended, had you drawn any conclusions or noticed any global trends?

We did see more evidence, in countries like Australia and South Africa in particular, of chefs' really educating the public about food and making an effort to showcase ingredients, like lardo and different types of offal, that most people shy away from but can be really enjoyable to eat. In China, in Provence, and even to some degree in Salvador, Brazil, we also felt as if we'd encountered cooks who were mindfully honoring the culinary tradition of their country but were taking it to a new level and doing it in a fresher way.

Each chapter of Around the World in 80 Dinners includes a recipe from a place you visited. How did you choose and develop them?

It was a combination of talking to people there on the scene and then coming home and researching everything about those dishes that we could find in print. Then we experimented a lot by ourselves until arrived at a version that we felt really demonstrated what was the best about the dish.

Is there any chance you might turn more of your discoveries from the trip into a larger cookbook?

All the things we discovered couldn't fit in a book.