Drawing on her family's rich barbacoa tradition, Cristina Martínez has become a Philadelphia food star -- and a voice for undocumented immigrants.

At Istanbul's Çiya, "food anthropologist" Musa Dagdeviren meticulously re-creates regional Turkish dishes in a bid to keep them from going extinct.

Frustrated by the dearth of authentic Thai cuisine, Bo Songvisava revives bold, complex local flavors in her sustainable Bangkok restaurant.

After years as the creative director of El Bulli, innovator Albert Adrià now presides over an "amusement park" of genre-bending Barcelona eateries.