Almost all my favorite meals this year were made by people from far away, who left behind the countries of their birth to make a life in this one. By choice or necessity, they turned to the kitchen and became quiet ambassadors for the food of their childhoods.

This kind of cooking is built on that most profound of flavors, memory. It comes in a sip of shikanjabeen, a slush of mint and lime that reaches back to the streets of Lahore, Pakistan; in a perfect palata, the dough slapped and stretched in a technique learned decades ago from a trishaw driver by the Irrawaddy River in Myanmar; in a tamal, hibiscus-red and sweet as cake, a Christmas wish from Puebla, Mexico.

How lucky New Yorkers are, to have all the world inside their city, if they know where to look.

Below, in descending order, are the places where, in the tumult of 2016, I found the greatest comfort.

1. Burmese Bites

The menu is only three dishes long at this stand at the Queens International Night Market. Each is $5, and a wonder: palata, as rich as Indian paratha but pulled nearly sheer, like Malaysian roti canai, and served plain, for dredging in scarlet curry, or with curry already hidden inside; and ohno kaukswe, a noodle soup fattened by coconut milk, with fish sauce in the depths and lime lancing the surface.