On any given night, bustling, narrow Nevizade Street in the heart of Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district buzzes with thick crowds of evening revelers searching for the best table while clean-shaven waiters in their customary uniform of pressed white shirts and V-neck sweaters attempt to lure the crowds into their establishments.

Forty-five minutes south of Çanakkale, a small but flourishing ferry port sits outside of the town of Geyikli. Nestled between olive groves and farms lies the main access point to the small island of Bozcaada. Until the late 1990s, Bozcaada was disputed territory between Turkey and Greece, isolating the island from foreign vacationers. As a result, the vine-covered passageways of the traditional seaside village have been preserved. Active resistance from island residents prevents large developments from being established and restricts the use of cars within the island’s main town. Consequently, Bozcaada is a haven for those seeking delicious food away from sprawling resorts and crowded beaches.

Rio de Janeiro didn’t need to be told to host colorful outdoor fresh food markets. The feira is a carioca tradition, with wooden booths going up overnight at their weekly locales and filled with wares so standard any local could recite for you off his head what you can and can’t find there. But with a little kick from the tools of the digital age and a hipster-era recalibration of the local palate, the Rio feira has gotten a particularly nice new edition. Junta Local brings together local producers and budding chefs in a biweekly, rotating-location food-fest, often accompanied by live music.

The kumru sandwich – a specialty of Turkey's Aegean coastal resort district Çeşme – is one of our top guilty pleasures. It comes as heavy on the guilt as it does on the pleasure, with its sodium-laden, coma-inducing blend of grilled hot dog strips, salami slices and buttons of garlicky sucuk topped with melted kaşar cheese, fresh tomatoes and pickles served on a grill-toasted roll somewhat resembling a turtledove (kumru in Turkish).

Winter in Cape Town is a wildly gentle season. Freezes are rare in the peninsula city. Instead, the coolest months of the year are defined by rain – sheets of it. Fields and forests and mountainsides turn deep green after the dry summer. Streams rush with tea-colored mountain water, pools form on the flats where arum lilies bloom in profusion, and by late winter, spring flowers are opening in the days of sunny blue sky between rain squalls.

Dear Culinary Backstreets, I’ve heard about “wet markets,” but what are they exactly? And where can I find the best wet markets in Shanghai? Stocked with all the fresh produce and live seafood that hungry Shanghai residents could ever cook up, wet markets are an essential alternative to the brand-name supermarkets vying for their slice of the market share of the planet’s largest population. These markets are so named because the floor tends to be wet, thanks to the live fish flopping around and the vendors’ habit of throwing water on the ground to keep the area clean. They are, however, under constant pressure from the central government’s drive to urbanize the population and modernize facilities, which has led to the steady destruction of the more traditional ones.

“In Cadaqués, we cure anchovies differently than anywhere else,” Rafel Martín Faixó told us. We were sitting at long wooden tables outside of his family’s winery, on a sunbaked hilltop in Cadaqués, two and a half hours north of Barcelona. Rafel is the son of Carmen Faixó and Rafa Martín Mota, and together with his sisters Ester and Georgina, the five of them comprise the Martín Faixó (MF family) brand, featuring three restaurants in Cadaqués and the Celler Martín Faixó winery, with a rural tourism guesthouse on-site.

Having been divvied up and overshadowed and even having come back from a nasty fire, the Mercado San Juan Arcos de Belén, also known as San Juan Salto del Agua, has hung on tight as a staple market in Mexico City’s downtown. Born from the 1950s-era split-up of the original San Juan marketplace, which stood only a few blocks away in what is now the Plaza San Juan off of Ayuntamiento, this is a very budget-friendly market in Mexico City’s downtown, largely bereft of high-end delicacies but bustling with mostly working-class families. It is shouldered by two major traffic conduits, Eje Central and Arcos de Belén, and sits atop the two-line intersection of Metro Salto del Agua on the forest-green and pink lines.

Dear Culinary Backstreets, Should I be concerned about MSG when I eat in Shanghai? The addition of MSG to Chinese food has been dividing diners for decades now, yet it appears that most people still don’t really know why they’re trying to avoid the stuff, or if they should even be concerned. We’re here to clear that up, once and for all.

In May, we visited some friends on the beautiful island of Amorgos. While we were driving to the south of the island, in the Kolofana area we came across a very small kafeneio, or traditional coffeehouse. We only wanted to make a quick stop for a cup of coffee and a glass of water, but we ended up getting a lot more than we bargained for.

Istanbul’s Aksaray neighborhood harbors an unfortunate reputation derived from its seedy nightclubs and the heavy presence of illegal brothels, which turn profits from sex trafficking. But as the city continues to transform at dizzying speeds, Aksaray’s status as an underbelly has begun to be overshadowed by that of a diverse, exciting culinary destination. Streetside Syrian cafés churning out cheap and reliable falafel and shawarma; a handful of Uighur restaurants serving dishes of spicy peppers and succulent morsels of beef bathing in handmade noodles prepared to order; and Georgian drinking dens, where chacha, a grape-based moonshine, is brought out in plastic water bottles alongside juicy, lovingly made dumplings, are just a few of the international cuisines that can be sampled in Aksaray.

The 19th-century homes in old Tbilisi neighborhoods were built in a style Georgians call “Italian Courtyards,” where through a gate or arch you enter a quad enclosed by stories of balconies shared by each family on the floor. This courtyard was the nucleus of each building, where kids safely romped around, monitored by adults from the windows above, as men contemplated domino moves at a table under a tree and women beat rugs on an iron rack in a corner.

Comprising a city within a city made of housing complexes and self-built neighborhoods, the Maré favela complex in Rio’s North Zone packs 130,000-plus residents into the area between the Avenida Brasil highway and Guanabara Bay, just south of Rio’s International Airport.

In South Africa, many roads lead to boerekos. We chose the N7, the tar artery connecting Cape Town and Namibia. After winter rains, the barren land along the way – known as Namaqualand – bursts into spectacular, botanical hotspot bloom. The floral diversity here is unique. Also unique is the local food.

There is an ancient saying in Greek, Theros, Trygos, Polemos, meaning “wheat harvest, wine harvest and war”: All three are situations that need immediate attention and cannot be postponed until later. Hopefully there will be no war, but having completed the wheat harvest, we are nearing the finish line of the wine harvest.