Editor’s note: It’s Beat the Heat Week at Culinary Backstreets, and in this week’s stories, we’re sharing some of our favorite spots to visit when the summer temperatures soar. One of the great joys of spring and summertime in Istanbul is the chance to get away for a day to one of the Princes’ Islands, the car-free and forested archipelago that is a short ferry ride away from the city. The only downside to an island hop is actually getting there: as soon as spring makes its first appearance in Istanbul, the hordes descend on the mainland’s ferry terminal, filling the boats to beyond capacity (at least on the weekends).

We recently spoke to author Elizabeth Minchilli about her new book, “Eating My Way Through Italy” (St. Martin’s Griffin; May 2018). After a lifetime of living and eating in Rome, Minchilli is an expert on the city’s cuisine, as evidenced by her popular blog, her Eat Italy app and her book “Eating Rome: Living the Good Life in the Eternal City” (2015). In her most recent title she writes about the dishes, customs and recipes that she’s discovered during her travels across Italy. Rather than an encyclopedic guide to the country, the book is a spirited and intimate look into Minchilli’s own experiences and the meals that have led her off the beaten track.

We’ve long been tasca hounds, searching out the best that Lisbon has to offer. But in the last few years, a good number of our favorites have closed: the perfect storm of spiking rents, real estate interests, and aging owners and clients have stacked the odds against these small, cheap, familiar restaurants. For a while, the stream of closures had us thinking that the Lisbon tasca scene might face complete extinction sooner than expected. But while doing research for a story on summer tascas – places with outside seating, grilled food or simple dishes similar to the ones you can eat by the beach – we found hope, in an unexpected way.

Street life still remains a big part of the port zone’s narrow alleys, which are lined with small traditional shops and restaurants, many with a big charcoal grill out front for cooking up whatever fish is in season. We sample several preparations of seasonal fish and seafood on our Song of the Sea walk in Lisbon.

Last February, we were at a Japanese pop-up dinner at Bina 37, Tbilisi’s wine cellar in the sky, organized as a tribute to Georgian-Japanese friendship and to celebrate the champion Georgian Sumo wrestler, Tochinoshin (Levan Gorgadze), soon to be promoted to the rank of Ozeki, the second highest tier in the sport. Zura Natroshvili, the owner of Bina 37, had invited a small delegation of Japanese diplomats from the embassy and set up a big screen for a live Skype chat with Tochinoshin in Tokyo while members of the Gorgadze family were at a table in front. It was a touching event, if a bit surreal.

The northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa is nestled between the western Sierra Madre Mountains and the Gulf of California – putting it between surf and high desert, and the sea doth offer bounty. Be it gigantic squid, run-of-the-mill “fish” or marlin, the sinaloenses fear not the chopping block when it comes to seafood, and the state’s devil-may-care attitude (cooking with lime instead of actual heat) comes full force at Los Sinaloenses, located in trendy Roma Sur. The scrappy refuge lights onto a seafood-based, regional cuisine that manages to stand out in a nation with more than 9,000 km of coastline. It’s characterized by an array of ceviches, cocktails and other arthropod and piscine specialties.

As the car crested a craggy hill, the first rays of golden sun peaked over the horizon, painting distant clouds the color of red wine. Tufts of gnarled olive trees and rows of grapes whizzed by the window as we approached the farm, outrunning the quickly approaching sun. We left Thessaloniki at 5:30 a.m. to beat the Greek summer’s heat, something of concern for both workers – and oregano plants, our destination’s star crop. Michalis and Anastasia, owners of Aetheleon, were prepared for the day’s harvest. With every rising degree, minuscule droplets of moisture and essential oils seep from the oregano in an attempt to cool them down. The plants’ sweat-like response can be easily smelled, the aromatic wafts upon the breeze a prelude to the frenzied buzzing of hordes of happy bees following the fragrant trail.

We’ve got a thing for small, family-run spots in Naples, particularly those that are multigenerational. If a restaurant or bakery or producer has been open for at least a century and has always stubbornly stood in the same place, continuity and quality of product are all but guaranteed. Take, for instance, Cantina del Gallo in Materdei. Established in 1898 and run by four generations of the Silvestri family, this is one of the few real outdoor taverns left in Naples. Over the years, this cozy, simple spot has attracted artists, intellectuals, musicians, travelers and many Neapolitan students looking for good food at reasonable prices.

There we are at Bodega Carlos, enjoying a homey and delicious batch of crispy fried anchovies and succulent stewed pork cheeks, when we suddenly hear birdsong. We look up, but neither canary nor nightingale can be seen flying around the high-ceilinged bodega-restaurant. But then the birdsong instantly switches to a sound we can best describe as a falling whistle, like the one that accompanies Wile E. Coyote as he falls from a cliff. Is it a bird, is it a plane, or is it a smartphone ringing with infinite improvised melodies? No, it is Carlos Estrada Roig, the owner of this friendly neighborhood bodega and an expert whistler.

Roaming the narrow cobblestoned alleys of Centro Storico in Naples, we visit a limoncello production lab in a most unusual place. The dazzling bright yellow drink, most often served chilled, is particularly welcome on a hot summer day.

Shanghai doesn’t fit the traditional (if often false) narrative that urban spaces consist of “good” neighborhoods and “bad” neighborhoods. Crime is not a major concern for most residents in the city, and truly derelict areas are few and far between. However, the varying levels of development and infrastructure create different zones that deeply impact residents’ lifestyles in ways that are more extreme than in other more developed countries. On a recent weekend road trip to Moganshan, a mountainous oasis of bamboo forests just a few hours from Shanghai, the starkness of the city’s “development zones” came to light as we made our way home to the tree-lined streets of the former French Concession

Our go-to breakfast to fuel up for a day of walking around the backstreets in Athens is fresh-baked koulouri, an iconic street food, paired here with cheese and olives. But we don’t go overboard, as there are many more Greek delicacies to follow!

It wasn’t very long ago that finding a vegan restaurant in Mexico City was like finding a friend on the city’s overcrowded metro during rush hour (read: impossible). In fact, until this decade there were no exclusively vegan eateries in Mexico’s bustling capital. This is not to suggest that vegan options weren’t available, but exploring the city as a vegan could be a tricky business, and veganism was a little-understood concept. So unusual an idea it was, that journalist-cum-chef Mariana Blanco was often called a loser or perdedora by friends who found her animal-free and plant-rich lifestyle to be at odds with what they knew. So when she opened the first vegan restaurant in the city, and indeed the first in Latin America, she called it Los Loosers.

For some inexplicable reason, leche merengada, or meringue milk, a traditional Spanish summer drink, has fallen out of favor over the past few decades – industrial ice creams and sodas, with their multicolored flavors, bubbles and fantasy frozen shapes, have seduced local palates, making this monochrome drink pale in comparison. Well, we say that it’s time to shine the spotlight back on the démodé but delicious and nutritious leche merengada and to revive a drink that was considered opulent in numerous Spanish cities back in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and documented in recipe books from as early as the 18th century.

An employee at Sirvent tops the shop’s artisanal ice cream with bright red candied cherries. Sirvent is one of Barcelona’s turronerías (also called torronerías), so-called because they dedicate themselves to making artisanal nougat (turrón) in the winter. But come summer, many flock to them for a cooling ice cream or horchata.