Shanghai is famous for its swampy summer weather, and although this August was the coolest in 14 years, it’s still hot and humid out there as we head into Indian summer. Staying hydrated against the rising mercury is crucial if you’re out hunting a meal of street food, so here are the best sips to keep your yin and yang balanced this season. Mia’s Green Apple Mint Juice This neighborhood Yunnan specialty restaurant takes bold flavors from southwest China and elevates them in simple combinations. In many of their noodle and main dishes, mint features prominently - there is even a salad composed entirely of mint leaves that will leave you wondering why anyone is even bothering with iceberg lettuce. By supercharging fresh apple juice with a fistful of pressed mint leaves, Mia’s makes the idea of a juice cleanse just a teensy bit more appealing.

Who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch? In fact, over at Gastronomika, a new Istanbul culinary project, the food is served not only free of charge but also with an intriguing – and ambitious – backstory

Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节, zhōngqiūjié) lands on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, relatively near the autumnal equinox; in 2014, it falls on September 5. Also sometimes called Mooncake Festival, it is a public holiday in China and Taiwan on which families gather to give offerings to the full moon, float sky lanterns and eat mooncakes (月饼, yuèbing). A culinary tradition with legendary roots, mooncakes are sold everywhere from grocery stores to five-star hotels and come with competing origin stories that relate how these sweets came to represent the holiday.

Misty, lush Fırtına Valley is worlds away from Istanbul’s concrete urban hustle. It’s a land of cascading waterfalls, rushing rivers, wild edibles and precipitous hillsides covered with glossy tea bushes. We came to escape Istanbul’s infamous August heat and learn about the region’s special foods. After a week, we had stomped our way through bagpipe-fueled celebratory circle dances and eaten our weight in fried trout and cornbread.

It’s a dirty secret nobody wants to talk about, but let’s put it out there: finding a good cup of Turkish coffee in Turkey can sometimes be very difficult. Thin and watery, rather than thick and viscous, is frequently the order of the day. This is no small matter, akin to complaining about the quality of the French toast in France or about finding stale danishes in Denmark. Turkey, after all, is the land that, during Ottoman times, helped introduce coffee to the rest of Europe. When it comes to making Turkish coffee, Turkey needs to represent.

Although there are plenty of bars on Copacabana’s famous Avenida Atlântica – or even at the beach, at the so called quiosques – very few are worth a visit. Many are just tourist traps. Others are much too expensive. No, the really good bars in Copacabana are inland, along Barata Ribeiro street. That road, along with some of the side streets that let onto it, reveals the true face of Copacabana's popular gastronomy. One of the first bars you encounter on Barata Ribeiro is Galeto Sat's. Open seven days a week, always until 5 a.m., the bar is a bohemian temple – but it’s far from being only that. For many cariocas, Sat's serves the best galeto in town. A galeto is a very young chicken (no more than three months old) cooked over a big coal-fired grill.

Editor's note: We are sad to report that SofrAda has closed. One of our favorite spots to make a quick summer getaway from Istanbul is the idyllic car-free and forested paradise of the Princes’ Islands, located just a short ferry ride away from the city. Here’s where you should eat when you get there.

Strict vegetarians in Shanghai face a double-edged sword when it comes to staying meat-free. On the one hand, the country’s large Buddhist population means they are in good company. It is estimated that the total number of vegetarians in China reached about 50 million last year. However, while tofu dishes can be found on just about every Chinese menu, that doesn’t mean that the dishes are strictly meat-free. To vegetarians’ dismay, pork and meat-based broths are often used to give the soy-based dishes more flavor, and special requests (even simple ones like “no meat”) are not usually complied with (or understood). Traditionally, meat is often sliced in very thin strips (肉丝, ròu sī) and used to flavor vegetable and tofu dishes, as opposed to being the star

On recent visits to Madrid, we’ve noticed that a new breed of food market has taken hold of the city’s attention. While the traditional kind with food stalls slowly disappears, vibrant, culture-focused gastromarkets are booming. In addition to great food, they offer a mix of businesses, along with cooking demos, live music, exhibitions – the list goes on. In 2009, the private society El Gastródomo de San Miguel refurbished a beautiful building that was built in 1916 and located very close to Plaza Mayor. It was opened as the “culinary space” Mercado de San Miguel. Though the initial inspiration was Barcelona’s La Boquería, San Miguel is utterly different, with its own colorful, unique personality. The market is dedicated not just to selling quality seasonal foods, but also to allowing visitors to enjoy them in situ, at tables and chairs distributed throughout common areas. They can choose from cod, fresh shellfish and other seafood, various vermuts, pickles and olives, paella, churros, Spanish wines, international beers, delicious Iberian ham and cured sausages and cheeses, ice cream and non-Spanish items, such as pasta or sushi. Unsurprisingly, the concept has been a hit, and other similarly styled markets have since popped up around the city.

Dear Culinary Backstreets, I’ve heard some horror stories about food safety scandals in China. How does an adventurous eater explore Shanghai without having any culinary misadventures? There’s no hiding the fact that recent years have seen the highly publicized exposure of some unsavory information on China’s food safety record. While the headlines may not be any worse than those seen recently in other countries (whether unlabeled horse meat or fecal matter in ground turkey), the Chinese lately have reached appalling levels of creativity in their food scandals, from thousands of diseased pigs washing up in the Huangpu River, to rat, fox and mink meat being pawned off as lamb at hotpot restaurants.

Just a block away from Mexico City’s financial district, one unlikely food star sets up shop every morning. From Monday to Saturday, at La Abuela, 72-year-old Arnulfo Serafin Hernandéz feeds hungry office workers, commuters, neighbors, school kids, government officials and tourists from all over the world with one of the simplest Mexican dishes: tacos de canasta.

In just a few hours, Germany will play Brazil in a World Cup semi-final match, but the outcome doesn’t matter. Win or lose, Germany has already conquered this nation – gastronomically speaking, at least. This isn’t fancy gastronomy, of course (leave that to the French!), but the simple, hearty, delicious food that the best Brazilian German bars serve all over the country, especially in Rio. German bars have been beloved institutions in Rio for a very long time. The most famous ones have been around since before World War II, when Rio was the capital of the country and the federal government was flirting with German's National Socialist Party. By 1939, Rio had a dozen German bars.

If it’s because of showing visitors around or simply a desire to get away from the city for the day, we can usually count on at least one visit a summer to Büyükada, the largest of the Princes’ Islands. But as much as we like looking at the car-free island’s Victorian mansions and visiting its quiet, forested backside, when it comes time to eat on Büyükada, we feel like we’re stuck inside an airport, forced to eat mediocre food at outrageous prices. (Although we very much like the food at Kıyı, a seaside restaurant on the island that we’ve previously recommended, even a casual dinner there ends up costing more than what one would like.)

In Mexico, magic is all around us. It’s in the architecture, history, way of life – and, of course, the food. The country’s Ministry of Tourism is no stranger to this magic, and in fact, fully grasping its economic possibilities, it created the Pueblos Mágicos program in 2001 to recognize villages that are unique and historically significant. There are now 80 such pueblos mágicos across the country, and one of our favorites is just a short drive away from Mexico City.

Trabzon doesn’t face the sea so much as fall into it like it’s hugging an old friend. The weight of dozens of mountains and just as many rivers pushes the city into the Black Sea, and the blue-collar port and ribbons of highways get the region’s bounties out of the city seemingly while the bread is still warm. Due to the massive out-migration that the region has undergone since the 1980s, countless pide shops and lokantas promising Karadeniz (“Black Sea”) recipes can be found in Istanbul, and some of them are quite good. But with food as simple and unique as what’s found in the Turkish Black Sea coast, it’s not the recipes that pack a punch so much as the ingredients. The freshest and weirdest are found in Trabzon and its environs and are as good an excuse to up and live in Trabzon as the mountains and the music.