The Sweet Life -- Mexico City is blessed with great weather all year round. Summer is not very hot because it’s the rainy season, and at 2,200 meters above sea level, things cool down very fast as soon as the rain starts falling.

The Sweet Life -- Yelo, Roppongi’s kakigori (shaved ice) mecca, summoned the faithful with free samples on April 1 like some kind of cool April Fool’s joke for the not-quite-warm weather. The line stretching to the Hard Rock Café a block away was a reminder of things to come. Now the weather has turned much warmer, and the wait is daunting.

CB Book Club -- 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).

CB on the Road -- 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.

CB on the Road -- Every time we venture down to Turkey’s Çukurova region, particularly its largest cities of Mersin and Adana, we leave more intrigued than we were on the previous visit. In much closer proximity to Cyprus and Beirut than Izmir and Istanbul, these are truly southern Mediterranean cities, with blooming flowers, incredible citrus fruits, towering palm trees and scorching summers.

The Sweet Life -- 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.

CB Sips -- The medieval Skhvilo fortress prison overlooks the ancient village of Samtavisi and the rest of Shida Kartli’s Kaspi region, a rolling expanse of contours that in July are wrapped in overtones of green and gold under a sky that would make Montana buckle in envy.

CB Book Club -- We recently spoke to food historian and researcher Priscilla Mary Işın about her new book, Bountiful Empire: A History of Ottoman Cuisine (Reaktion Books; May 2018). She has previously published edited transcriptions of texts relating to Ottoman food culture and Sherbet and Spice: The Complete Story of Turkish Sweets and Desserts (2008), a social history of Ottoman sweets and puddings.

Street Eats -- The neighborhood of San Miguel Chapultepec sits on the west end of Mexico City’s hipster corridor that runs east through Condesa and on to Roma. In the last decade, these neighborhoods have flowered with bars and restaurants fed by tourists and young people eager to impress.

The Sweet Life -- It’s always tempting to try and take on all three major museums in Tokyo’s Art Triangle in one day. It would be easy to be overwhelmed by the delicious treasures of the National Art Center Tokyo, the Suntory Museum of Art and the Mori Art Museum, so we usually opt for just one and head to Naniwa Café afterwards for a pot of tea and their delicious taiyaki, a popular form of Japanese sweets (wagashi).