Girdled by the South China Sea, the islands and peninsula that make up Hong Kong have had to grow up rather than out. This geographical constraint has resulted in more than twice as many skyscrapers as any other city in the world (1,251 and counting), and many of those high-rises house malls jam-packed with some of the best restaurants in the city. Now the trend of dining out amongst designer shops is heading north to Shanghai, as developers erect facsimiles of Hong Kong’s favorite malls on both sides of the Huangpu River. At IAPM, the latest shopping spot stocked with HK brands to open its doors to Shanghai, it seems fitting that Tao Heung is one of the most popular spots in the foodie and shopping mecca.

You are what you eat, as the saying goes. Is it any surprise, then, that food figures so largely in popular culture all over the world? In Spain, we have a veritable cornucopia of food-related expressions. Here’s a taste: Dar una torta, “to give a cake.” To slap someone. But darse una torta, “give a cake to yourself,” means you hit something else. It’s a mild, lighthearted expression, even with tortazo, which is a bigger biff, and comes from the funny old circus setup where a clown throws a cake into the face of another clown.

(Editor's Note: We regret to report that this establishment is no longer open.) Şenol Erol is trying to remain optimistic about running the last esnaf lokantası in Sultanahmet, where the market seems to demand tourist traps over traditional tradesmen’s restaurants. “I guess that makes us unique, doing things the old way,” he says, as if this vintage eatery needed a tagline.

Editor’s note: We asked Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, a columnist for Turkish daily Milliyet, where she heads first for food when she returns to Istanbul after a trip abroad. Aydıntaşbaş is also a commentator on CNNTürk’s show “Karşı Gündem” and has written for numerous publications, including the former International Herald Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes and Newsweek. Funny enough, I don't really crave Turkish food if I have been spending time out of the country. This is because, for starters, I am a foodie: I crave things. I schlep to the other side of town for a meal. I never hesitate to spend money on good restaurants.

The perpetually packed Bar Mundial is one of Barcelona’s elder statesmen. It opened for business in Santa Caterina-El Born in 1914 under the name Bodega La Chispa, and was rechristened with its current name in 1925, when the Tort family took over. The place is now run by third-generation owner Paco Tort. The old bar has history, that’s for sure – even El Chispa ("Spark"), the bartender, is a 30-year veteran of the place. And what keeps people coming back to Bar Mundial are the delightful seafood tapas, classic and contemporary, that issue from the tiny kitchen.

Editor's Note: Sadly, this spot is now closed. La Huasteca, a region in Mexico that extends through several eastern states, including San Luis Potosí, Veracruz, Tamaulipas, Hidalgo, Querétaro and Puebla, gets its name from the pre-Hispanic civilization that inhabited the area. There are still some indigenous Huastec communities that live in the region, and like those of the rest of the country, their local food and customs have been highly influenced by the Spanish conquest and the influx of immigrants both domestic and international.

With all of the anticipation of local elections in March, the scandalous graft-laden tapes leaked via social media, the communication fog brought on by the ban of Twitter and YouTube and the subsequent call for a vote recount in many cities, this city's stomach had good reason to be distracted. But one cannot survive on a diet of daily news alone. In case you all forgot, Spring is here.

Editor’s note: For our First Stop series, we asked Toronto blogger Peter Minakis, who writes about Greek cooking and dining at Kalofagas, where he heads first for food when he arrives in Athens. Minakis is the author of The Everything Mediterranean Cookbook and his latest book, The Big Book of Mediterranean Recipes, is due out by the end of April.

Taquerías are probably the most common kind of eatery in Mexico City, but torterías, purveyors of tortas, the generously filled sandwiches that come on bolillo rolls or the smaller teleras, are not far behind. From stalls at subway station exits to restaurants that have been in business close to a century, torterías are a fixture in the city landscape. Here are five of our favorites, in no particular order:

For the carioca in need of grains in bulk, cheap party decorations, live animals and herbs for the ritual baths practiced in Afro-Brazilian faiths, the Mercadão de Madureira offers one-stop shopping. Madureira is a good two-hour bus ride from tourist-zone Ipanema and is tucked behind hills far from the ocean breeze, which means the neighborhood heats up even more than already steamy Rio. In the heart of Rio’s working-class north zone, the Mercadão is where cariocas who count every real go to comparison-shop and haggle for the best deals in the city limits. Remember that the minimum wage in Rio is less than 800 reais (about US$330) per month, and a middle-class family is defined as earning above US$450 per month. That means the 100-real meals of Ipanema are hardly palatable for the so-called “new middle class.” Despite the cheery BRIC emerging-economy narrative and the olho grande (“big eye,” or greed) of investors looking for a new consumer market, this sector of Brazilian society can be better understood as the working poor.

For visitors looking to get beyond Shanghai’s urban core, among the main attractions are the plentiful water towns that ring the outer suburbs in just about every direction. The name refers to the bygone reliance of these towns on water for irrigation and transport, especially in the form of canals. Billed as ancient villages, the popular destinations tend to be packed with visitors, with traditional foods as the main draw – perhaps due in part to the lack of other activities on offer.

In the weeks leading up to Easter, Barcelona looks like an extension of Willy Wonka’s factory-fun house: chocolate castles, houses, animals, cars, motorbikes and even cartoon characters and fútbol celebrities fashioned out of cacao populate the city’s traditional patisseries. Catalonian confectioners expect to sell some 600,000 chocolate sculptures decorated with yellow chicks, chocolate eggs and cakes studded with hard-boiled eggs and colored feathers this year. The last are known as monas, and godparents traditionally give these to their godchildren throughout Catalonia and other parts of Spain to mark the holiday.

Ask a Shanghainese person for the best běnbāng, or local, restaurant in town, and you’ll probably be pointed toward Old Jesse. The doyenne of haipai cuisine, this ramshackle restaurant is the darling of the guidebook industry, with mentions in publications from Travel + Leisure to Lonely Planet, but that doesn’t mean that it’s foreigner-friendly. In fact, when LP first published their listing back in 2008, Old Jesse stopped taking reservations in English for some time, just to spite the hordes of tourists vying for a seat in their tiny former French Concession establishment. Even now, the lingua franca in the packed dining room is Shanghainese, and it’s still not uncommon for a laowai’s reservations to disappear if he or she is just a few minutes late, or for foreigners to have to watch hungrily as the dishes they ordered come out to tables manned by locals first, even though said locals were seated long after them.

With its rich, profound history – its roots lie in epics and at the foundation of modern civilization, after all – the Greek language is ripe for and with metaphor, particularly of the food-related variety. Folk sayings and proverbs have a prominent place in colloquial language and everyday life, and they are at turns humorous, instructive and ironic. And sometimes they are all three at once.

Mexico City is indisputably one of the world’s great eating capitals, and one of its main draws is the astonishing regional diversity in the Mexican cuisines that are available here. But sometimes, the only thing that’ll hit the spot is a slice of pizza. Fortunately, D.F.’s got you covered there, too. There are hundreds of pizzerias to choose from, from big chains to small family-run establishments, but these are our three favorites.