Ever since former President Deng Xiaoping opened China’s economic doors to the rest of the world starting in 1979, foreigners wishing to do business in China have had to find a local partner to form a joint venture company. Though no longer a hard-and-fast requirement, that’s still the modus operandi at Lotus Eatery, where a founding partnership brings together the best of both culinary worlds: unusual yet authentic local flavors and distinctly foreign notions of consistent quality and attentive service.

Kadınlar Pazarı – a pleasant, pedestrian-only square in Istanbul’s Fatih neighborhood – is the closest thing the city has to a “Little Kurdistan.” The area is populated by migrants from Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast region, and small market stalls and butcher shops selling honey, cheeses, spices and other goodies from the region surround the square. Visiting the atmospheric area is a great way to get a taste of Southeast Turkey without having to leave Istanbul.

Editor’s note: This is the fourth installment of “Spring (Food) Break 2013,” featuring our favorite foods of the spring season in each city Culinary Backstreets covers. This year’s Nevruz celebration, an ancient welcoming of spring, may be remembered for its political significance in which a peace deal was struck between Turkish leaders and Kurdish rebels. But once the shoulder-shrugging, line-dancing, fire-jumping and ululating are over, the real bounty of the season will continue to be celebrated all over Turkey and in many Istanbul restaurants, from the chic to the shabby.

Editor’s note: Here at Culinary Backstreets, we eagerly await the coming of spring each year, not just for the nicer weather but also because some of our favorite foods and dishes are at their best – or indeed, are only available – for a short period during this season. This post from Athens is the first installment of “Spring (Food) Break 2013,” a weeklong celebration of our favorite springtime eats. Stay tuned for dispatches from all of the Culinary Backstreets cities. Athens is probably at its prettiest in springtime, especially in April and May.

Dear Culinary Backstreets, I heard that the Monday on which Lent begins is a holiday in Greece and that there are some special culinary traditions. Is this true? What do Greeks eat on this day?

Once a mostly beer-free country, Spain – traditionally a land of wine drinkers – has recently started to develop a taste for the sudsy beverage, and Catalonians seem to have been the main pioneers behind this growing trend. The number of local craft breweries is increasing and so is the number of beer fans, who are also learning how to brew the drink at home. Put it all together and you have a young and adventurous market that is ready to experiment with tastes and textures to create stellar new beers with a distinct Mediterranean flavor.

Lahmacun is one of those mysterious foods where a lot is created with so little. It checks all of the boxes of a perfect savory snack: crispy, oven-fired crust, light and spicy meat spread, a fresh green garnish and a tangy spray from a lemon. It’s like an artisanal pizza with a Middle Eastern topping wrapped around a side salad – for the cost of a shoeshine.

In a 2003 TV commercial for Cola Turka, the actor Chevy Chase was seen speaking Turkish and then sporting a moustache, after taking just one sip of the intended challenger of Coke in this country. This sensational ad – which riffed on the old theme of American cultural imperialism through its number-one agent, Coca-Cola – was the first time that Turkish soft drinks caught our attention. Though we didn’t take to the overly sweet Cola Turka, we did start looking beyond, to its local brethren in the market: gazoz, a world of nearly extinct Turkish carbonated drink brands with a fanatical following.

A quiet residential area in Western Athens, the working-class suburb of Sepolia was until the 1970s characterized by a few industrial buildings, empty plots of land and small, humble houses. Over the past few decades, Sepolia has developed rapidly and is now full of high-rise apartment buildings. Though it still has a neighborhood feel, there aren’t many cafés or dining venues, which makes To Rodi – an Armenian restaurant and neighborhood souvlaki place that does some of the best kebabs in Athens – seem particularly incongruous.

Dear Culinary Backstreets, I’m traveling to Barcelona and I love visiting food markets. I’ve heard a lot about La Boquería, but are there any other markets that might be worth visiting?

Once a resort town on the outskirts of the Greek capital, Phaleron – only a few miles from downtown Athens – is now well incorporated into the city’s urban fabric. The area has remained an upscale neighborhood, but, sadly, it has lost its distinctive character: the sea is now polluted, the open-air cinemas have been turned into parking lots, and many of the stately mansions were demolished to make way for apartment blocks during the construction boom of the 1960s.

Lantern Festival (元宵, yuánxiāo, or “first night”) is the fifteenth day of the Chinese New Year, and marks the last day of Spring Festival. This “first night” is actually the first full moon of the lunar new year, and in the Year of the Snake it lands on February 24. On this holiday, it’s customary for revelers to light red lanterns and eat sweet stuffed dumplings called tāngyuán (汤圆).

One of our favorite markets in Mexico City, Mercado Jamaica is a fantastic destination any time of the year, offering everything from festive Christmas decorations to a large selection of fruits and vegetables. After the markets of Xochimilco, Jamaica is also one of the city’s best flower markets, with block-long aisles filled with freshly cut flowers and plants of almost every imaginable color and type. But as much as we love getting lost in the sweet scents of these green alleyways, what keeps us coming back to Jamaica is El Profe, an excellent eatery inside the market that specializes in barbacoa. El Profe ("The Prof") looks less like your typical market food stand and more like a mini restaurant, with small brass chandeliers hanging from the ceiling that provide more in the way of ambiance than actual light. Waiters and cooks in matching blue uniforms hustle and bustle around the customers, who come and go from the counter at a steady pace.

De toda la vida is a Spanish expression that basically means “It’s been around forever,” and it’s a sure thing that the locals in Barcelona’s Gràcia neighborhood will utter those words if you ask them about Bodega Quimet. Opened in the 1950s by the Quimet family, the bodega (not to be confused with Quimet i Quimet, a popular Barcelona tapas bar) was passed down from father to son until 2010, when the younger (but nonetheless old) Quimet retired and brothers Carlos and David Montero bought the venue. David Montero had always worked as a cook and dreamed of owning his own place. However, after buying Quimet, instead of doing the renovations so typical of Barcelona bars that change hands (such as modernizing the furnishings or installing a huge flat-screen TV for showing fútbol matches), the Montero brothers made the somewhat unusual decision to keep everything, from the low prices to the décor, pretty much the same as it always had been.

Dear Culinary Backstreets, I keep hearing about Greek coffee but is it any different from Turkish coffee? And do most Greeks actually drink Greek coffee these days or do they drink other types of coffee? Greek coffee is exactly the same as Turkish coffee – and it was in fact called just that in Greece until Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974, at which point, for political reasons, the Greeks decided to rename their coffee “Greek coffee.” The process and preparation, though, are identical to the Turkish way.