Winter in Cape Town is a wildly gentle season. Freezes are rare in the peninsula city. Instead, the coolest months of the year are defined by rain – sheets of it. Fields and forests and mountainsides turn deep green after the dry summer. Streams rush with tea-colored mountain water, pools form on the flats where arum lilies bloom in profusion, and by late winter, spring flowers are opening in the days of sunny blue sky between rain squalls.

Dear Culinary Backstreets, I’ve heard about “wet markets,” but what are they exactly? And where can I find the best wet markets in Shanghai? Stocked with all the fresh produce and live seafood that hungry Shanghai residents could ever cook up, wet markets are an essential alternative to the brand-name supermarkets vying for their slice of the market share of the planet’s largest population. These markets are so named because the floor tends to be wet, thanks to the live fish flopping around and the vendors’ habit of throwing water on the ground to keep the area clean. They are, however, under constant pressure from the central government’s drive to urbanize the population and modernize facilities, which has led to the steady destruction of the more traditional ones.

“In Cadaqués, we cure anchovies differently than anywhere else,” Rafel Martín Faixó told us. We were sitting at long wooden tables outside of his family’s winery, on a sunbaked hilltop in Cadaqués, two and a half hours north of Barcelona. Rafel is the son of Carmen Faixó and Rafa Martín Mota, and together with his sisters Ester and Georgina, the five of them comprise the Martín Faixó (MF family) brand, featuring three restaurants in Cadaqués and the Celler Martín Faixó winery, with a rural tourism guesthouse on-site.

Having been divvied up and overshadowed and even having come back from a nasty fire, the Mercado San Juan Arcos de Belén, also known as San Juan Salto del Agua, has hung on tight as a staple market in Mexico City’s downtown. Born from the 1950s-era split-up of the original San Juan marketplace, which stood only a few blocks away in what is now the Plaza San Juan off of Ayuntamiento, this is a very budget-friendly market in Mexico City’s downtown, largely bereft of high-end delicacies but bustling with mostly working-class families. It is shouldered by two major traffic conduits, Eje Central and Arcos de Belén, and sits atop the two-line intersection of Metro Salto del Agua on the forest-green and pink lines.

Dear Culinary Backstreets, Should I be concerned about MSG when I eat in Shanghai? The addition of MSG to Chinese food has been dividing diners for decades now, yet it appears that most people still don’t really know why they’re trying to avoid the stuff, or if they should even be concerned. We’re here to clear that up, once and for all.

In May, we visited some friends on the beautiful island of Amorgos. While we were driving to the south of the island, in the Kolofana area we came across a very small kafeneio, or traditional coffeehouse. We only wanted to make a quick stop for a cup of coffee and a glass of water, but we ended up getting a lot more than we bargained for.

Istanbul’s Aksaray neighborhood harbors an unfortunate reputation derived from its seedy nightclubs and the heavy presence of illegal brothels, which turn profits from sex trafficking. But as the city continues to transform at dizzying speeds, Aksaray’s status as an underbelly has begun to be overshadowed by that of a diverse, exciting culinary destination. Streetside Syrian cafés churning out cheap and reliable falafel and shawarma; a handful of Uighur restaurants serving dishes of spicy peppers and succulent morsels of beef bathing in handmade noodles prepared to order; and Georgian drinking dens, where chacha, a grape-based moonshine, is brought out in plastic water bottles alongside juicy, lovingly made dumplings, are just a few of the international cuisines that can be sampled in Aksaray.

The 19th-century homes in old Tbilisi neighborhoods were built in a style Georgians call “Italian Courtyards,” where through a gate or arch you enter a quad enclosed by stories of balconies shared by each family on the floor. This courtyard was the nucleus of each building, where kids safely romped around, monitored by adults from the windows above, as men contemplated domino moves at a table under a tree and women beat rugs on an iron rack in a corner.

Comprising a city within a city made of housing complexes and self-built neighborhoods, the Maré favela complex in Rio’s North Zone packs 130,000-plus residents into the area between the Avenida Brasil highway and Guanabara Bay, just south of Rio’s International Airport.

In South Africa, many roads lead to boerekos. We chose the N7, the tar artery connecting Cape Town and Namibia. After winter rains, the barren land along the way – known as Namaqualand – bursts into spectacular, botanical hotspot bloom. The floral diversity here is unique. Also unique is the local food.

There is an ancient saying in Greek, Theros, Trygos, Polemos, meaning “wheat harvest, wine harvest and war”: All three are situations that need immediate attention and cannot be postponed until later. Hopefully there will be no war, but having completed the wheat harvest, we are nearing the finish line of the wine harvest.

Editor's note: In the latest installment of our ongoing series First Stop, we asked Stavriani Zervakakou, chef of the restaurant Karaköy Gümrük in Istanbul, where she stops first for food when she returns to Athens. Athens rarely lets me down when it comes to food. And although I am a seafood person, the first thing my soul craves after a long stay in Istanbul are grilled juicy pork skewers calmly hugged by the crispy arms of a well-baked pita bread.

We like to think of İnciraltı, a laid-back meyhane in the sleepy Bosphorus-side Beylerbeyi neighborhood, as a destination restaurant – not so much because of the food, but because of the destination itself. Not that there’s anything wrong with the food here, which is reliably well made. The meze tray at İnciraltı (which means “under the fig tree” in Turkish) is brought to your table carrying all the classics, plus a few welcome and tasty surprises, such as the zingy brined twigs of the caper plant and a sea bass fillet that has been cured in a piquant sauce redolent of curry.

Kim Díaz, a well-known local restaurateur and owner of Bar Mut tapas bar and El Mutis cocktail bar, wanted to pay tribute to one of the most humble and sadly underrated Spanish snacks, the sandwich. Sandwiches are generally made by most Barcelonan bars with defrosted cheap bread and greasy fillings, and good ones are not easy to find in the city (though we have written about some great ones). Entrepanes Díaz opened last February with the goal of giving the sandwich the respect it deserves.

The West has gone gaga for noodles, Japan’s most cherished comfort food. Hungry diners pack secret soba dens in Los Angeles for bites of hand-cut anything; they line up to plunk themselves down at sparkling counters offering $100 ramen tastings in New York and pick through ramen au beurre in Paris looking for the next new taste. In Tokyo, ramen masters are now competing for cult status within a ramen culture imported from the United States. Soba chefs are newly coveted for their skill in grinding, rolling, cutting and plating and are praised as master craftsmen.