It’s been more than half a century now since The Beatles formed, and their worldwide popularity continues unabated. In Japan especially, the band’s presence and influence were outsized almost from the beginning, and John Lennon’s marriage to Yoko Ono cemented the band’s place in Japanese culture.

In a country the size of Brazil, you’ll have an easier time finding a carioca who’s been to Disney World than to the Amazon region, so cut off is it by vast forests and pricey airfares from the cosmopolitan southeastern cities of São Paulo and Rio. When we visited Manaus and took a days-long boat trip on the Rio Solimões, we introduced ourselves as American, living in Rio. Locals seemed uninterested in asking the usual litany of questions about America but grilled us on Rio, which they had only seen in evening telenovelas.

Editor's note: Our last dispatch for Breakfast Week takes us to a charming spot in Beyoğlu, where followers of Istanbul's two competing schools of breakfast can enjoy their morning meals side by side. Istanbul is a dynamic city, where conditions can change so quickly and completely that it’s easy to forget the way things used to be. The new reality can be so strong and ever-present that the past feels like a hazy dream, if that. But no, this is not an article about Turkish politics. This is an article about Turkish breakfast.

Fried pig’s ears fortified with garlic and parsley, veal cheek and tongue laced with vinaigrette, hefty veal and pork meatballs, creamy artichoke or eggplant omelets or a hearty bocadillo of marinated tuna, red pepper, anchovies and olives: these esmorzars de forquilla, or “fork breakfasts,” are how a Catalonian might start his day – especially at Can Ros, a tapas-and-bocadillos joint that’s open every day from 7 a.m. until midnight. Office workers might drop by for a coffee at mid-morning, followed by the lunch crowd, which takes over from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Dinner, of course, lasts well into the night. It’s breakfast, however, that has made Can Ros most popular among locals.

Editor's note: We are regret to report that Nixon and Hip Cafe are closed. Editor's note: Our third installment for CB's Breakfast Week takes us to Athens, where we take a look at traditional breakfasts and how globalization is changing the way Greeks eat -- especially on weekend mornings. In Athens, brunch has become big business. Over the last couple of years, locals have fully embraced this foreign import, and numerous venues have sprung up across the city to bring Eggs Benedict and Bloody Marys to hungry Athenians every weekend.

Editor's note: It's Breakfast Week at CB, and the second piece in the series takes us to Mexico City for a look at typical morning meals and the best places to find them. Stay tuned for more breakfast dispatches from other CB cities throughout the week. Mexico leads the world in per capita egg consumption, according to the country’s National Poultry Institute. That’s not hard to believe if you’ve ever taken a look at a typical Mexican breakfast; in homes and at restaurants huevos are the first order of the day for many a desayuno. And with all those eggs they eat, Mexicans have come up with a number of ways to dress them up or down. One of the most popular ways to prepare them, for example, is huevos revueltos al gusto, two or three scrambled eggs with an additional ingredient or ingredients, such as ham, chorizo, sausage, vegetables or a la mexicana (onion, chilis and tomato). Huevos can also come divorciados, which are two sunny-side-up eggs, one bathed in green salsa and the other in red; rancheros, or fried and served over corn tortillas and refried beans and bathed in a red or green salsa; al albañil, scrambled and served with a very hot red salsa and fresh cheese; or ahogados, poached in green or red salsa. Most of these egg dishes are served with a side of refried beans, avocado and corn tortillas.

Editor's note: It's Breakfast Week here at CB, and to kick off the series, we first head to a street corner in the heart of Shanghai that offers a remarkable variety of breakfast foods. Stay tuned all this week for more morning dispatches from other CB cities. We’re all guilty of indulging in the complimentary hotel breakfast buffet a little too often while traveling. But in Shanghai, the widest array of street food is on full display in the morning hours, as young professionals and retirees alike gather at their favorite stands for a quick bite with friends or on their way to work.

In a city filled with Technicolor snack bars, Casa Paladino Comestíveis instead looks more like the kind of place where you’d find seedy men smoking cigars in a black-and-white film. Glass cases lining the walls display manila-labeled cachaça and Cuban rum bottles, with an occasional anachronism, like boxed Toddynho chocolate milk, breaking its turn-of-the-century salon aesthetic. Cloudy mirrors, a handwritten menu and a grape-adorned Bacchus sculpture decorate its black carved wooden walls.

Just a stone’s throw from centrally located Vasileos Konstantinou Avenue, the tree-lined neighborhood in and around Plateia Proskopon (Scouts’ Square) is verdant and full of charm. Wonderful dining options abound here, with new entrants such as the popular Mavro Provato joining a host of beloved older eateries. Among the latter is Magemenos Avlos, a glamorous throwback specializing since 1961 in European cooking, and a favorite meeting place of musicians, poets, actors, politicians and remarkable personalities of the 1960s and ’70s.

Near the Aksaray metro station, set back from a loveless part of Istanbul crossed by wide roads and overpasses, the kebab is flourishing. Over the past few decades, waves of migration have brought a particularly southeast Anatolian flavor to the otherwise drab apartment blocks and government buildings of this part of the Fatih district. Now bright isot peppers are strung up, handwritten signs in Arabic advertise services in barbershop windows, a nargile café is filled with older men smoking and playing cards. Nowhere else in the city is there such a high density of kebab restaurants and most of them are run by families from the southeastern city of Urfa.

Dear Culinary Backstreets, I just moved to Shanghai, and while I’m looking forward to investigating all the street food options, I’d love to be able to make dinner at home too and would like to get into Chinese cooking. Where’s the best place to stock up my new kitchen?

The hotpot’s storied history stretches back over a millennium in China. The cooking method originated in Mongolia, where legend has it that warriors used their helmets as makeshift pots, boiling strips of horse and lamb meat over campfires to sustain them as they made their way south to breach the Great Wall. As hotpot cooking proliferated, regional variations took their toll on the meal’s simplicity, earning it the nickname of “Chinese fondue” among some Westerners.

One of our favorite places in Mexico City is Xochimilco. Like many visitors, when we hear the word “Xochimilco” the first thing that comes to our mind is a relaxing ride aboard a trajinera, or boat, on the waterways of this southern borough. We’ve been to Xochimilco many times before, on family excursions to buy flowers, plants and compost from the local farmers.

A hidden culinary sanctuary, El Passadís del Pep may be located in one of the most visited quarters of Barcelona, but it’s out of sight of anyone who isn’t looking for it. Once you go down the long corridor that leads to the restaurant, you don’t need to do anything, and that includes choosing what to eat. From the moment you sit down, the “house” offers you your first bottle of cava, and the celebration of food and life begins. There is no menu and there are no “daily specials,” just whatever Joan Manubens and his team decide to cook that day.

Editor’s note: This is the final installment of “Best Bites of 2013,” a roundup of our top culinary experiences over the last year. Be sure to check out the "best bites" in all the other cities CB covers. Breakfast in Erzincan We were strangers in a strange land – eastern Turkey’s Erzincan, to be exact – and Yalçın Kaya welcomed us into his cheese shop with such gracious fervor that it didn’t surprise us to find out that this Anatolian cheesemonger moonlights as an imam.