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.

Perhaps coffee is underappreciated in Rio because it’s so plentiful. Brazil is the world’s largest producer of coffee, but both the selection and the presentation of the stuff you’ll find in Rio is hardly what a gringo dreams of in the capital country of café. Coffees here are cafezinhos, small, potent, highly sugary and with no milk. A cafezinho is taken standing up at a lanchonete (snack bar) or on a work break in the office in tiny medicine cups filled from an unseemly plastic cylinder. When Brazilians have seen the size of our morning coffee, many have expressed a concern that we could hurt ourselves with such a large quantity. (It’s just a coffee cup.)

Early on in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s 2001 film Amélie, the title character plunges her hand into a big sack of lentils, relishing the sensation of them slipping through her fingers, a look of pure pleasure on her face. That kind of behavior is verboten in shops that sell dry goods by weight, but buying groceries in bulk has its own inherent pleasures (and you can run your fingers through your purchases once you’re back at home). Just as with bulk wine, buying food in bulk is making a comeback in Barcelona. Not only does this practice yield less packaging waste, but in our minds, it also makes hunting for great ingredients all the more enjoyable.

Editor’s note: In the inaugural post of our new recurring feature, First Stop, we ask Chef Ana Sortun of the much-beloved restaurant Oleana and bakery Sofra in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she heads first for food when she arrives in Istanbul. Sortun received the James Beard Foundation’s award for “Best Chef Northeast” in 2005 and wrote the cookbook Spice: Flavors of the Eastern Mediterranean. Her newest restaurant, Sarma, opened at the end of 2013 in Somerville, Massachusetts.

China is increasingly becoming a nation of coffee drinkers, a trend that is quietly percolating out beyond the confines of cosmopolitan Shanghai and Beijing. As more and more tea terraces are converted to profitable coffee plantations in the country’s mountainous southwest regions, and with the number of Costa Coffee and Starbucks locations still on the upswing, it’s never been easier to find a decent cup of joe.

After three decades in Brazil, Margarita Sayan Pinto still speaks a charming, peppery portunhol – the Spanglish-like mix of Portuguese and Spanish – that she seems in no hurry to rid herself of. The chef remembers an interaction she had with a local taxi driver when asked to describe why she opened Rio’s first Peruvian restaurant nine years ago. "Peru?" the driver said. "That’s the only country in South America that doesn’t border Brazil." (Peru indeed has a 1,860-mile border with Brazil. Ecuador and Chile are the only South American nations that do not touch Brazil.)

Greeks have been gravitating towards Melbourne, nestled in the southeastern corner of Australia, ever since the gold rush of the 1850s. The Greek Orthodox Community was formally founded in 1897, and the first Greek language newspaper, Australis, was issued in 1913. But it was in the 1950s and '60s, as the consequences of the civil war continued to be felt in Greece, that they really immigrated in earnest, coming in the thousands. Today Melbourne boasts the largest population of Greeks outside of mainland Greece, and the world’s third-largest Greek-speaking population after Athens and Thessaloniki.

It’s hard to imagine Istanbul without its pastane windows stacked high with trays of ivory-colored flaky mille-feuille and coolers lined with row after row of chocolate-topped éclairs. And of course, the sweets scene in Istanbul would not be complete without the much-loved profiterole. Generations of İstanbullu have taken pleasure in these French exotics, but at some point they became part of the local dessert canon, complete with their new Turkish ID, milföy and ekler. Their origins, their journey to Istanbul, if still relevant, have been more or less wiped clean from the memory of the city.

We know that there’s a trend away from gluten and carbs these days, and all we have to say to that is: more for us! In Athens, bread and pies still form the foundation, if the not the substance, of many a meal – breakfast especially. Make like a local and start your day off right with cheese pie or koulouri from one of our top picks. (These places are also perfect for a pick-me-up later in the day.)

Update: This spot is sadly no longer open. There’s pork, and then there’s pork – by which we mean pastured Iberian pork from Extremadura. These native black pigs roam freely on as much as ten hectares each of dehesa, through grass and brush and under oak trees, feeding on acorns and other forage. The meat is extraordinary, tender and deeply flavorful, used to make some of the world’s best ham and among the prized ingredients at Bar Ángel in El Born.

Dear Culinary Backstreets,I am a practicing Muslim and have a hard time finding halal food in Shanghai. Do you have any recommendations? Eating halal is difficult in a country whose cuisine considers pork its staple meat. Pork consumption in China - the largest consumer of the meat globally - reached record levels last year, averaging 86 pounds per capita. Since 2007, the government has operated “strategic pork reserves,” which include underground bunkers of frozen pork and live pig farms, to help regulate porcine inflation. If you pop into a wet market, you’ll see rows of pork vendors selling everything from cutlets to brains, but typically only one butcher filleting beef and lamb. Above that stall, you’ll inevitably find Arabic script and the characters: 清真 (qīngzhēn, or “halal”).

Well-intentioned food appreciators have often made the error of believing that touristy is the opposite of authentic. The same goes for tourism and cultural exploration in general. The relentless search for the most local anything becomes based not on how locals themselves regard this thing but on how many fellow outsiders like ourselves have found it. (The fewer, the better, so goes the logic.) The localness of the thing is inverted, with the outsider becoming the arbiter of what is “authentic.” But if we, the outsiders, put so much effort into finding what is local, what’s wrong with locals making a similar effort to reach out to us?

When Karaköy was still “the docks” and filled with shop windows advertising boat tickets to Odessa alongside cubby-sized import and export offices, Karaköy Lokantası felt like a culinary mirage. With great food, personable service and tasteful décor, this family-operated eatery stood out, prominently, among the humble street-side eateries filled with noshing stevedores. These days, snapshots from the neighborhood could have fallen from the pages of the hipper-than-thou Monocle magazine, and Karaköy Lokantası fits in nicely with its new, trendy neighbors.

Update: This spot is sadly no longer open. In Athens, we take full advantage of our proximity to water. An incredible variety of fresh fish and seafood go straight from the fishing nets into our pots and onto our grills. So naturally, we know a thing or two when it comes to seafood restaurants. One is the master of fried dishes, another grilled, while yet another on our short list is known for creative experimentation. What they have in common is supremely fresh seafood at a reasonable price (as well as a penchant for fishing nets as decoration, it seems). And they’re all located close to the sea – where else could they be? In no particular order: