Editor's note: We're going on a Global Bar Crawl this week, and today we're stopping at a building in Istanbul that has five floors of bars and clubs. Tomorrow we head to Mexico City for some mezcal. We like to think of the building at the corner of Sakız Ağacı Caddesi and Küçük Bayram Sokak as the mullet of the Beyoğlu neighborhood’s entertainment venues – out front is a tidy, little Armenian Catholic church, but in the back, it’s a wild and tangled mess of a party.

Editor's note: Our third installment in the Global Bar Crawl takes us to Barcelona, where gin continues to be the drink of choice among locals. Tomorrow we head to a spot in Istanbul where you can spend an evening visiting a number of bars, all without leaving the building. Spain is a country that loves a long-drink – alcohol in combination with a soft drink, refreshing and open to invention and reinvention. On the heels of creative gastronomy’s efflorescence in recent years, many old drinks, cuisines and forgotten ingredients have returned, revived through new and more sophisticated techniques and interpretations. The gin and tonic, called gintonic here, is one such Spanish obsession, and all that ingenuity and focus have gone into taking this highball to the next level.

Editor's note: Our second stop on CB's Global Bar Crawl is in Athens, where two classic old watering holes have been tending to the drinking needs of locals for decades. If there’s one realm in which Athens has improved by leaps and bounds since the economic crisis began, it may very well be the city’s bar scene. Perhaps this can be attributed to a sense of nihilism or an uncertain future, but Athens has never had so much to offer in terms of drinking. From theme bars specializing in meatballs and cocktails to boîtes with a different DJ every night to converted bistros in former fabric shops, the list of venues is endless and endlessly varied.

Finding a kebab restaurant in Istanbul is not hard. There must be thousands of them. But finding the right kind of place, especially if you want to make it a bit more of a meal, can be surprisingly difficult. Most kebab joints tend to be no-frills, in-and-out places. Some are very good (and we will review a few in the future), but they don't make for a night out. On the other hand, some of nicer places – where you can find a more extensive menu and, more importantly, drink booze with your dinner – take things too far. Tuxedoed waiters serving kebab? Griller, please! At the end of the day, we're still talking about meat on a stick cooked over a fire.

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 Rio, food and culture go hand in hand like Romeu and Julieta (for Brazilians, that refers to white cheese and guava paste, respectively, which are such a tasty combination that they are said to be destined to be together). And perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in language – after all, the word for “language” in Portugese, língua, also means “tongue.” In Rio, what the carioca says tells us a great deal about how he eats. To wit:

Deep in the heart of El Born lies a medieval labyrinth of dark stone buildings and massive wooden doors, scant light, narrow passageways and dozens of colorful little shops, ateliers and hidden bars and restaurants. Of the last, La Cua Curta is one of our favorites, a family restaurant specializing in cheese fondue, unusual salads, carpaccios of meat and fish, homemade pâtés and a remarkable veal steak.

Update: This spot is sadly no longer open. Last summer, we took a look at the popularity of Cretan cuisine in Athens and noted that Alatsi, which introduced the island’s cooking to the city in 2005, had since seen a decline in fortunes. Until now. In early September, Pericles Koskinas took over at the helm and steered the restaurant back on course. The former chef of Milos Athens, Koskinas is famous for his simple and seasonal approach to cooking. He has a talent for bringing out the best in his raw materials with the least possible manipulation and tangling of flavors. Leaving behind a high-end restaurant to resuscitate another whose reputation had tanked was no small undertaking. His first move? He jettisoned the strict Cretan theme, looking beyond the island to all of Greece – and further still. He sources ingredients from small producers, and the majority of them have a protected designation of origin, including wild greens from Messinia, beef and xinotiri (sour cheese) from Naxos, apples from the Taygetos Mountains and eel from Arta.

Editor's note: In a recent New York Times article, Joshua Hammer wrote about a tour that Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk gave him through the author's native city and his personal history there. We were delighted to read that one of Pamuk's favorite places is Vefa Bozacısı, which is one of ours too (and also a stop on the Old City culinary walk). After our first taste, we were not quite ready to sing the praises of boza, a thick, almost pudding-like drink made from fermented millet. But the experience stuck with us. What is that flavor? Something like cross between Russian kvass (a fermented drink made from rye bread) and applesauce may be the best way to describe it. As it did to us, the drink may haunt you, much like the call of the itinerant boza vendors who wander the streets of Istanbul during the winter months calling out a long, mournful “booooo-zahhh.”

Editor’s note: Antiochia has moved to a new location. In Istanbul, we’ve noted an inverse relationship between a restaurant’s atmosphere and what’s coming out of the kitchen. In most cases, as furniture design goes slick, as bathrooms get properly lit and ventilated, as the wait staff becomes customer-savvy, the quality of the kitchen inevitably goes down. Presumably, there are those in Istanbul who go out to eat and those who go out to sit in chic restaurants, and never the two shall meet. But just when we thought this theory was watertight, we stumbled upon Antiochia – a small restaurant in Beyoğlu that exudes cool without sacrificing flavor.

Morro Fi and Mitja Vida are two relatively new entrants to Barcelona’s vermuteo (“vermouthing”) culture, whose history stretches back to the turn of the last century. These two bars are the product of nostalgia for a bygone era fused with the social network- and urban design-driven present. The vermouth tradition in Barcelona was started in the early 20th century by Flaminio Mezzalama, who represented the Italian company Martini & Rossi in Spain, at his fabulous modernist Bar Torino. Vermut began to be produced in Catalonia, and in the following decades, the province developed its own style of the aromatic fortified drink. At the same time, the custom arose of having vermut before lunch with some pickles to whet one’s appetite. That tradition faded over time but has emerged in recent years as a kind of retro, hipster-approved pastime.

We’ve all been there. One minute you’re in a dive off Garibaldi Plaza watching your out-of-town guests dance with half-naked mariachis, and the next morning, you’re nursing the poor tequila-stricken bastards back to life so they can do it all over again a few hours later.

Editor's note: We're sorry to report that Şam Şerif is now closed.  Turkey as a country does not deal in absolutes, even though some of its more bombastic citizens are known to. So when one hears the numerous bewildered complaints about Istanbul’s dearth of falafel and hummus, the correct response is not “Turkish food is not chickpea-compliant,” but “You are not going to the right restaurants.”

Update: This spot is sadly no longer open. The corner shop had stood empty for at least two years, so naturally I was interested when signs of renewed occupancy began appearing just a few blocks from where I live. Plaster came off the façade, revealing beautiful amber-colored stone walls with a cream trim that matched the perforated half-moons above the windows. Then the paper was stripped from the glass, and lo and behold the neighborhood had a new bakery, with tempting displays decorating the sills. Two slender olive trees in wooden churn-like pots planted with red cyclamen guarded the door, but I slipped past them to wish the owners kalo riziko – good roots – and to see what was going on.

At 6 p.m. on a Monday evening, the dining room of Adana Ocakbaşı was nearly full and the wide grill in the corner was covered with skewers loaded with meat. While most restaurants, worldwide, were closed or waiting for a slow night to start, this neighborhood kebab house was busting through a bumper rush of early birds in for a quick lamb chop or two on the way home. The dinner crowd had not even arrived.

Istanbul’s after-midnight dining options tend to be of the offal variety – tripe soup, chopped lamb’s intestines – thought to be curatives after a night of hard drinking. Luckily, not all late-night eats in the city involve innards. At Dürümzade – a grill joint positioned right on the fringe of the rowdy, bar-lined streets of the Beyoğlu’s fish market – we’ve found a dürüm, or Turkish wrap, that’s equally satisfying at 2 a.m. or 2 p.m.