Editor's note: For our last stop on CB's Global Bar Crawl this week, we're pulling up a stool at our favorite mezcal bars in Mexico City, kicking back and savoring every last drop. Para todo mal, mezcal. Para todo bien, también. Y si no tiene remedio, tómate litro y medio. For everything bad, mezcal. For everything good, the same. And if that doesn’t help, drink a liter and a half. – Popular saying among mezcal lovers.

“I’m not a missionary, but I am not doing this just to make a profit. People must see that there is mantı outside of Kayseri, there’s Crimean Tatar mantı, as well,” explained Gülben Resuloğlu, in front of her restaurant in the leafy Feneryolu district of Istanbul’s Asian Side.If Martha Stewart were in the mantı (also known as “Turkish ravioli”) business, her place would look just like Gülbi’s – meticulously decorated in pastels, white and floral prints. Everything matched, even the two neatly dressed women who welcomed us: Gülben (the Gülbi in question) and her sister, Leyla. But kept just behind tidy appearances, we discovered, is the pain of being Tatar. We’re convinced that this identity, which was forged in the fire of dispersal and diaspora, made the food taste better.

Editor’s note: This post is the third installment of “Best Bites of 2013,” a roundup of our top culinary experiences over the last year. Stay tuned for “Best Bites” from all of the cities Culinary Backstreets covers. Bar do Adão There are so many good fillings – 65, in fact – for the pastéis, or fried turnovers, at Bar do Adão that we appreciate their diminutive size, which allows us to eat a greater variety in one sitting.

Once considered Mexico City’s next hot neighborhood, Santa María la Ribera, near the city's center and one of its first suburbs, has been slow to deliver on that promise. While neighborhoods just to the south have stolen Santa María’s thunder, it’s finally showing signs of life – one of which is the restaurant/cooking school La Casona del Sabor. Built 140 years ago by a German immigrant couple, the building that houses La Casona features traditional colonial architecture, including a grand entrance that leads into a spacious, landscaped courtyard. Looking out over the courtyard is a colorfully tiled verandah that connects to multiple rooms. Once family quarters, these rooms now serve the culinary school. The school's head chef, Jorge Luiz Alvarez, began the school seven years ago in his nearby apartment, but when space became tight, he took over the house and expanded the business.

With the brutally forceful clearing of Gezi Park of its temporary inhabitants by Turkish police, the recent protests in Istanbul have lost the imposing physical presence that, incredibly, lasted for two weeks. These days, protestors are tossing ideas onto social media walls to see what might stick. To keep the resistance alive, we’ve been urged, via Facebook, to take part in all sorts of acts, passive and active, madcap and practical. But the one that really struck a chord with us is a campaign not to spend any money in shopping malls, not to even enter shopping malls, and to spend only what we must at small, local shops. Boycott the mall? Now, that’s a battle we’ve been waging since the late 1980s.

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).

As the legend goes, a 19th-century Catalan farmer was out experimenting in his fields when he came up with a new kind of longer, juicier green onion, the calçot. In creating the onion, the farmer produced much more than a new vegetable; he also paved the way for the rise of an idiosyncratic, and distinctly Catalan, cultural event.

Dear Culinary Backstreets, I’ll be in Spain during the December holidays and I’m wondering if Barcelonans eat any special meal on Christmas? If so, what is it and where in the city could I try it?

Thwap. Thwap. Thwap. “Do you hear that?” asked Sean Roberts, an expert on Uighur culture and politics and our dining companion for the day. “They’re making the lagman.”

Any Shanghai denizen who has lived in the city for longer than a few months worships at the altar of xiǎolóngbāo (小笼包). These steamed buns of goodness – tiny pork dumplings with a slurp of soup wrapped up in a wonton wrapper – provide delicious fodder for debates among Shanghai’s fiercest foodies.

For a Chinese city as fast-paced and increasingly cosmopolitan as Shanghai, there are surprisingly few late-night dining options that don’t involve ordering from the roving, streetside pushcarts that hawk grilled skewers or fried rice and noodles. Unfortunately, these midnight vendors are not always where you want them to be when you need them most, after 10 beers. Enter Ding Te Le.

[Editor's note: We're sorry to report that A Da Cong You Bing has closed.] In China, where queuing isn’t part of the culture, a long line of hungry diners patiently waiting for their food is just about the highest compliment a restaurant can receive. By those standards, Mr. Wu’s scallion oil pancakes are, hands down, one of the most sought-after breakfast treats in Shanghai. The line that stretches out his kitchen’s back door and wraps around the street corner means that fans of his savory pancakes can wait for hours, gulping in the scallion-scented air as they look forward to their chance to sink their teeth into the real thing. Scallion oil pancakes (葱油饼, cōngyóubǐng) are a common breakfast treat in Shanghai, but when Mr. Wu makes them, the little savory rounds stuffed with salty pork and scallions become an art form.