As we wrote in part one, specialty coffee has really taken off in Barcelona, after a long period of limited options and mediocre to bad beans and roasts. Here are a few more of our favorites among the new generation of coffee shops: True Artisan Café Elisabet Sereno, a Barcelonan nutritionist, coffee specialist, a founder of the Specialty Coffee Association of Europe (SCAE) and a judge in the World Barista Championship, opened this coffee shop in 2014. It was created as a showroom and also serves an educational role in improving specialty coffee culture in Barcelona and Spain by organizing events, demos and tastings. True Artisan is an official La Marzocco espresso coffee machine distributor showroom, an SCAE-certified training center and a comfortable bar to while away an afternoon diving into Arabica aromas, latte art, cups, gadgets and machines.

Here in Mexico City, there are many restaurantes yucatecos that serve the cooking of the Mayan states, including two of our favorites, Máare and Coox Hanal. And a few months ago, an eatery with a fresh take on Yucatecan food opened its doors in Colonia San Rafael. As its name indicates, Cochinita Power specializes in the region’s best-known dish, cochinita pibil. The traditional version consists of pork marinated in an acidic sauce made from achiote (annatto seeds) and Seville oranges, wrapped in banana leaves and roasted in an underground pit. At Cochinita Power, the meat is not roasted underground, but chef Alexis Estrada cooks the mouthwatering cochinita on the stovetop until the meat is incredibly tender and deeply imbued with all the spices and flavorings he adds to it.

Shanghai’s farm country is closer than most residents imagine, especially when surrounded by the city’s seemingly endless forest of skyscrapers. But just beyond the spires is a huge, green oasis: Chongming. Somewhat smaller than Hawaii’s Kauai, this island at the mouth of the Yangtze River grows much of the municipality’s food supply. The government is pushing plans forward to develop the area with “eco-friendly” industries by 2020 but, as usual, has not provided many details on how these goals will be achieved. A stopping point for millions of migratory birds each year, the island (for now) has several wetland zones and ecological parks that are open to visitors, making it a worthwhile jaunt for those wanting to escape Shanghai’s urban jungle.

In Spain, as in the U.S. and elsewhere – even as we hit coffee pod peak – a new multicultural generation of specialty coffee shops are discovering and sharing with their customers the best ways to experience all the special characteristics of truly great coffee. Spain’s cities share the urban Mediterranean tradition of strong short coffee, very much influenced by Italian espresso and served in small cups or glasses, with tons of sugar and perhaps also liquors (orujo or aguardiente, anís, coñac). Much of the time, the quality of this coffee could really hurt your body and soul. It’s made from cheap, low-quality Robusta beans that undergo torrefacto (toasted at 200 degrees C with sugar) – once a technique to keep flavor and increase weight but now widely regarded as a way to hide terrible qualities or to ruin any coffee. At the same time, in the countryside and in small villages, café de puchero, coffee made in a pot and filtered with a cloth, much lighter and more diluted than espresso, was always the brewing method of choice before the rise of the stovetop moka pot.

For a country of Brazil’s size (pop. 190 million), the number of foreigners in the country is pretty miniscule. Less than 1 percent of the country’s residents are foreign-born; the top countries of origin for those foreigners are the U.S., Japan and Paraguay. (By comparison, about 13 percent of the U.S. population of 319 million is foreign-born.)

As in many other rural parts of Europe, the Catalonian countryside is dotted with large, old farmhouses, legacies of feudalism that have since been converted into hotels, bed-and-breakfasts and restaurants. The origins of these masías, as they’re known in Catalan, go back to the 11th century, but it was not until the end of feudalism in the 16th century that the former serfs turned masías into their own self-run farm holdings and homes. The buildings that survive today may be of a more recent vintage, built perhaps a century ago, sometimes older. Masías were usually named after the family who owned them; “Can Josep,” for example, means “house of Josep.”

Dear Culinary Backstreets, I’ve heard about drinks in Mexico called “aguas frescas,” but what exactly are they? Visitors to Mexico are sure to encounter aguas frescas, a popular category of drinks that are ubiquitous at food stands and eateries around the country. These colorful beverages, whose name literally means “fresh waters,” come in a variety of different flavors depending on the main ingredient, but generally all are made by mixing a fruit juice with water and sugar.

Along the southwestern coast of Turkey, the vibrant blue waters of the Mediterranean crash against dry, rocky mountains jutting from the water’s edge. For centuries, pilgrims and adventurers alike have scrabbled over the unforgiving terrain between Fethiye and Antalya known as the Lycian Way. Ruins dating back to Greek and Roman times nestle between the scrubby trees and undergrowth, melding with the landscape and painting a picture of the life that has always dotted the shore. The Turquoise Coast is a popular place to visit in the summer, with massive sand beaches and countless pansiyons catering to every type of tourist. While most people visit this region for its stunning vistas and beaches, it has exceptional food if you know where to look.

Upon the hot and dry plains of Les Garrigues, two irrigation canals cut through an agricultural expanse, diverging first from the ample Segre River, which runs through the center of the city of Lleida, before subdividing again, their meandering channels reaching farther and farther into an otherwise parched plateau. These life-giving tributaries are collectively known as the Canal d’Urgell. Les Garrigues, a region of the Catalan province of Lleida, is a fertile green splotch on an otherwise arid landscape 150 kilometers inland from Barcelona. The irrigation of this region, first conceptualized by the Moors in the 13th century but carried out on a grand scale in the late 1700s, has enabled the cultivation and nurturing of farmland, where a crop of prized arbequina olives and fragrant almond trees now stretches toward the horizon.

Like other cities around the world, Mexico City has been flooded with big-name chain coffee shops that charge exorbitant prices for a cup of bad coffee. Fortunately, D.F. is a city of contrasts, where good taste in coffee still exists. We set out to find the best coffee shops in town and were surprised by what we found. Our first stop was one coffee shop we have been visiting for several years now, Café Triana, inside Mercado San Juan, the city’s first gourmet stop par excellence. Marilu and Pablo Arana started selling coffee from Veracruz, a city on the Gulf of Mexico with a Caribbean feel, in the aisles of the market until they got the chance to get a booth and start their own coffee shop. Their establishment has since been featured in many national and international media outlets.

Each year at the end of May, more than 12,000 penyistes and 200,000 hungry visitors devour 12 tons of snails in one mere weekend in the city of Lleida, the capital of Catalonia’s interior. The Aplec del Caragol (“Snail Gathering”) is now an internationally known gastronomic event of impressive magnitude. Just under two hours inland from Barcelona by car and an hour by high-speed train, Lleida is an easy trip worth taking, especially in late spring, when friends and families gather to eat and drink with abandon. Typical foods prepared by the colles (gangs) of penyistes (participants) who register together and participate in the Aplec every year (sometimes for decades without fail) include paella, fideuà (a typical pasta preparation), grilled meats and sausages, stews and salads. However, the tender, tasty land snail is the main attraction.

We are very happy to announce that in May we’ll be offering a springtime edition of “Culinary Secrets of Gaziantep,” our three-day eating and hands-on cooking adventure in Turkey’s gastronomic mecca. An ancient city not far from Turkey’s southern border, a meeting point between the Arab Middle East and Turkish Anatolia, Gaziantep over the centuries has developed a culinary culture that is deeply rooted in the rhythm of the agricultural lands surrounding it and that is maintained with great pride and honor by the city’s cooks and food makers. Gaziantep is also the source for many of Turkish cuisine’s iconic dishes – the city’s famous baklava is without compare and its kebabs are truly works of art, the standard by which all others are measured.

Known in Catalan as mongetes – “little nuns,” as Catalonia’s oldest kind of beans resemble the pale face of a nun in her black habit – or fesols, from the Latin phaseolus, beans are an integral part of the region’s culinary traditions. If Catalan home cooking could be represented by a single dish, it would be butifarra amb mongetes, peppery pork sausage which is either grilled or fried and served with a little mountain of delicious beans: simple, filling and soul-warming. But in Catalonia the number of dishes made with legumes is infinite. In fact, many local restaurants offer a choice of beans or potatoes to go with all manner of seafood or meat preparations, from chicken to pork or veal, or from cod to squid or sardines.

Editor’s note: To cap off our annual review of the year’s best eating experiences, we’ve unleashed our imaginations to create the Turkish food court of our dreams. After a period of protest, we finally broke down and visited the Zorlu Center, a new, high-profile shopping mall in Istanbul and a showcase of international brand names, from Fendi to Jamie Oliver. Our initial attraction was the promise of a particularly well-kept playground, but while we were there, we visited Eataly, the all-Italian culinary emporium.

Editor’s note: The year is coming to an end, which means it’s time for us to look back on all the great eating experiences we had in 2014 and name our favorites among them. Can Pineda At this tiny, century-old restaurant in the neighborhood of El Clot, we ate a simple dish of guisantes lágrima (“tear-shaped peas”) with little bits of jamón ibérico, one of the most delicious culinary treasures we have had all year – and one we will remember for a long time to come.