For years, expats in Shanghai complained about the lack of quality desserts in the city. Perhaps they just meant familiar desserts, as locals were more than happy to point them to delicious egg tarts, mooncakes or Taiwanese iced treats. But alas, when it came to sweets, there seemed to be a Great Wall-sized divide between East and West. In an effort to bring together sweet tooths from both sides of the dessert dividing line, in 2010 Lexie Comstock started Strictly Cookies, an American-style cookie delivery company in Shanghai that she hoped would delight expats and win over locals along the way. Having first visited China in 2000 while in middle school, Comstock later plunged into studying Mandarin and majoring in East Asian Studies at Harvard.

Tacos are everywhere in Mexico City, and though the options are many – chicken, al pastor, carnitas, carne asada – the basic ingredients tend to be the same wherever you go. That’s why, as we were walking the aisles of Tianguis La Raza on a Sunday morning, El Parrillón caught our attention. A big sign announced tacos – nothing new there – but besides the classic chicken and bistec, cecina and arrachera – all different cuts of beef – El Parrillón (roughly, “The Big Grill”) offers several Argentine-style sausages and cured meats, including chistorra, a small spicy sausage, and panceta, pork belly (like Italian pancetta), as well as Spanish chorizo, which, unlike the fresh Mexican sausage, is cured. But for us the real draw was griddled provolone, which we had never seen on a taco before and happens also to be one of our favorite cheeses.

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.

Earlier this year, we attended a music festival on the Barra de Colotepec near Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca. This is where the Colotepec River meets the Pacific Ocean, creating a rich natural environment away from the bustle of the city.

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.

A few weeks ago we wanted to get out of bustling Mexico City, but we only had one day free, so we decided to look for a place where we could see some sights, eat, enjoy ourselves and still be back before the day was over. We found not just one, but two gorgeous towns that fit the bill in the state of Hidalgo, just over an hour north of Mexico City. The picturesque town of Real del Monte, also known as Mineral del Monte, is a small pueblo mágico (the Ministry of Tourism’s designation for a unique and historically significant village) with a long and rich heritage. It was one of the first mining towns the Spanish established after La Conquista. Much of the silver and gold mined during the colonial and post-colonial periods came from this part of the country.

Editor’s note: This post is the fourth 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. Hilaria Gastrobar We visited this restaurant on revitalized Madero Street downtown just a few months after it opened, and we were immediately won over by the food and beer selection.

Dimitris Kotsaris was more proselytizer than baker. Rather than a flour-dusted apron, this mild-mannered gentleman would wear elegant suits to meet with journalists, bearing two or three kilos of his famous whole-wheat bread as a gift. He was an ardent believer in the medicinal qualities of bread and preached widely that good bread promoted good health, once even taking his case to Harvard, where he delivered a talk about the role of well-made loaves in healthy diets. In 1981 Kotsaris opened Pnyka, the pulpit from which he spread his yeasty gospel, and gave the bakery the Greek name for the hill downtown where, in the golden years of Ancient Greece, Athenians gathered for the general assemblies that played such a formative part in the creation of democracy. It is quite fitting then that the first Pnyka shop opened in Syntagma (“Constitution”) Square. The bakery has since added two more shops in the city, in Exarchia and in Pagrati, the headquarters of the operation, and its following is such that last year a third was established in Vienna. Kotsaris passed away last year but his vision lives on through his son George, who has taken over the business.

Piraeus holds the distinction of being Greece’s biggest port, as well as the largest passenger port in Europe. Although it is a mere 20-minute train ride from downtown Athens, most Athenians think of Piraeus with a reverence reserved for a foreign country. There is just something almost mythic about this ancient port, which has been in existence since the 5th century B.C. – the famous opening line of Plato’s Republic is, after all, “I went down to the Piraeus yesterday.” In the modern period, the greater Piraeus area – home to a population of about half a million in Piraeus proper, along with a number of suburbs – has witnessed dizzying highs and lows, especially over the past century. The area has been a major destination for immigrants from elsewhere in Greece, including the islands and the Peloponnese. One of the biggest population expansions came after 1922, when vast numbers of Greek refugees fleeing Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) migrated to the area and established new working-class neighborhoods, including Nikaia, Keratsini, Drapetsona and Korydallos.

In Mexican cuisine, sweets are for the most part simple treats that are enjoyed at the park, market or beach, such as caramelized fruits and vegetables, blocks of nuts or amaranth seeds held together with honey, or small rice paper cakes filled with honey. The common denominator of most of these sweets is their simplicity. When it comes to ice cream and other frozen delights, however, the country truly shines, with an astounding variety of cold treats to please sweet tooths of every persuasion.

Forget about Christmas. In Greece, Easter is the main event, one where food, naturally, plays a starring role. It is also very much a holiday celebrated in the countryside: most Athenians go back to their villages during the holiday to be with their extended family and enjoy the Easter-related culinary delights of their home region.

Dear Culinary Backstreets, I heard that the Monday on which Lent begins is a holiday in Greece and that there are some special culinary traditions. Is this true? What do Greeks eat on this day?

One of our favorite markets in Mexico City, Mercado Jamaica is a fantastic destination any time of the year, offering everything from festive Christmas decorations to a large selection of fruits and vegetables. After the markets of Xochimilco, Jamaica is also one of the city’s best flower markets, with block-long aisles filled with freshly cut flowers and plants of almost every imaginable color and type. But as much as we love getting lost in the sweet scents of these green alleyways, what keeps us coming back to Jamaica is El Profe, an excellent eatery inside the market that specializes in barbacoa. El Profe ("The Prof") looks less like your typical market food stand and more like a mini restaurant, with small brass chandeliers hanging from the ceiling that provide more in the way of ambiance than actual light. Waiters and cooks in matching blue uniforms hustle and bustle around the customers, who come and go from the counter at a steady pace.

If there is a symbol of the adoring relationship that Greeks have with lamb, it is none other than the lamb on a spit that most Greeks in mainland Greece eat as a specialty on Easter Sunday. Greeks eat beef or pork at least once per week; lamb, however, is not an everyday thing but a treat, something more than just meat.