Editor’s note: We don’t operate in Milan, but it's the home of our managing editor, Emma Harper. So we asked her to share her experience living under lockdown in the epicenter of Italy's outbreak. The first thing I noticed on lockdown in Milan, and the thing that has stuck with me the most, is the barking. Our apartment sits on a noisy thoroughfare, with cars and trams running by at all hours. But now, save for the errant tram, it’s quiet and still; the piercing, fearful dog barks ring out and bounce between the buildings that line my street, amplified by the silence. The only sound that can drown them out is an ambulance siren. It’s safe to say that the Milanese are dog people: Canines crowd the parks and streets, join their owners on the metro, and tag along for caffè and a brioche at the bar.

I have sat down to write this three or four times, and every time I stop, scrap everything and start all over. For many reasons, the most important being that things are changing so fast – every time I finish, the information I have included is inaccurate. More and more restaurants are closing, businesses are changing hours, closing, opening again. It starts at the top. The Mayor of New York City, the Governor of New York State and the President of the United States can’t seem to agree on what to do and how to do it. The mayor announced we must prepare to be under “shelter in place” in the next 48 hours only to be contradicted by the governor just a few hours later.

Do I have a fever? Am I coughing more than normal? My paranoia about potential coronavirus symptoms seems to be quite widespread, judging by my family and friends. After more than one week confined inside the walls of our homes in Spain, our moods have run the whole gamut from joking and laughing in chats and on social media about toilet paper or funny protection outfits to a more intimate anguish and uncertainty. Questions keep swirling in my head: How are we going to survive this tremendous health crisis? How are we going to come back from this economic standstill? What is going to happen to all our beloved bars, bodegas, restaurants and all the other small and family businesses that will be closed for so long? How is this storm going to change us?

My first reality shock with the quarantine and its food implications was when beans and chickpeas, both in tins and jars, started to disappear from the supermarket shelves. It was a sign of things to come. Portugal has been on official lockdown since last Saturday, but most of us spent the week leading up to the announcement voluntarily at home. Now, we are only allowed to go out to buy food, go to the pharmacy, work out or walk the dog. I have been taking advantage of that last reason – the dog has never walked so much in his short life. Plus, he’s not complaining about this new reality of having humans all day in the apartment.

In Spain, preserving the rituals of Lent – historically a period of 40 days of prayer, penance and pious abstinence from eating meat that leads up to Easter – was up until the second half of the 20th century mostly the responsibility of priests. Nowadays, however, it is more often the country’s chefs who are shaping the observance of Lent, by both maintaining and updating its delicious culinary traditions, which are still very much a part of Spain’s contemporary food culture. Each country where Lent was customarily practiced has its own special dishes in which meat is replaced with other protein-rich ingredients in order to fill the stomach. In Spain, the “king” of Lenten cuisine is cod (bacalao), introduced in the 16th century by Basque fishermen who had begun to catch it off the faraway coast of Newfoundland.

The place smells like a wet dog. The fishmongers have long grown accustomed to it, but the uninitiated are assaulted by the full force of La Nueva Viga’s funky barnyard smell almost from Eje 6, the congested avenue were we turn into the entrance. The trick, we find, is to walk quickly into one of the long, narrow corridors of the fish market's three massive buildings, so that the smell of salt and sea and freshly crushed ice fills up our nostrils so completely there is room for nothing else.

Growing up in Oaxaca, la gelatina rosita (“pinkish jelly”) was a biweekly ritual – every other Saturday, our mother would return from the market with this special dessert. It was so ingrained in our routine that we couldn’t imagine life without it. In fact, on a family trip to Mexico City, we were shocked to learn that gelatina rosita wasn’t readily available. Did they know what they were missing? It was only when we were older did we learn the proper name of this precious Oaxacan specialty: nicuatole. Some say its etymology can be traced back to Nahuatl (one of the many Indigenous languages spoken in ancient Mexico), specifically the words necuatl (“agave honey”) and atolli (“liquid corn”). While this may be true, it doesn’t quite portray what nicuatole is, not really.

The southern city of Adana is synonymous with kebab, and for good reason. Not only is the spicy grilled skewer of meat named after and originating from the city perhaps the most iconic and beloved style of kebab in the country, Adana also boasts the highest number of excellent kebab joints per capita anywhere, according to our unofficial but heartily conducted research. Therefore, we would be utterly remiss to neglect to mention our favorite kebab joints in the city: Ciğerci Mahmut, İştah, Kaburgacı Yaşar, Yeşil Kapı, and Ciğerci Memet. But Adana’s deep and rich food culture goes beyond the kebab, and during our numerous visits to this energetic, dynamic and truly excellent city, we’ve delighted in discovering its other specialties.

We like to travel on a smaller scale. Forget countries and cities, for us the neighborhood is the ideal unit of exploration. Celebrating neighborhood life and businesses is, of course, essential to what we do as Culinary Backstreets. Since our founding in 2012, we’ve been dedicated to publishing the stories of unsung local culinary heroes and visiting them on our food walks, particularly in neighborhoods that are off the beaten path. Plus, we recognize that tourism, while a justifiably important economic force in many cities, can devastate the urban ecosystem if not distributed responsibly into neighborhoods otherwise neglected by the travel industry. To help that process along, two years ago we launched an annual “Neighborhoods to Visit” guide, featuring areas off the main tourist trail from all the cities that we cover.

Corn is so vital to Mexican cuisine and culture that we could scarcely avoid it even if we wanted to. Not that we would ever want to – one of the things we love most about dining in Mexico is the high likelihood that our meal will have a healthy dose of corn in one form or another. Take atole, a traditional beverage made of corn flour, fruit, spices, and milk or water, which is often sold alongside tamales, corn patties most often stuffed with meat or veggies, steamed in a corn husk or banana leaf. Wash down your corn with some corn; that’s the Mexican way.

The oft-heard quote from Pablo Neruda, “Mexico is in its markets,” is rarely truer than at the Mercado San Juan de Pugibet. Not only is Pugibet likely the only market on the face of the planet where you can pick up bok choy, ostrich meat, black-eyed peas and chicatana salsa (made from Oaxacan flying ants!) on any given day of the week – and, to be fair, that last one is probably hard to find anywhere – this downtown market is positively dripping in centuries of history. The market has its origins in the pre-Hispanic open-air market, or tianguis, in the San Juan Moyotlan quarter of colonial Mexico City. Before 1548, the neighborhood was simply Moyotlan – “place of the mosquito” in Nahuatl – a nod to a common (and persisting) nuisance in the formerly marshy area bordering Lake Texcoco that surrounded ancient Tenochtitlan.

Athens, unofficially known as the Big Olive, has many delightful spots for a picnic in all seasons. Okay, in summer perhaps you’d rather be on the beach – and that can be arranged if you hop on a bus or tram for the southern coastal suburbs of Voula, Vouliagmeni and Varkiza – but in the city proper you can spread your meal on a hillside with a view of the Acropolis. With the weather often sunny and mild even in February, all you need is a little DIY initiative and the ability to resist the temptation of a snack at one of the many “fastfoodadika” or a sit-down meal in an air-conditioned taverna.

“What year did you marry your wife?” we ask Rafael Hernandez, known as El Negrito of Mercado Medellín, one Saturday afternoon at his vegetable stand. “I don’t know!” He breaks into uncontrollable laughter, “She knows though!” “What year did we get married, Gorda?” he asks the woman next to him. Her hair is tightly permed and her hands are ever-busy sorting vegetables and tallying accounts “I was 21 and you were 25, Negro – so more than 50 years,” Josefina says. Rafael, now 79, with a shock of white hair and an easy smile, happily bustles around his stand.