Editor's note: We're celebrating Mushroom Week at Culinary Backstreets, and today's installment takes us to Istanbul's Belgrade Forest, where Turkey's leading wild mushroom expert has found some remarkable fungus specimens. “This would be front-page news in France!” Jilber raved, darting off between tall chestnut trees and oaks, obscured by a hazy steam that seemed to hang in the forest like a gauzy Halloween decoration. He looked over each shoulder and all around him where it seemed he was surrounded by golf balls, shanked off and forgotten in the rough.

When Andres Contreras brings wild hongos (mushrooms) down from the forest, everyone starts preparing for a feast. “I learned everything from my dad. The categories of mushrooms, which were edible, everything,” says Andres on the day we trekked through those same woods he walked as a child, discovering the secrets of hunting for fungi. He makes quick work of the kilometers to the top of the section we are walking, with a hawk-like accuracy for spotting mushrooms and a soft gait despite his chunky rain boots. The area, about an hour outside of Mexico City in Mexico State, has been home to mushroom hunters for over a hundred years and is a parcel jointly owned by several communities in a cooperative structure known as an ejido.

Despite the image that Greece wants to sell the world as a holiday destination of eternal summer with beautiful beaches and clear water, the fact remains that it is a very mountainous country – almost a third of Greek land consists of hills and mountains. Most are forested, hosting a great diversity of ecosystems that offer fertile ground for mushrooms in particular. That said, mushrooms don’t feature prominently in traditional Greek dishes, and many people avoid them altogether, even the common cultivated varieties, from fear of getting sick. For many, meanwhile, mushrooms don’t evoke the best memories: During the 70s and 80s, the tinned variety was mainly used in cooking, as fresh cultivated mushrooms were rare and expensive.

Nine Inch Nails. Metallica. Tool. Rage Against the Machine. The driving beats, shredding guitar solos and iconic howls are attention grabbing to say the least as you meander through the colorful labyrinth that is Mercado de Coyoacán. From its famous tostadas and comida corridas to spiritual cleansings using Santa Muerte magic and all things Frida (it’s located just three blocks from Kahlo’s Casa Azul, arguably the most visited site in Mexico City), the Coyoacán Market is always abuzz with diners and shoppers, as many locals as tourists. In this case, the music is coming somewhat incongruously from behind an array of fresh-cut flowers: lilies, sunflowers, hydrangea, roses, carnations.

For the most part, Mexico City pampers its citizens with year-round warm, sunny weather, give or take the occasional downpour in the rainy season. And like any spoiled child, chilangos have grown so accustomed to living in such a temperate clime that any slight deviation registers as almost unbearable. At 19 degrees C, pedestrians cloak themselves in winter coats and hurry down the sidewalk, worrying that they will freeze to death on the two-block walk from their parked car to their front door. It’s rumored that chilangos are so unused to seeing their own breath in the cold that they mistake it for their souls escaping their bodies, augmenting their hatred of frigid weather.

In the heart of Alfama’s historic flea market is a surprise: Lisbon has a small restaurant dedicated entirely to mushrooms. Located inside the charming old market building from where there is an excellent view over the Tagus river, Santa Clara dos Cogumelos (Saint Clara of Mushrooms) is a very peculiar eatery: from starter to finish, including desserts, are unexpected combinations of shiitake, oyster, porcini, black trumpets or truffles, all cooked using a variety of techniques.

There’s a light scent but not much taste to the fresh truffle we just picked up from a local Chinese market. On a tea scale it weighs in at 18 grams and is the size of a healthy walnut. This year’s price for fresh truffles from France or Italy is many times more than the roughly US$6.50 price tag for this earth-coated Chinese truffle (松露, sōnglù).

With all of the anticipation of local elections in March, the scandalous graft-laden tapes leaked via social media, the communication fog brought on by the ban of Twitter and YouTube and the subsequent call for a vote recount in many cities, this city's stomach had good reason to be distracted. But one cannot survive on a diet of daily news alone. In case you all forgot, Spring is here.

Editor’s note: This is the fourth installment of “Spring (Food) Break 2013,” featuring our favorite foods of the spring season in each city Culinary Backstreets covers. This year’s Nevruz celebration, an ancient welcoming of spring, may be remembered for its political significance in which a peace deal was struck between Turkish leaders and Kurdish rebels. But once the shoulder-shrugging, line-dancing, fire-jumping and ululating are over, the real bounty of the season will continue to be celebrated all over Turkey and in many Istanbul restaurants, from the chic to the shabby.