Standing behind the counter at his small bici bici shop in Gökalp Mahallesi, a neighborhood in the Zeytinburnu district of Istanbul, Cuma Usta recalls the first time he headed up into the mountains with his uncles in search of wild ice, one of the key ingredients in this Turkish snow cone treat sold from street carts throughout southern Turkey. His uncles had gone up in the winter and cut large slabs of ice from the mountaintop, wrapped it in old blankets and hauled it off with a donkey to a nearby cave. In July, with young Cuma – just being introduced to the ways of bici bici – in tow, they headed back to the cave to collect the ice. It took a couple of hours by car, as he recalled, and the ride back to Adana, vehicle loaded with the frozen bounty, was nice and chilly. Then they’d use that ice to make the summertime street food favorite bici bici (pronounced like the disco-era band of brothers from Australia) and sell it from pushcarts. According to tradition, a bici bici master is, firstly, a harvester of ice.

The Praça da Bandeira, an area of Rio that until recent years was mostly known for prostitution and cheap inner-city housing, is rapidly changing. Lying in the shadow of the massive Maracanã Stadium – built for the 1950 World Cup and the planned location of the opening ceremony of the 2016 Summer Olympics – it is alive with new construction and pedestrian traffic, which are changing the tired face of this historical but underappreciated neighborhood. And sitting snugly in the midst of this new buzz is Aconchego Carioca, a restaurant and bar with one of the best beer menus in Rio.

Chat up the older residents of a Rio favela and you’re likely to start hearing romantic stories about Brazil’s northeast: those colorful cajú and mangaba fruit trees, the clear turquoise ocean, the folksy and upbeat forró music, chewy tapioca sandwiches and cakes. Brazilians call that saudades – a longing for something lost, which may or may not exist in the form one dreamily remembers it. These are the pleasant memories many northeastern immigrants hold amidst the urban hustle of crowded Rio de Janeiro, where a working-class Brazilian knows the beach exists but easily lives a hot two-hour bus ride away from it.

Until a few years ago, breakfast eateries were not very common in Rio. Cariocas would have breakfast at home or at a bakery, while tourists had to make do with the always-boring "Continental breakfast" offered at hotels. But thankfully, everything has changed.

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.

Following a tip, we set out one morning to find Pamuk Usta, a legend among the chickpea breakfast-wrap-eating Antep-Birecik-Nizip diaspora of Istanbul.

It’s October and mushroom season in many parts of Europe, but if you were hoping for anything like Genoa’s Porcini Festival in Athens, you’re out of luck. But don’t despair: ‘shrooms, wild and cultivated, can be found; it just takes a little sleuthing.

Let’s say you have only two or three days in Rio. You want to experience a little real Brazilian culture and don’t want to restrict yourself to the obvious tourist stops, overhyped bars and restaurants or usual “gringo” nightlife spots. Our recommendation? Spend a night or day – or both, even – at Feira de São Cristóvão.

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 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.

Dear Culinary Backstreets, My husband and I are headed to Rio for vacation and neither of us eats meat or fish. Brazil sounds like a paradise for the carnivorous, but what’s a vegetarian to do?

With 4,500 miles of coastline, the world’s largest river by volume (the Amazon), more than 10,000 miles of waterways and the largest amount of fresh water on the planet, Brazil suffers from a certain gastronomical misperception. Yes, this is a country that loves beef, prominently on display in popular Brazilian churrascarias.

Mushroom hunting has an irresistible, magical pull. Composer John Cage, an avid mushroom collector, found them an integral part of his creative process, once writing: “Much can be learned about music by devoting oneself to the mushroom.” Every fall, thousands of Catalans likewise find themselves under the mushroom’s spell, following the elusive fungus’s silent melody into the woods, a rustic wicker basket in one hand and – more and more these days – a GPS-enabled smartphone in the other.

Dear Culinary Backstreets, My family is planning a trip to Shanghai. We want to dine like the locals but also make sure our little ones get their fill. Do you have any recommendations?

Dear Culinary Backstreets, I’ve noticed that a dish called “moustalevria” pops up in shops all over Athens in the autumn months. What is it, and where can I get it?