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.

From 6 a.m., Tuesdays through Sundays, over 500 customers – from housewives to Michelin-starred restaurateurs – stream into a two-story, tile-front fish market in working-class Ponta d’Areia, a neighborhood in Niteroi, across Guanabara Bay from Rio de Janeiro. Since 2 a.m., stall owners have been out greeting fishing boats at docks across the city, where captains return from four- to 10-day trips along Brazil’s southeast coast, up to the Lake Region (Região dos Lagos, which includes the cities of Maricá, Saquarema and Cabo Frio, still in Rio de Janeiro state) and south to the state coastlines of São Paulo, Paraná and Santa Catarina.

In just a few hours, Germany will play Brazil in a World Cup semi-final match, but the outcome doesn’t matter. Win or lose, Germany has already conquered this nation – gastronomically speaking, at least. This isn’t fancy gastronomy, of course (leave that to the French!), but the simple, hearty, delicious food that the best Brazilian German bars serve all over the country, especially in Rio. German bars have been beloved institutions in Rio for a very long time. The most famous ones have been around since before World War II, when Rio was the capital of the country and the federal government was flirting with German's National Socialist Party. By 1939, Rio had a dozen German bars.

In a couple of days, Brazil will be the center of the world. And over the course of the World Cup, Rio will host seven matches, including the big final. Needless to say, the city is already packed with visitors from all over the world, all of them hoping for a ticket to watch at least one of those matches at legendary Maracanã Stadium. But only a privileged few will get to see the beautiful game in person; most people will support their national teams in front of a TV. But where? Inside a boring hotel room? Of course not. Everybody will be on the streets trying to find a good place to watch the games and have a lot of fun at the same time. And in Rio, watching soccer matches at bars is a national sport that is almost as important as the futebol itself. Here’s our list of the best “watch-and-drink” bars in town.

Perhaps coffee is underappreciated in Rio because it’s so plentiful. Brazil is the world’s largest producer of coffee, but both the selection and the presentation of the stuff you’ll find in Rio is hardly what a gringo dreams of in the capital country of café. Coffees here are cafezinhos, small, potent, highly sugary and with no milk. A cafezinho is taken standing up at a lanchonete (snack bar) or on a work break in the office in tiny medicine cups filled from an unseemly plastic cylinder. When Brazilians have seen the size of our morning coffee, many have expressed a concern that we could hurt ourselves with such a large quantity. (It’s just a coffee cup.)

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?

Rio’s Port Zone is undergoing a major facelift, and whether that will nicely polish its tired face or look like a botched Botox job remains to be seen. The port is the heart of Rio Antigo and particularly central to Afro-Brazilian history.It’s home to Rio’s first favela (squatter settlement), called Providência, which was originally populated in 1897 by veterans of the War of Canudos who were told the government would provide housing when they returned to Rio and found those promises to be delayed and elusive. At this port, up to an estimated half million slaves walked in from Brazil’s shores to then be sold in the port’s slave market, treated in a hospital if they were sick or buried if they died after arrival in Gamboa, where a fascinating makeshift museum called the Cemitério dos Pretos Novos offers a view of the human bones a homeowner found while digging on her property.

To call someone a cachaceiro in Brazil is to deal a pretty low Portuguese blow. The word translates roughly to “drunkard” and evokes the image of an unkempt alcoholic clutching a plastic bottle of the powerful local liquor known as cachaça. It’s no coincidence that the name of the drink made with cachaça, the caipirinha, comes from the word caipira, roughly meaning “redneck” or “country.” That the national spirit is invoked in insults is emblematic of the poor image the drink has long had, but which has recently been changing. Like the newly assertive Brazil, the sugarcane-based alcohol is finding its way into chic circles where it was once seen as a bit cheap and rustic. In the past, a posh dinner host in Brazil would offer her guests a uisque (whiskey) or imported wine. But these days, it seems cariocas are finally embracing the truth: the caipirinha is a profoundly refreshing godsend on a steamy Rio summer night. A thriving cachaceiro scene is now budding both in Brazil and among a growing fan base abroad.

Editor’s note: As of this week, Rio de Janeiro joins Culinary Backstreets as our sixth city. We’re thrilled to have expanded to four continents, and are looking forward to sharing with readers our explorations of this exciting city's dynamic food scene. Like many things in Brazil's beachside, party-hard Carnival city of Rio de Janeiro, gastronomy has a hedonistic edge to it.