Editor's Note: Sadly, Azteka is now closed. Being a host for the World Cup really changes the routine of any city. Just imagine, then, what it’s like when you’re the main point of entry for the country – the place everybody wants to visit, even if their national teams are scheduled to play in other cities. Tourists have been pouring into Rio over the last couple of weeks, many Mexicans are among them – and, of course, the big match between Mexico and Brazil is tomorrow. (We’ve already written about where to watch matches if you don’t have a ticket.) And if you’re a fan of Mexico’s national team, where in Rio can you go to get in the spirit for this game? Where might one go afterward to celebrate or drown one’s sorrows? Where do Mexicans in Rio go when they’re feeling homesick? Here’s our list of the best Mexican spots in town.

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.

Editor’s note: We asked jazz guitarist and composer Anthony Wilson where he heads first for food when he lands in Rio. Wilson has been a member of Diana Krall’s quartet since 2001 and has recorded with Paul McCartney, Willie Nelson, Madeleine Peyroux and Barbra Streisand, among many others. His 2011 album “Campo Belo” was recorded in São Paulo with Brazilian musicians André Mehmari, Edu Ribeiro and Guto Wirtti.

And the winner is... Okay, okay, it’s nothing like the Oscar ceremony. But everyone in attendance at Comida di Buteco 2014 – the most important popular gastronomy competition in Rio – did hold a collective breath moments before the winner was announced. When the hostess proclaimed Bar da Frente the victor, the Rio Scenarium, the old theater in Lapa where the award ceremony was held, almost came down. Screams, tears, emotional speeches – there was definitely some similarity to the Academy Awards, we have to say. After a month of extremely hard work and profound hope for the 31 bars that took part in the competition for “best botequim food” in town, this was the moment we had all been waiting for.

After Portugal, Spain is second in exerting the most influence over the traditional bars and botequins of Rio. Even though the number of immigrants from Spain is less than that of Germany or Italy, the Spanish, like the Portuguese, took over much of the popular commerce in the city at the end of 19th century and the first half of the 20th.

Brazil, as everybody knows, was colonized by the Portuguese. But even with the end of colonial Brazil, the Portuguese continued to come: at the beginning of the 20th century, thousands of them immigrated to flee poverty in Europe and to start anew in Brazil – especially in Rio. As the capital of the colony for more than 400 years, Rio has been the most influenced by Portuguese traditions, architecture and, of course, gastronomy.

Editor's Note: Sadly, these spots are closed now. In February, the Rio state assembly took an unprecedented measure and passed tax breaks for microbreweries that produce less than 6 million liters of craft beer a year. We don’t actually endorse such foregoing of public funds in a place like Rio, where a recent survey found 28,000 elementary schoolchildren to be illiterate and where a responsible young woman is told in a public health clinic that it will take her four months to get an appointment for an STD test.

Editor's Note: Sadly, this spot is now closed. The locals of the Morro da Conceição are a proud bunch, and with good reason. To the north the cargo and cruise ships of Rio’s Port Zone steam in and steam out of Guanabara Bay. To their south the centro overflows with working cariocas during commercial hours. By evening, the centro becomes sparsely populated stretches of concrete and highway. The residents of Morro da Conceição have witnessed Rio history on its various sides.

For the carioca in need of grains in bulk, cheap party decorations, live animals and herbs for the ritual baths practiced in Afro-Brazilian faiths, the Mercadão de Madureira offers one-stop shopping. Madureira is a good two-hour bus ride from tourist-zone Ipanema and is tucked behind hills far from the ocean breeze, which means the neighborhood heats up even more than already steamy Rio. In the heart of Rio’s working-class north zone, the Mercadão is where cariocas who count every real go to comparison-shop and haggle for the best deals in the city limits. Remember that the minimum wage in Rio is less than 800 reais (about US$330) per month, and a middle-class family is defined as earning above US$450 per month. That means the 100-real meals of Ipanema are hardly palatable for the so-called “new middle class.” Despite the cheery BRIC emerging-economy narrative and the olho grande (“big eye,” or greed) of investors looking for a new consumer market, this sector of Brazilian society can be better understood as the working poor.

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.)

After three decades in Brazil, Margarita Sayan Pinto still speaks a charming, peppery portunhol – the Spanglish-like mix of Portuguese and Spanish – that she seems in no hurry to rid herself of. The chef remembers an interaction she had with a local taxi driver when asked to describe why she opened Rio’s first Peruvian restaurant nine years ago. "Peru?" the driver said. "That’s the only country in South America that doesn’t border Brazil." (Peru indeed has a 1,860-mile border with Brazil. Ecuador and Chile are the only South American nations that do not touch Brazil.)

Well-intentioned food appreciators have often made the error of believing that touristy is the opposite of authentic. The same goes for tourism and cultural exploration in general. The relentless search for the most local anything becomes based not on how locals themselves regard this thing but on how many fellow outsiders like ourselves have found it. (The fewer, the better, so goes the logic.) The localness of the thing is inverted, with the outsider becoming the arbiter of what is “authentic.” But if we, the outsiders, put so much effort into finding what is local, what’s wrong with locals making a similar effort to reach out to us?

Carnival in Brazil can be traced back to the 17th century, when the colonial-era population threw street parties, collectively called the entrudo, which involved pelting each other with lemon-scented water. (The governor of Rio de Janeiro tried to ban such raucousness in 1604, but the party lived on.) Throughout the colonial period, Brazil’s lower classes and slaves were the protagonists of street carnival, often imitating the dress and mannerisms of the elite. The entrudo continued, with irreverent (or was it inebriated?) revelers sometimes substituting urine and feces for the scented water in the spirited street parties.

You are what you eat, as the saying goes. Is it any surprise then that food figures so largely in popular culture all over the world? In Rio, food and culture go hand in hand like Romeu and Julieta (for Brazilians, that refers to white cheese and guava paste, respectively, which are such a tasty combination that they are said to be destined to be together). And perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in language – after all, the word for “language” in Portugese, língua, also means “tongue.” In Rio, what the carioca says tells us a great deal about how he eats. To wit:

In a country the size of Brazil, you’ll have an easier time finding a carioca who’s been to Disney World than to the Amazon region, so cut off is it by vast forests and pricey airfares from the cosmopolitan southeastern cities of São Paulo and Rio. When we visited Manaus and took a days-long boat trip on the Rio Solimões, we introduced ourselves as American, living in Rio. Locals seemed uninterested in asking the usual litany of questions about America but grilled us on Rio, which they had only seen in evening telenovelas.