Every Sunday, Praça Paris fills with cooks and communities whose food reflects a far broader Rio than the formal European plaza was built to represent.

At Gebar, four cousins honor their grandmother’s Lebanese cooking with kafta, tabbouleh, kibbeh, hummus with beef and baru nuts, and a Lebanese-inflected prato feito inside Rio’s São José Market.

A tiny pasta and wine shop inside Rio’s Mercado São José, where chef Ellen Gonzalez serves fresh handmade pasta, Asian-inspired noodles, seasonal ingredients, and Brazilian natural wine.

A guide to Rio de Janeiro’s reopened Mercado São José, where young food businesses, neighborhood residents, and independent restaurateurs have transformed a historic Laranjeiras market into one of the city’s most exciting dining hubs.

A Centro boteco where Chef Diego Melão brings caipira cooking to the foreground with wood fire, preserved pork, bull tongue and one of downtown Rio’s most distinctive menus.

A century-old Santa Teresa boteco where family history, excellent petiscos and some of Rio’s coldest beer still draw the neighborhood in.

Insider tips on food, costumes, samba parades, and staying energized during Rio de Janeiro’s legendary Carnival.

A local guide to the best botecos in Rio de Janeiro. Discover where to eat petiscos, drink cold beer, and experience the city’s everyday bar culture.

Ricardo Manuel Pires Martins likes to brag about the popularity of his bar among Japanese tourists. We don’t begrudge him that, because if you’re in the market for seafood, particularly the less-cooked kind, as these tourists evidently are, Adega Pérola is your bar. Tucked on a commercial lane a few blocks behind the Art Deco condo-and-hotel jam that is the Copacabana beachside, Rio's Adega Pérola sticks close to its Iberian roots, with wine jugs lining the high wall shelves and a selection of about a hundred tapas stewing in their respective marinades behind the glass bar window.

From the street, Café Lamas looks almost intentionally nondescript. A fluorescent-lit bar with a glass case of snacks and a few metal chairs would make it identical to any other lanchonete (snack bar) across the city, if it weren’t for the shadowy doorway behind the bar’s aisle. Behind that door awaits a blast from the past. Café Lamas is Rio de Janeiro’s oldest restaurant – a respectable 138 years old in a city that is rapidly putting on a new face as it buzzes with Olympic, hotel and condominium construction – and the place radiates a sense of history and tradition. Bow-tied waiters politely bend as guests enter the dining room, which is dimly illuminated by lamps on ornate cast-iron mounts.

Although there are plenty of bars on Copacabana’s famous Avenida Atlântica – or even at the beach, at the so called quiosques – very few are worth a visit. Many are just tourist traps. Others are much too expensive. No, the really good bars in Copacabana are inland, along Barata Ribeiro street. That road, along with some of the side streets that let onto it, reveals the true face of Copacabana's popular gastronomy. One of the first bars you encounter on Barata Ribeiro is Galeto Sat's. Open seven days a week, always until 5 a.m., the bar is a bohemian temple – but it’s far from being only that. For many cariocas, Sat's serves the best galeto in town. A galeto is a very young chicken (no more than three months old) cooked over a big coal-fired grill.

In a city with no shortage of postcard views, Bar Urca’s may get the title for most picturesque in Rio. The eponymous residential neighborhood where the bar is located faces Guanabara Bay, where a colorwheel of boats and yachts bobble on the slow waves leading up to the seawall. Across the bay, the iconic Christ statue watches over everyone from atop Corcovado peak behind the neighborhood of Botafogo.

For a city whose natural beauty is what often sweeps visitors off their feet, Rio’s historical gems often look a little like urban ugly ducklings next to the bikini crowds and chic bars on sandy Ipanema beach. That’s a shame, because Rio Antigo has a great story to tell. Old Rio runs along the Guanabara Bay rather than the open Atlantic, and it was the former that gave the city its name – River of January – when Portuguese explorers came upon it in the first month of 1502.

Rio de Janeiro’s food scene, much like the city itself, operates on its own distinct rhythm – a samba of deep-rooted traditions, neighborhood loyalties, and an ever-present informality that masks the seriousness with which cariocas approach their food. After nearly a decade, we at Culinary Backstreets have resumed our in-depth coverage and guided walks on just where to eat in Rio. Today, we’ve rounded up our essential spots in this forever dance party of a city. For us, an "essential" is not about popularity, trends, or haute cuisine. These are places embedded in the city’s daily life or keepers of specific culinary practices. Where to eat in Rio comes down to places with heart: community gathering spots or businesses that tells a larger story about Rio’s history and its people.

The eyes of Tacacá do Norte’s harried staff widen as yet another customer arrives during the lunchtime rush. The bedroom-sized snack bar can barely hold one line of chairs around its bar but they have somehow managed to squeeze in two. Impatient regulars shake hands and whistle “psst” to the young men staffing the establishment, who gingerly hand steaming pots of shrimp soup and freshly puréed juices over the packed bar.