The city that out-eats Rio, out-works New York, and out-sizes them both
South America's largest city (22 million in the metro) and its undisputed culinary capital — a city where Lebanese immigrants run the best kibbeh, Japanese-Brazilians (the largest Japanese diaspora outside Japan) operate the finest sushi bars, Italian descendants control the pasta scene, and paulistano cooks synthesize all of it into something that belongs entirely here. The Mercadão (Mercado Municipal, 1933) is the best single food stop in South America — a cathedral-scale iron-and-glass market hall where the mortadela sandwich with cheese is worth a separate trip.
Founded by Jesuit missionaries in 1554 on a plateau above the coast, São Paulo grew slowly until the late-19th-century coffee boom that made Brazil the world's dominant coffee producer. Coffee wealth funded São Paulo's industrialization; mass immigration from Italy (1880s), Japan (from 1908), and the Middle East, plus internal migration from Brazil's Northeast, created one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world. São Paulo now generates roughly 12% of Brazil's entire GDP.