SNACKS
Salgadinhos |
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On every street corner,
busstation and airport in Brazil you will find a lanchonete, a mixture of café and bar.
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Here you
find basics like cold beer, snacks, cigarettes, soft drinks, coffee and sometimes small
meals.
Padarias (bakeries) often have a lanchonete attached, and they're good places for cheap
snacks. |
Empadinha is a small pie,
which has various fillings (carne, (meat), palmito (palm heart) and camarão (shrimp). |
Bolinhos are fried balls
with bacalhau. |
Pastel is a fried, filled,
thin pastry. |
Esfiha is a pastry stuffed
with spiced meat. |
Risoles are crumbed,
halfround pastels. |
Pão de queijo, a savoury
cheese snack that goes perfectly with coffee. |
 
Coxinha is spiced chicken
in dough rolled in the form of a pear (coxinha means little thigh) and then fried. A good
coxinha must have a rich and tasty filling and must be deep fried in high quality hot oil.
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 Quibe is a mix of minced meat, mint and couscous and fried in
oil. |
| http://bolnamesa.bol.com.br/receita/salgados.jhtm |
recipes |
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Despite all these
salgados that you find at the lanchonete, it might be less easy to find something to go
with your beer or caipirinha on a terrace. No tapas, nuts, tortilla chips or salami. You
ask for a petisco and maybe they will fry some batatas or mandioca fritas for you. Or
bolinhas de bacalhau. |
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You can get food at a
growing number of fast food outlets in cities, which look garishly American but take the
hamburger or hot dog and "Brazilianize" it, much improving it in the process.
All sorts of things are added, and the menus are easy to understand because they are in
mangled but recognizable English, albeit with Brazilian pronunciation. A cheeseburger is a
X-burger, a hot dog a cachorro quente; a bauru is a club sandwich with steak and egg; a
mixto quente a toasted cheese and ham sandwich. |
Food sold by street
vendors in Brazil should be treated with caution, but not dismissed out of hand. You can
practically see the hepatitis bugs and amoebas crawling over some of the food you see on
sale in the streets, but plenty of vendors have proper stalls and can be very
professional, with a loyal clientele of office workers and locals. Some of the food they
sell has the advantage of being cooked a long time, which reduces the chance of picking
anything up, and in some places - Salvador and Belém especially - you can get good food
cheaply in the street; just choose your vendor sensibly. |
 In Salvador try Acarajé, only available from street vendors - a
delicious fried bean mix with shrimp and hot pepper. |
 In Goiania try to find Pamonha, rolls of corn-cob
leaves filled with corn purée and then boiled. That is the sweet version. The salty
version is made with a filling of cheese or a sausage.
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Food
It's hard to generalize about Brazilian
food, largely because there is no single national cuisine but numerous very distinct
regional ones. Nature dealt Brazil a full hand for these varying cuisines: there's an
abundant variety of fruit, vegetables and spices, as you can see for yourself walking
through any food market. |
Four main
regional cuisines: |
Comida mineira from Minas Gerais, based on
pork, vegetables (especially couve, looks like curly kail) and tutu, a kind of refried
bean cooked with manioc flour and used as a thick sauce; |
Comida baiana from the Salvador coast, the
most exotic to gringo palates, using fish and shellfish, hot peppers, palm oil, coconut
milk and fresh coriander; |
| Comida do sertão from the interior of the
Northeast, which relies on rehydrated dried or salted meat and the fruit, beans and tubers
of the interior of the Northeast; |
Comida gaúcha
from Rio Grande do Sul, the most carnivorous diet in the world, revolving around every
imaginable kind of meat grilled over charcoal. Comida do sertão is rarely served outside
its homeland, but you'll find restaurants serving the others throughout Brazil, although -
naturally - they're at their best in their region of origin. |
Nearly every
region of Brazil has its own delicacies.
Rio's cuisine is as international as it gets, but local Rio specialties focus on excellent
grilled fish, lobster, fine fish stews called caldeiradas, and some of the best pizza in
Brazil.
Cuisine in Minas Gerais tends toward short ribs, heavy bean dishes, and torresmos (fried
pork rinds). Seafood-based Bahian cuisine is spicy and most often orange in color (from
the dendê palm oil).
The most exotic fish dishes can be found in the Amazon, where anything from piranha to
pirarucu is fried, stewed, broiled, or poached. |
Alongside the regional
restaurants, there is a standard fare available everywhere that can soon get dull unless
you cast around: steak (bife) or chicken (frango), served with arroz e feijão, rice and
beans, and often with salad, fries and farinha, dried manioc (cassava) flour that you
sprinkle over everything. Meals in Brazil are heavily
salted. Don't be afraid to ask for your food ´sem sal´ (without salt). Inquire about the
prato feito, or sortido, the prepared meal of the day. |
Farofa is toasted farinha,
and usually comes with onions and bits of bacon mixed in. In cheaper restaurants all this
would come on a single large plate: look for the words prato feito, prato comercial or
refeição completa if you want to fill up without spending too much. |
Vinaigrette
is a mix of onions, tomatoes, lime juice, oil, coriander, small green onions. |
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Brazilians are big meat eaters, and for
good reason. Southern beef from Rio Grande do Sul and cuts imported from Argentina are
among the tastiest in the world. If a small town has only two restaurants, at least one of
them is sure to be a churrascaria (steakhouse) where you can order a rodízio—an
all-you-can-eat buffet served by formally dressed servers who present as many as 18 cuts
of meat until you call it quits. For a single moderate price, you start with chicken
hearts, ham, sausage, and gizzards, then continue with chicken, filet mignon, and prime
rib. If that's too intimidating, you can order simple grilled beef à la carte. |
| Brazil's national dish is feijoada,
a black bean stew with an intriguing variety of dried, salted, and smoked meats, including
pork, tongue, pork loin, ribs, sausage, and bacon. The original version was invented by
slaves during the colonial period, who creatively employed leftovers from the tables of
their masters. Today, making a good feijoada is a fine art (preparation takes all day),
and you're expected to eat it at a leisurely pace. Most restaurants throughout the country
serve it on Saturday, though it can often be found on Wednesday (especially in Rio's finer
hotels). |
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