We hadn’t visited a restaurant for a while here at the blog. Today we are presenting a 100% off-the-beaten track food experience we had during our trip to Manaus.

We learned about the peixaria do Jokka Loureiro on a blog review (you’ll be pushed hard to find a mention to it on a printed guide, whether in English or in Portuguese) and thrilled with what we read we headed to the fish restaurant, in the São Raimundo neighbourhood, Manaus west (exact location of the restaurant on Google Maps).

The restaurant is at the end of a cul-de-sac. You ring the bell and someone will open the gate for you. The interior of the restaurant couldn’t possibly be more spartan: chairs and tables and hardly anything else. Well, not entirely true, from the height of the restaurant you enjoy a fantastic view of the river Negro which by itself would be a good enough reason to go as far as the São Raimundo neighbourhood.

In Manaus, do as the locals. We went to Jokka Loureiro to feast on some Amazon fish. There is no printed menu, and the options available are truly basic: tambaqui, pirarucú or tucunaré, the finest of the Amazon fish. We had heard of the awesome costillas de tambaqui (tambaqui ribs) and that was what we ordered.

Along with the fish we had some beer and rounded up the meal with dessert. The final bill for 2 reached R$55.

Jokka Loureiro is on Rua São José, 9. The safest and less stressful way of getting there is a cab. Approximately R$20 from the centre of Manaus. The restaurant only opens for lunch, from 11:30 to 15:30, Monday to Saturday. It seemed really popular with the locals.

——————————
RELATED POSTS:
destination: Manaus
map of Manaus
photos of Manaus
Teatro Amazonas, Manaus
the Meeting of the Waters and the Janauary Ecological Park, near Manaus

subscribe to the Brazil Travel Blog by Email
follow the Brazil Travel Blog on Twitter
follow the Brazil Travel Blog on Facebook

Those with a grasp of Spanish should learn before they arrive in Brazil that the ubiquitous pastel is a false cognate and does not mean cake or pie like the Spanish term does. Rather, a pastel (its full form is pastel de feira) is a small pasty, made of puff pastry, rectangular in shape and fried. It can contain a wide range of fillings: cheese, tomato, meat, cod, mushrooms, chicken and so on.

The ancestor of the pastel is the Chinese spring roll. It arrived in Brazil with the Japanese immigrants escaping from the Second World War. As at that time being Japanese wasn’t hold in high regard, some of the Japanese tried to pass as Chinese to avoid the discrimination their country fellow men were being victim of. And they begin cooking Japanese food with a Chinese touch.

The pastel is strongly associated with São Paulo and it is an incredibly popular snack you will find in most open-air markets (the feiras, hence the name pastel de feira). The traditional thing to do is to eat your pastel washed down with a caldo de cana – sugarcane juice.

If you go to Alcântara, state of Maranhão, you have to eat one of the most scrumptious sweets prepared in Brazil: the doce de espécie. It is a coconut cake so good, so delicious, that it itself it becomes a reason to visit Alcântara. You will also find the delicacy in São Luís, but it is made in Alcântara.

In Alcântara it is the kids that go after the tourists carrying the doces in large tupperware containers. If you are lucky, the sweets will have just left granny’s oven. If you make the mistake of buying just half a dozen, you must know that shortly after that you will be running after the kid to buy another half a dozen. Do yourself a favour and order the dozen from the start.

——————————
RELATED POSTS:
Destination: Alcântara
Destination: São Luís

One night in Florianópolis we went out for a pizza. We had driven by the Nave Mãe pizza parlour a few days earlier and decided we would give it a go. Only later we discovered it is one of the Florianópolis haunts of local celeb and national heroe Gustavo Kuerten (tennis player). The pizzaria is on the southern shore of the Lagoa da Conceição, where there is a considerable amount of restaurants. Access without a car is not easy.

The dining room has individual lamps on the tables that help it recreate an atmosphere of intimacy. It is quite dark inside.

Nave Mãe prepares its pizzas with wholemeal dough. Its menu is quite, shall we say, ‘lunatic’. The names of the pizzas relate to galaxies and the space race (Saturno, Terra, Soyuz, Sputnik, Cruzeiro do Sul, Siryus, and so on). We ordered a pizza with three different parts. Asteróide (tomato sauce, mozzarella, pepperoni and oregano), Lua (tomato sauce, mozzarella, bacon and oregano) and Soyuz (tomato sauce, mozzarella, ham, ‘catupiry’ cheese and pineapple). R$34 for a large pizza for two.

For dessert, we shared a conventional petit gateau, chocolate cake with ice cream.

What with one thing and the other we spent R$57. For someone who lives in São Paulo it is always difficult to judge pizzas prepared anywhere else – the risk of being unfair in our assessment is noticeable. The pizza was delicious. The base was slightly thickier than we are used to, but prepared with top quality ingredients.

The pizzaria Nave Mãe is on the rua Laurindo Januário da Silveira, 1296.

subscribe to the Brazil Travel Blog by Email
follow the Brazil Travel Blog on Twitter

Any Brazilian fruit stand or greengrocer’s is a true festival for the senses. Sometimes the surprise is not related to the exotic – abundant as exotic fruits are. The best known fruits are also full of surprises. Take the humble bananas.

On the photograph you can see, clockwise, four types of different bananas: nanica, prata, ouro and da terra. There are several others (figo, maçã, …). The moment you can identify them with ease you realize your process of cultural adaptation is well under way.

Today we want to introduce you to one of the greatest contributions of Brazil to the world: the unmistakable, inimitable and genuinely Brazilian pão de queijo. There will be those – and not without reason – wanting a more specific attribution of fame: pão de queijo is, above all, a Minas Gerais institution.

The pão de queijo is a cheese bun made of cassava flour, eggs, salt, milk and cheese. It is rounded in shape and the size can differ quite a lot. It is eaten hot and if it has been properly backed, it should have a soft and creamy feel to it. It should never be chewy.

You might find pão de queijo for breakfast at your hotel or pousada. The more you go up north, the less likely you are to have pão de queijo for breakfast. It is also served at snack bars, where it is often eaten next to your mid-morning coffee. There is a snack bar chain called “Casa do Pão de Queijo”.

You can buy frozen pão de queijo to bake it at home, and there are also mix packages if you want to prepare the bread yourself.

Similar products can be found in other South American countries. In Colombia cheese buns take the name of pandebono; they are chipás in Paraguay and Argentina.

subscribe to the Brazil Travel Blog by Email
follow the Brazil Travel Blog on Twitter
follow the Brazil Travel Blog on Facebook

The finger-licking good brigadeiro (in Portuguese it means brigadier) is one of the best known and most typical Brazilian sweets. Born in São Paulo in the 40s (so the Portuguese Wikipedia tells us) when a group of housewives began cooking the delicacy to be served in meetings in support of brigadier Eduardo Gomes, at the time running for the presidency of Brazil.

Brigadeiro is a tiny and round sweet. Its basic ingredients are condensed milk, chocolate powder and butter. Once the ball is formed, it is rolled in chocolate sprinkles. Brigadeiros are mandatory at birthday parties.

Not recommended for weight watchers.

subscribe to the Brazil Travel Blog by Email
follow the Brazil Travel Blog on Twitter
follow the Brazil Travel Blog on Facebook

Who would imagine, a melon ice lolly (Popsicle) is becoming a craze in São Paulo. It all began on the oriental quarter of Liberdade. We saw the ice-cream for the first time in July. So many people walking around holding a green lolly. When we tried to buy one to taste it, it was sold out. Since then, what could have perfectly been kept within the boundaries of the Japanese community, reached other parts of the city. Today you can buy your melon ice-cream on the avenida Paulista and even in the small Japanese supermarket of our very own part of São Paulo.

In actual fact, the product comes from Korea, and is manufactured by Bing. One wonders what the logistics of transporting ice-cream from Korea to Brazil must be like. Visions of hungry sailors stuffing themselves with ice-cream come to mind. As well as the melon ice lollies, you can also buy other Korean delicacies such as watermelon ice-cream or red beans ice-cream.

subscribe to the Brazil Travel Blog by Email
follow the Brazil Travel Blog on Twitter

For those familiar with the Argentinian tenedor libre, not much is needed in terms of an explanation. The rodízio is its Brazilian cousin. For those unfamiliar with both, the deal is simple: you pay a fixed price, you eat as much as you want (drinks and desserts are paid separatedly).

The rodízio par excellence is the meat rodízio. Comfortably seated at your table, you contemplate a seemingly endless series of waiters coming and going with huge skewers containing different cuts of meat. Whenever you fancy a cut of meat, ask the waiter, and he’ll cut some pieces for you. In actual fact, you hardly ever need to ask, waiters at a rodízio restaurant are quite proactive.

Those in the know are aware that good things come to those who wait. You can skip the French fries, fried bananas, onion rings and inferior cuts of meat that will be doing the rounds at the beginning of your meal. No need to stuff yourself too early. If you are patient enough, you will be rewarded with some of the most delicious cuts of meat you will have tasted in your life.

Prices at rodízio restaurants start from R$15 and go up to R$70 or R$80 at the best restaurants. In most restaurants, as well as the meat, you will find a larguish salad counter with quite a lot of cooked meals as well. The idea behind this bewildering variety is to stuff you real quick so you won’t be too eager to taste the most expensive cuts of meat.

Vento Haragano is quite a good (and expensive) churrascaria in São Paulo. At its website you can see what a rodízio looks like and what are the cuts of meat being served.

As well as meat rodízios, there are now fish rodízios, prawn rodízios, pizza rodízios, sushi rodízios,… The sky (or rather, your stomach) is the limit!

subscribe to the Brazil Travel Blog by Email
follow the Brazil Travel Blog on Twitter

For Japanese food lovers, São Paulo is the closest thing to heaven. Home to the largest Japanese community outside Japan, food from the land of the rising sun has experienced over the last decade a spectacular boom in São Paulo. As a result, there are now more Japanese restaurants (over 600) in the megalopolis than meat restaurants.

It’s not just the restaurants. Japanese ingredients are readily available, even at the corner shop.

A recent development are the rodízios de sushi, inspired on the ever-popular rodízios de carne, where you eat as much as you want for a fixed price. There are decent rodízios de sushi for R$35.

rio de janeiro, trancoso, arraial, porto_seguro, rio, natal, fortaleza, sao paulo, natal, buzios, paraty