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Rio de Janeiro

Sao Paulo

Ouro Preto 

More photos of our trip coming up shortly...

Indian Food Extravaganza

With all the glorious food that we were devouring in Sao Paulo, we decided to cook up a minor feast (by our standards) of Indian food at home, for our hosts. Of course, neither of us had cooked up all that many minor feasts before so if anything a minor adventure was to be had.

At least we easily settled on a menu - it was to be a full spread. Starting off with either Papdi chaat or Bhel depending on the ingredients available, followed by stir-fried Okra with potatoes, Chhole, Carrot salad, Rice and finished up with Gazar Halwa.

We found all ingredients necessary at an extremely well stocked supermarket called Pao de Acucar, but didn't quite estimate the time well. We had dawdled in Parque do Ibirapuera and the Bienal exhibition a little too long and so by the time P. and M. returned, we were still cooking! Fortunately though, our first-time attempts, with modifications for ingredients (and time!) not available, at tamarind chutney and gazar halwa turned out perfectly fine. The substitute for papdi that we picked up at the supermarket held up well under yogurt and the late addition of jeera (cumin) and bay-leaves to the rice didn't go south either. All in all, the food was good and the cooking and eating of it was fun! Even though, ahem, we say this ourselves. The food was also bolstered by the very solid bottles of wine - Brasilian ones - that P fished out.

To P. and M. - this was just a teaser, there's more awaiting on your future trip to India!

P.S. Erm, late revelation, but the carrot salad was a late addition because we had too much carrot for the halwa!

Sao Paulo, an Ode to Food

We had to devote an entire post to Sampa's food and drink, it was marvellous. We started each day with a sumptuous breakfasts at P. and M's home, where we were treated to excellent coffee, assorted breads, heavenly bolo de fuba (cake of cornmeal) with erva doce (aniseed), requeijao (Brasilian cream cheese), homemade blackberry jam, pao de quiejo (refer our Ouro Preto post), and fruit.

The city has many Italian and Japanese immigrants. In fact, Sampa has the world's largest Italian population outside Italy. It is no surprise therefore, that pizzerias and sushi places abound. Paulistanas claim that Sampa's pizza is the best in the world, and I would have to agree! I have never eaten better pizza! I suppose I will need to confirm this after our trip to Naples (not yet scheduled). We went to one of Sao Paulo's oldest and most traditional pizzerias in the Italian neighbourhood of Bixiga, where the Famiglia Tarallo has been serving excellent pizzas since 1958. They have up on their walls some kind of certificate from Italy about their margherita pizza vouching for its authenticity.

We also ate excellent Japanese food at the Mercado Municipal. Mercado Municipal is an enormous colonial building built in 1928 that houses a varied selection of fresh produce, spices, wines, prepared foods, and eateries, and basically anything food related. We were introduced to the extremely simple, elegant, yet divine Brasilian dessert - salada de frutas com leite condensado (fruit salad with condensed milk!), for which we made the trip back to Mercado Municipal a second day! At Mercado, we were also introduced to Pasteis, a delicious Brasilian snack/meal made of fried flour and stuffing (either cheese, fish, meat, vegetables, or sweet things like chocolate or guava). We have become great fans of pasteis (what's not to like in fried flour and cheese?!) and keep an eye out for them on our travels.

Thanks to P.'s friend who suggested a vegetarian restaurant close to Ave. Paulista, we got to eat at Vegethus. It's a pay-by-weight/all-you-can-eat-buffet with a huge variety of delicious solely vegan food and desserts. We sampled their vegan pizza, pasta, rice, beans, croquettes, salads, goiaba (guava) flan, maracuja (passionfruit) cake, and other assorted desserts. TFFos took the all-you-can-eat quite literally and was therefore stuffed to the gills for the rest of the day, and could not even eat dinner. Close to P. and M.'s house is a Sampa institution Rancho do Empada, which serves a variety of Lanchonettes (hot snacks!). Here we ate empadas, a baked good that looks like a muffin from the outside, but is actually a cover of dough, with various savoury and sweet stuffings to choose from. Empadas are widely available everywhere we go, as Brasilieros seem fond of their snacks.

Edicificio Italia not only provides a splendid view of Sao Paulo, it also hosts great wine and finger foods. We were introduced to the Brasilian wine Talento, a blend of Cabernet, Merlot, and Tannat (an Uruguayan grape high in tannins). We also ate excellent rucula and brie croquettes - fried appetizers.

P. and M. took us to sample Sao Paulo's best caipirinhas at Veloso and its sister establishment next door. Being Brasil's national cocktail, our expectations were high and we were not disappointed. The traditional caipirinha is made with cachaca (extremely sweet sugarcane liquour), lime, and sugar. Today, caipirinhas come in varied forms - with fruits, or made of vodka, or sake. TFFos's favourite was the traditional, while mine was the one with caju (the red cashew fruit, not to be confused with the nut). Here we also tried the Brasilian staple - mantioca. As an appetizer, it's served fried, like french fries. As a vegetable it's often stewed and eaten with rice. For our South Indian readership, it tastes quite like aritikai, or raw plantain.

A few of our meals were prepared by the wonderful D., including pancakes filled with cheese and vegetables, and a superbly sauce-y lasagna with zucchini. A word on the Brasilian zucchini- it is quite different from the type you get in California, and is extremely flavourful and crunchy, and not watery at all. I am a huge fan!

We will end our food post with a nod to Brigadeiro, Brasil's favourite dessert, usually made for children's birthday parties! It's surprisingly easy to make, but we intend to keep the recipe a secret so that we can dazzle our non Brasilian friends at our dinner parties. :) Let's just say that it is delightfully sweet and chocolatey.

Days and Nights in Sao Paulo

Lonely Planet calls Sao Paulo a "monster. The gastronomic, fashion and finance capital of Latin America ... home to 19 million people and more skyscrapers than could ever possibly be counted." (MF Tree, of course, tried and stopped at about 200) I'd call it more of a tsunami. While Rio's pleasures were more drawn out, lackadaisical and a little sleepy, Sampa came at us in a splendid sensory gush. We were hosted by the fantastic P. and M., who love food as much as we do. We should also mention their wonderful little dog, T. and the uber-helpful and lovely D. We were blown away by their warmth and hospitality, and aspire to be as good hosts to our friends, and friends of friends ourselves. There may be no better city in Brasil - Latin America or the world, if you ask Paulistas - as far as food is concerned. The same also goes for museums, cultural happenings and the mad rush of people. As passionate city-slickers, we absolutely loved it.

Everything that we saw was a highlight. Avenida Paulista - where the beautiful and wealthy of Sao Paulo can be found on weekdays. Also home to the high-calibre Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo (MASP) and FIESP (can't remember the translation. Also MF Tree corrects me - it's FIESP SESI SP!) We caught an excellent (mostly) photographic exhibit at FIESP chronicling Brasilia* through the years. From the days of its rapid construction under the eagle eye of Niemeyer, to visions of a utopian land in the middle of the country, to modern installations showing its present day condition in literal and metaphorical forms. The photographers included Marcel Gautherot, Peter Scheier and Thomaz Farkas. At MASP we were treated to modern German paintings, the progress of Romanticism through the ages and an exhibit capturing portrait painting at different points in history. All well-curated and displayed, although the English translations were a wee bit odd. Also on Avenida Paulista is the beautiful Livraria Cultural - a bookstore par excellence where we spent yet another lazy afternoon after a mouth-watering lunch (more on that later.)

Another lazy day was spent strolling through Parque do Ibirapuera and visiting the Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM) and the Bienal - a twice yearly exhibit of current international art. Also littering the Ibirapuera landscape are Niemeyer buildings (TFF gushes.) A verdant patch with varied play spaces for children in the middle of concrete Sampa, Ibirapuera is also an art oasis. Two of the spaces we mentioned already, but it also holds a museum of Afro-Brasilian art and a performance space for theater and music designed by Niemeyer. We're saving those for our next time.

Sao Paulo's Centro is studded with Colonial style gems. In our roamings around we saw the massive Catedral da Se, the ornate and peaceful Sao Bento - which also has a super bakery! producing some rather 'divine' bread and cookies - the Estacao Luz, the Pinacoteca, Praca da Luz and the truly awesome Mercado Municipal (reserved for our food post.) The Pinacoteca is our favourite museum in SP. Home to some fine Brasilian art, we were especially taken with the contemporary Brasilian sculpture and paintings. It also has some great rotating exhibits, our favourite from the current stock was one on photographs from the 1910-1950s by the Vargas brothers, a pair of Peruvian brothers from Arequipa.

Lastly, we had a revelatory look at the Sao Paulo night panorama from the Edificio Italia, which has the Terraco Italia - a trendy restaurant and bar at the top. Of course, we won't forget this in our food post!

More on food next! We take our leave for now, thinking about the lilting sounds of Chico Buarque, a Brasilan singer-songwriter - part of the MPB (Musica Populares Brasil) movement, introduced to us by M.


*Constructred in 3 years, Brasil's capital was designed by Oscar Niemeyer, with the ideas of the school of modernist architecture in mind, which exposed and presented solutions through urban planning for the most serious problems presented by the industrial revolution - mass migration to cities, bad housing, reduction of green areas, excessive pollution and noise, improper transport leading to long commutes. The solutions included zone planning, with each zone being a self contained unit with space to work, play and live. Brasilia today though, likely thanks to its isolated location in the bare center of the country, is not the vibrant city that its creators imagined and remains only the seat of government.

Emerging

... from a food coma.
Sao Paulo, Brasil