A Country The Size of a Continent is Going to Have its Own Cuisine

When I first made my way into Brazil via the Amazon, I was relatively cut off from the rest of the country. On the Brazilian-run cargo boat, the food was immediately different from Colombia. Numerous times, I was served food that I didn’t recognise, and it took me a long time to realise why.

Strong, Independent, Green Country

Brazil is bigger than I had fathomed. Travelling, first, five hours from the north of Brazil to the North East via plane, and then travelling from the North East to the South East on a journey that took over 32 hours on a coach while still being technically central Brazil, made me realise that this place is enormous. It’s also very green. There is a huge amount of new food.

So Green

I mentioned that on the way into Brazil, we tried some weird stuff on the ferry—things everyone on the boat recognised but I had never seen before. These two things are essentially staples of Brazil, but I was completely new to both. One is Farofa, and the other is raw Acai.

Farofa is served on every table in any good Churrascaria in Brazil. It comes with almost all meals and can be served in your basic ‘Drywall’ flavour, or it can be the most beautiful, savoury meal-completing sawdust you never knew you needed. Either way, it is served dryer than a nun’s crotch and only sucks up more moisture.

Farofa is just baked Cassava flour. If it is baked with bacon it will taste like bacon. If it is baked with cheese, it will taste like cheese. If it is baked with shrimp, it’ll be like shrimp. You get the idea. It bakes into a breadcrumb-like texture and rapidly expands when added to anything vaguely liquid, soaking up the flavour. It can turn a soup into a chewy bread in seconds. This is farofa, and it is phenomenal when done right.

Another staple is Acai. I had only ever seen this on menus of shops that were run by two crusty vegans who started their business using their trustfund and Daddy’s Shopfront on Park Street. They sold it for more than a standard meal, and it included things like ‘Guilt Free Rosehip Oil’ in the ingredients.

It turns out it’s actually just a very commonly eaten berry from a palm that is used in the Amazon as a staple for nutrition and vitamins. Essentially, Amazonian porridge. The way they eat it, without the ‘Climate Conscious Organically Bleached Sugar’, is typically gross. The most basic, natural way tasted like mud.

However, once you get off the river and into the cities, it is still incredibly common. In Salvador, every other shop served Acai, and every single one was amazing. I am a convert. It costs about $1.50 a tub, and you have free reign over about 40,000 toppings. This trend continued into Rio de Janeiro. Acai isn’t a luxury item; it is a basic human right. Don’t let the hippies gentrify Amazonian porridge.

Getting fancy

Once you get away from the staples and into the finer things, there are a few more commonalities with the rest of the continent. However, they’re only recognisable if you really look. One of these for me was the Moqueca and Bobo dishes, which were popular in the Northeast and Bahia areas.

What I found was stew, similar to the Moles of Mexico and the Caldos of Colombia. However, like in each country, their mix was completely affected by local ingredients. Mole is thick, smokey, and hot as hell. Cadlos are much lighter, being heavy on the stock and having lighter flavours. However, Moqueca is a thick, almost viscous soup. It is heavy in texture, dense, and quenching in flavour because of it. It turns the plate into a meal, pulling in all the other elements on the plate like a black hole. Unsurprisingly, it always comes with Farofa.

Brazil has a fine appreciation for the cuisine of the colonials unless it’s measle-flavoured, of course. This meant that when I arrived here, I was once again able to buy things I love from home, and not for a price close to robbery. Of course, Olive Oil is available everywhere, but it often costs more than gold. However, here, I am able to buy cheese, wines, olives, oils, spices, butter, and even chocolate, which were, in the rest of Latin America, all owned and sold by Nestle or Coca-Cola.

I spent over £500 last month, only in restaurants. However, this equated to a few date meals a week, like maybe 2/3, lunch five days a week, and drinking my regular amount in bars. I almost never ate at home, and I ate wonderfully. This is in part due to Brazil’s buffets.

Buffets are everywhere, and they vary as much as any restaurant. Imagine, if you will, rather than a written menu, restaurants just offered their menu, all the time, to pick and choose from at will. The only cost is the weight of your plate.

“So, sir, you want the beef stroganoff and also Fried Fish, with a salad of pickled quail eggs, beetroot, and farofa. Oh, and I see you have sides of pastel, Arancini, fries, and a small quiche. Excellent choice, sir. That will be $R45.” Obviously, not all buffets had a spread of the gods, but the cheap ones cost pennies and always had the essentials.

I would pop into one of the ones on the way back from my gym and essentially just eat 300 grams of quail eggs. They actually ran the city off my farts for the two months I lived in Rio.

Street Scran

But where Brazil has shone, though, for me, as they all do, is with the street food. Mio Dios, the quality of the Barbecue is always spoken about, but it will never really be understood until experienced. BBQ is not just a method of cooking in Brazil; it is beyond a hobby or even a passion. BBQ is like popping a beer or rolling a joint. Sure, you don’t do it every day, but when you do, it feels perfectly natural, and everyone gets involved.

Every bar, be it a nice fancy $5 cocktail place or a street-side, plastic-chair, family-run bottle shop, will have BBQ. It might be shit, but it’ll be burning every day and will provide you with a stick of hot, cooked meat. More often than not, though, it isn’t shit, and they run some mean ass fucking street grill with a chunk of animal on that will make your tastebuds weep. Everyone runs a BBQ, and everyone takes pride.

The Churrascaria of Brazil is a staple of every bar and street corner and progresses all the way to the most expensive restaurant in the city. However, it runs off a base belief in BBQ, and it runs deep. Maybe it won’t be the best BBQ you have ever had in the world in Brazil, but you’ll never find it anywhere cheaper or more available. My local did a plate with 5 different meats for $3.

Besides that, Brazil leaves very little for wanting when it comes to street food. I have the opportunity for something sweet, fresh, and healthy with the Acai during the day. The afternoon rolls around, and there is BBQ and Coixinha to enjoy, and when the sun starts to come up, there are the pastries and 24-hour Buffet to run riot in. If you manage to make it up for breakfast, you’re the only one. The cafe’s open at 10 am, fuck yourself.

Pastry, My Pastry

Everyone wants bread. Everyone needs bread. It is a staple all over the world, and everyone has their own. Asia makes it from rice flour, Europe makes it from grain, the United States makes it from Chemical Compound #28837354™, and North and Central America makes it from corn. Anyone who tries to emulate the other fails, trust me. I have had Gyoza in Bristol, Tacos in Rio, and White Bread in Mexico; they’re all wrong. However, somehow, Brazil nails two.

They have their Cassava flour to begin, which is Brazil’s speciality. It can result in Farofa, which is like breadcrumbs on speed. However, they also have Tapioca, which isn’t that jizzy vomit you remember from sad-desert and instead is a chewy pancake. They also use it to make a very airy and cheesy bread. Pao Do Quiejo is one of lifes small pleasures and ranks up there with the buñuelo of Colombia for the perfect breakfast coffee accompaniment. I am in the process of learning how to make them.

But it isn’t just the Cassava flour killers out there. They also have Coxihna, a thick, filled wheat bread in the shape of a teardrop stuffed with a hot cheese, meat, or a vegetable flavour sensation. Or, if you want to lose a tooth and then a foot to diabetes, start indulging in Brigadero. These small but tongue-curlingly sweet deserts are made of condensed milk and chocolate and easily match truffles in richness.

Maybe you miss the delicacies of Italy and their famous pasta and pizza? Brazil, for some reason, has a penchant for pizza and a perversion for pasta. Fried chicken and burgers are far less common than further north, to the point there are almost no KFCs, but if you want pizza or late-night tagliatelle, Rio de Janiero has you covered. Their fancy, stone-baked pizzas are expensive and tiny but delicious, and their cheap ones are the size of floor carpets and include ingredients and ‘Crust Techniques’ that would make the average, proud Italian shit themselves into a Calzone.

Capitão

Drinking could be another post, but I don’t want to let on just how much I drink, so I will keep to something a little more concise. Drinking in Brazil is cheap, easy, and widely enjoyed by both visitors and locals. This makes drinking okay because everyone does it.

So, leaving my house in Salvador, there was a bar opposite. Where I lived first in Rio my walk to town went through the bottoms of the favella, and past a lot of bars and churascarias. Any time of the day, there were a few people sitting outside, enjoying a beer or two with friends. This wasn’t seen as rude or desperate; the Brazilians just seemed to like a drink for the sake of it.

This is a problem for me, as an Englishman, because what stops me from drinking, mostly, is the look the people give you when it’s too early. Brazil won’t blink at me finishing my fourth caipirinha at three in the afternoon on a Wednesday. It’s both freeing and a little dangerous. Ordering table beer with lunch is more common than ordering water.

However, as with all countries worth their salt, they have their cocktails. The plague of sock-flavoured ‘craft beer’ has oozed its way over the sea, but they still have their three-ingredient cocktails. Mexico had its beloved Paloma, the Cuba Libre pioneered Central America, Colombia refined it with the straight-up Aguardiente, England has Quad Vods, and now I have the phenomenal Caiprinhia.

It is a mix of lime, sugar, and Cachaça, similar to a Paloma but without the soda. They make up the space with more Cachaça. When the sun of Salvador threatens to take your skin from your bones, and you’re one step away from using the government ‘sun cream’ mind control, a Caipirinha makes it all better.

Limey, boozy, teeth corroding sweet, and often mixed with something sexy like passion fruit, they are as key to a good beach day as soft sand. The beer here is also okay, and the argentinian influence has just meant the wine has got less bad the further south I have been heading.

More about the drinking of Brazil, in my experience, would start to encroach on the culture, and that’s a whole new conversation.