Bobó de camarão is a dish that pops up on Brazilian restaurant menus with almost no explanation behind it – and a one-liner just won’t do it justice. The name alone is enough to make plenty of diners stop and think, which is a pretty fair reaction to have. It’s a dish that deserves a […]
Finish a meal in Brazil, and a small cup of coffee arrives almost before the plates are taken away. The cup is small, the coffee is extremely strong, and the whole ritual happens so fast that it almost feels automatic. For first-time visitors, it can take a little while to get used to – especially […]
A Brazilian restaurant menu can make even the most well-traveled diners pause. Words like feijoada, coxinha and pão de queijo look nothing like the way they sound – and with no point of reference to go on, you either point quietly at the page or take a guess at a pronunciation that ends up nowhere […]
Skewers of picanha arrive at the table still sizzling. Coils of sausage follow – then the lamb, then more beef. Brazilian churrasco is less of a meal and more of a procession of meat, rich and salted and charred over an open flame. Most guests show up hungry with their attention fixed on the food, […]
Plenty of drinkers assume cachaça is Brazilian rum with a different label on the bottle, and it’s not an unreasonable place to land. The two spirits are made from sugarcane. They have deep roots in tropical climates, and they like to show up in the same kinds of cocktails. With that much in common, it […]
Brazilian restaurants work very differently from what most of us are used to back home, and it takes a minute to get your bearings the first time around. Walk in, and instead of a host handing you a menu, you’ll probably get a ticket pressed into your hand before you’ve even spotted where the food […]
A Brazilian churrascaria is its own dining experience, and it starts right as you walk in the door. Giant skewers of meat, servers making their way between tables and a general sense that you’d better have some idea of what you want before anyone stops at your seat – there’s plenty to take in all […]
Between a weeknight dinner and a centuries-old tradition sits one of Brazil’s most well-loved dishes – a fragrant seafood stew simmered in a clay pot, loaded with rich aromatics and a deep coastal character that’s nearly impossible to recreate anywhere else. Maybe you’ve come across the name before but couldn’t quite place it or spotted […]
Festa Junina is Brazil’s second biggest traditional festival – right behind Carnival in how much it means culturally. Every June, tens of millions of Brazilians pack the town squares lit up by paper lanterns to celebrate three Catholic saints, with music, dance and tables just loaded with food that has roots that trace back centuries. […]
Sunday lunch is not a casual meal in Brazil. Families plan for it, travel for it and in some cases build their entire weekend around it. You’ve probably wondered why that midday meal means this much to Brazilian culture, and the answer is a combination of food, family and a way of life that generations […]
Brazilian menus usually give diners pause if they’ve never come across them before. Words like “feijoada,” “picanha,” and “acarajé” don’t have any clean English translations, and any direct attempt to translate them tends to strip away the cultural meaning that comes with them. Brazilian cuisine draws from Indigenous, African and Portuguese roots and the layered […]
Brazilian beef culture tends to make distinctions that diners outside the country just don’t see. Picanha and alcatra come from the rump of the cow, and on a menu they can look nearly identical – but they cook and taste quite differently once they’re on the grill. Plenty of customers outside Brazil either treat them […]
