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 […]
The person who makes a Brazilian steakhouse dinner work carries the title “churrasqueiro.” The word almost never shows up on menus or signage, and yet the entire feel of a churrascaria dinner does rest on that one person’s skill. A title that’s that invisible deserves at least an introduction. Type the word into any search […]
A meal at a Brazilian steakhouse can ruin you for beef – at least once you’ve tried the picanha that comes off the rotisserie with the fat cap rendered just right and the flavor runs deep in a way that’s hard to forget. Walk into your local butcher and ask for it by name, and […]
A Brazilian bakery case and an Argentine street cart, placed side by side, would give you two pastries that look just about the same. One gets labeled empada, the other empanada (just one letter apart), and the two of them are dough wrapped around a savory filling. Even die-hard food lovers get these two mixed […]
The spread at a Brazilian steakhouse covers serious ground. There’s a massive cold bar, a full hot bar, soups, charcuterie and a whole lineup of imported cheeses that runs along the full length of an entire wall. The whole spread makes a statement on its own – well before a single gaucho has even made […]
Brazilian food has earned genuine admiration far outside of South America’s borders. The version most pictures show doesn’t match what actually lands on the table in Rio, Belém or Porto Alegre. Travel guides lean hard into churrasco. Health food businesses took açaí and repackaged it into a photogenic bowl. Steakhouse chains abroad put beef at […]
Two cocktails. Two countries. One long-running mix-up at nearly every bar worth visiting. The Caipirinha and the Mojito have enough in common (citrus, sugar, a base spirit with sugarcane roots) that plenty of drinkers treat them as nearly the same drink. It’s a natural assumption to make and an extremely common one at that. But […]
At any Brazilian table (a weekday lunch, a Sunday churrasco and a holiday feast), a small bowl of warm, toasted crumbs is usually going to make an appearance. Visitors from outside Brazil will see it and go quiet – they won’t be quite sure if they should reach for it or just leave it alone. […]
A trip to Brazil sounds fun until you start to think about what you’re actually going to eat there. Most travelers arrive with açaí bowls and churrasco at the top of their list of dishes to try. But once they get there, they find out that these two popular dishes make up maybe 5% of […]
Order a caipirinha at just about any beach bar and odds are you won’t actually know what spirit is in your glass. Cachaça happens to be Brazil’s national spirit, and it’s actually one of the oldest distillates in the Americas. It’s also one of the most misunderstood spirits you can buy. Most bartenders will just […]
