I had all these ideas of heading to the restaurants in São Paulo that keep getting written up in international circles, I mean, best of and all that. But Henry, rightly, pointed out that we’ve spent no time in Brazil, and basically have no real sense of the traditional local food. Why go eat the modern inspirations from local dishes and ingredients if we haven’t eaten those in the first place. So we’ve been “keeping it real” or something like that.

 

Coco Bambu Anhembi, Av. Braz Leme 201, Casa Verde – Apparently a fairly large chain of primarily seafood restaurants here in SP. They seem to have about twenty locations, though most of them appear to be takeout/delivery or smaller spots. Two standout as their bigger ones, and, I think, the original two. This is, I gather, the second, but it was open, and closer. I think. Either way, we headed north across the river and ended up in this cavernous restaurant, with seating for about 200-250 people. The menu is a massive affair too, with about 30 pages of dishes.

Their specialty, from everything that I could find, and from our waiter’s lips, is shrimp. They also only serve portions for two or more people, so you kind of have to agree on something. It wasn’t hard, we took our waiter’s recommendation for a couple of dishes and picked one. A mound of perfectly grilled, glistening shrimp, topped with lots of browned garlic, and accompanied by rice flecked with bits of broccoli, and a saute of mixed vegetables. 158 reais, or $41. Tack on waters which ran us to 28 reais, and a two person music charge (they have live music playing in the background, not really a show or anything), and tip, and it jumps to 223 reais, $58. Okay, it’s a bit pricey for what we’re used to in BA, even for shellfish, but it was a huge portion, it was absolutely delicious.

Also worth noting… Monday evening, and a place this size was jam packed with people. As soon as anyone would leave, the table filled up again. A restaurateur’s dream.

 

Mercado Municipal de São Paulo – you know I’m going to visit markets when I travel. We got waylaid by this guy at the first fruit stand we hit. He started cutting us slices from one fruit after the other, without pause – we ended up trying about a dozen different things, some of which we’ve had before, some of which we hadn’t. The standout? Bahian mangoes that taste like coconut. Seriously, you’d swear you were eating soft, juicy coconut.

Chilies.

No. We didn’t. But there are a bunch of food stands in the market, and quite a few of them specialize in mortadella sandwiches, and each tries to outdo the other. I don’t think these two are actually on the menu, though the actual sandwiches on offer are pretty massive and more elaborate with other ingredients added.

 

Farol Santander – this was the observation tower we wanted to go to the day before, but it was closed on Mondays. It’s a small spire at the top of the Santander bank building. It runs 20 reais, $5.25, a person to enter – which gives you access to the observation tower, four floors of art exhibitions, and four floors of the bank’s museum. We skipped the last, as we were getting hungry….

The observation deck is a bit disappointing. It’s mostly just a big cafe. On two sides, not on all four, there are balconies, glassed in, where you can go out and look at the city. A couple of panorama shots gives a vague shot at what it looks like, but the reflections in the glass (and that it’s not spotlessly clean) kind of mar that.

Two of the art exhibit floors were interesting, two weren’t. This installation was just fascinating – with mirrored surfaces and metal constructs everywhere, it’s a constantly changing kaleidoscope of images. Very cool.

A Casa do Porço Bar, R. Araújo 124, Centro – This is the place that had been closed for a private event the day before. And yes, it’s a restaurant dedicated to pork, in many, many, many forms. In fact, they offer a nine course tasting menu of different preparations – but it sounded a bit much for lunch, and a little… frou-frou. The guy at the table next to us was trying it, while his friends looked on, having long before finished their simpler plates. It looked interesting, but not what we were after.

I went with their classic roast suckling pig lunch – a small platter of melt in your mouth meat with crispy skin, with beans, shredded kale, and onion farofa, plus “banana tartare” on the side. The latter was just a soupy mix of chopped bananas and some salt, pepper, and cilantro, I think. I left that after trying it. But the rest, absolutely delicious.

Henry decided on spaghetti carbonara, made with house-cured guanciale, pig cheeks. And, no cream! Yay! And he liked my beans so much he ordered another ramekin of them for himself. Great food, great service, great fun. Add in a couple of waters and tip, and we left for 181 reais, $47. Worth it.

While we were at lunch, a thunderstorm started, so let’s say, “it was decided” that we’d go to the shopping malls (again). The folk at the restaurant recommended the Bras neighborhood, which wasn’t that far away, but because a) Centro is all pedestrian and so we had to go around it, and b) our Uber driver was clueless and kept ignoring the app navigation route (and went around the long way and got us stuck in a traffic jam), it took us over an hour and a half to go what we probably could have walked in 25-30 minutes had it not been pouring rain. Let’s say he didn’t get five stars. And, to top it all off, it turns out that shopping malls in Bras, which is a bit seedier than we were led to believe, all close at 5pm, so they were all getting ready to close up by the time we got there.

 

Let’s finish up day two with dinner at Academia da Gula, Rua Caravelas 374, Vila Mariana. Henry’s been talking about trying local bacalao dishes, though from what I was able to gather, most of those come from Portuguese restaurants rather than more traditional Brazilian. Not that the latter don’t have them, but they tend to be Portuguese dishes rather than Brazilian ones. Or something like that. It does make sense, the whole salt cod thing is much more a European thing. Anyway, a search for “best bacalao” in the city yielded up about half a dozen places that got repeated recommendations. Most of them, however, were further afield, and would have meant 45 minute or more trips to get to. This one was five minutes away, and despite being what amounts to a neighborhood bar, has won awards for their bacalao (bacalhau in Portuguese).

A bolhino, or fritter of bacalao was a perfect little shared bite starter.

We love our mollejitas, or, in Portuguese, moelinhas, or, in English, chicken giblets. Here, stewed until soft as butter in a mildly spicy tomato sauce, and then adorned with pickled boquinha chilies on top. Yum! I want that recipe.

And, a shared main course, as, again, everything’s served in portions for two or more. Baked bacalao and potatoes over a bed of onions and peppers, with sides of rice, roasted broccoli, and beans. Another tasty dish, though I think both of us were thinking… hey, we could have just had individual bowls of those giblets and some side dishes…. We had cocktails, so with those, waters, and tip, we ran to 311 reales, almost $82, for dinner, and the cocktails were only about 60 reales of that, so… kind of pricey for a neighborhood bar. I’d go back for the giblets, maybe some cod fritters to start, and a beer, and get away for more like 60 reais, or about $16, and be eminently happy.

A few observations after two days? No one has a clue how to get anywhere. We have yet to get in a taxi or uber, or get directions from someone, that actually knew how to get anywhere. They all seem to rely on apps, and still manage to not quite get it right. There’s a lot of, “I think you go until you see this, then you turn that way” going on.

There are a massive number of homeless people here. But like, really homeless. In BA we have some who do sleep on the street, but mostly those who live in poverty live in the villas, and tend to be a bit, well, industrious – as cartoneros collecting recyclables and such. And with universal healthcare and schooling, in general, how do I put this without sounding callous, they’re clean, reasonably well fed, and have dreams about a better life. Here, the homeless are laying about on the streets, in parks, on walls, they’re dressed in rags, they’re filthy dirty, and there doesn’t seem to be much more spark of life than to just beg for money to get some bare sustenance to eat.