Just back from six days in São Paulo. Initially planned as a solo getaway with the intent to get to a bunch of the “50 Best”, “Michelin Star”, or simply highly recommended by friends in the know kind of restaurants. The kind of places that Henry has little interest in, so I end up not going when we’re together. He’s off to Peru for his annual multiweek family visit, so I have some time. In the end, talking with a friend here, I invited him along, and he brought his boyfriend, so we were a trio for much of the week. I did go off on my own a bit, as they were less interested than I was in the high-end experiences, though in the end, I only got to two of the places on my list instead of twelve as planned, and both of those, solo. Guess I needed to have been more assertive.
This isn’t going to be a rundown of all twelve meals – six lunches, six dinners – of the week. Some of them you’ve seen before – I ended up introducing my companions to three places that Henry and I love, and go back to – Macaxeira Itaim, Academia da Gula, and Tordesilhas. We also tried a place that had been written up as the best sanduiches de pernil, Bar e Lanches Estadão, which turned out to be a little standing room only lunch counter offering what we thought were pretty average roast pork sandwiches. And we had a really good Japanese lunch at Izakaya Issa, which one of my local friends had highly recommended.
I had wanted to get to one or more of the top omakase places in the city, but not having planned this out well, couldn’t get a reservation anywhere except Shin Zushi, which I’d forgotten that Henry and I had gone to and just ordered off the menu. We hadn’t been impressed then. This time, sitting at the sushi bar and doing the omakase, was a far better experience service-wise, but I can’t say I’m any more impressed with their sushi than I was then. They seem to go for quantity over quality. Nothing was bad, but nothing was impressive. But twenty-one courses that involved over thirty pieces of sashimi or sushi, plus a couple of fritters, and soup, was just complete overkill. It reached the point of being unpleasant to even consider eating another bite, and at the end, I just took polite nibbles of each piece and pushed them aside. It was also stupidly expensive, though, perhaps, not on a per piece basis given the quantity.
Four meals stood out for me in addition.
Naga, R. da Consolação, 3397 was just a block away from our hotel, and I headed out on my own. There was a place nearby that touts Portuguese-Japanese fusion cooking and sushi, but they had an hour plus wait for a table. This place had high ratings on Google and quite good writeups, and had one spot at the sushi bar available.
I wasn’t hungry enough for an omakase meal, so I just ordered four pairs of nigiri favorites that I can’t get here in BA – salmon roe, sea urchin, fatty tuna belly, and glazed eel. That was where I was going to stop, but these were exquisite. Some of the best sushi I’ve had in a long time. Chatting with the head sushiman, I asked him to pick out two more, preferably more interesting than a simple slice of fish.
He whipped up a thin sliced scallop nigiri with lemon zest, salmon roe, and sea salt; and a fresh oyster with sriracha sauce and a shiso leaf. Fantastic! He also gave me some recommendations and thoughts on a few of the high end sushi bars in town, one of which I’d not heard of, but, as noted above, it was too late to get reservations (or, in the case of the latter, the restaurant was closed for vacation for two weeks). I kind of wish we’d gone back to this place and done the whole omakase.
One of the fancier places on the list, Fasano, R. Vitório Fasano, 88. Another solo night out. I was actually headed to a different Italian spot near the hotel, Picchi, where I was first given a table, and then asked to leave when the maitre d’ supposedly noticed they were overbooked already and I hadn’t had a reservation (I was dressed nicely, so it wasn’t that). She wasn’t polite about it either, to the point that I wouldn’t go back, despite their high ratings for pastas. This was the other fancier Italian spot I’d wanted to get to. It’s located in the hotel of the same name, a century old place catering to a wealthier international crowd. Which made it weird that as best I could determine, none of the waiters or captains or sommelier spoke English or Spanish. So we stumbled along in my very broken Portuguese.
The first course… I died and went to heaven. Oh my goodness. A dish of slow braised veal bone marrow, almost like an ossobuco without the bone or the surrounding meat, unctuous and delicious, and nestled into it, grilled scallops. Easily the best thing I ate all week. The pasta was… good. The linguini was a tad overcooked and seemed kind of commercial rather than homemade, but I wouldn’t swear to that. It was tossed with way too much sauce, and the crabmeat in the sauce hadn’t been well-picked, so I found half a dozen bits of cartilage, plus, as it turned out, it was more of a mud crab kind of crab rather than king crab which I’d hoped for. The hazelnut pudding for dessert was excellent. I’d go back just for the first dish, a glass of wine, and then move on, happy.
This time, it was lunch that I soloed at. I wanted to hit another of the fancier places – though it turns out it’s not all that fancy, just really amazing food – and do their tasting menu. I’m not going to show the whole meal, it was nine courses, and I loved six of the dishes, at Charco, Rua Peixoto Gomide, 1492.
Shown, the third course, a shrimp carpaccio on a crispy shrimp head tuile, with dots of sauces and herbs and all sorts of good stuff. This was after an excellent oyster on the half shell with various grape preparations, and a somewhat disappointing charcuterie plate of in-house cured meats and pickled mustard seeds and some breads – all fine, but just felt like something outside of the style of the rest of the meal. The fourth course, sort of canneloni of palm heart, roasted, with a lightly soured cream, chives, and grated… I think… bottarga. Amazingly good.
Then a decent sweetbread dish with orange in various form – the sweetbread itself was a bit rubbery. Then my favorite… or was the palm heart my favorite… a millefeuille of mandiquinha, or cassava root, that was just stunning in its simplicity. The main course was the one I really didn’t like. A magret of duck, cooked rare, but they didn’t render or crisp the skin, so that was just unpleasant, and the meat was not tender – I had trouble even cutting it with a steak knife, and chewing it was worse. I also didn’t think it worked with the muddy tasting beet puree though I really liked the onion sauce.
Then two desserts – I liked the pre-dessert, this little popsicle of an Amazon fruit that I didn’t quite catch the name of, with apple gel on it, was simply fabulous. The followup main dessert was weird – the ice cream (another ice cream? you shouldn’t follow one ice cream with another in a tasting menu, just my opinion) was over-perfumed with jasmine, served over peaches that were underripe, with a crispy shard or two of something that had a vaguely caraway flavor to it atop. Nope, didn’t like that one.
Service was attentive and friendly, and a quite cute mix of boys.
And, the biggest surprise of the week. My friend and former teacher for Brazilian cooking had, way back, told me about this small chain of pizzerias (or, as referred to in Portuguese, pizzarias, which seems to make more sense vowel-wise), Bráz. My friend and I headed out to one of them, Rua Sergipe, 406, one evening, sans the boyfriend. This is what I can say about the pizza (which, they offer to divide into three choices, as opposed to most places that will let you do half and half), as I said it already on Instagram. Eighteen years in Buenos Aires, trips to various places, including New York City, and this was the best pizza I’ve had in that time. Hands-down, amazing. From the crust to the sauce to the cheese to the toppings, even to the tableside service, piece by piece.
We went with three selections – mixed mushroom, carbonara, and diavola – each done nigh on perfectly. If I hadn’t had that bone marrow dish at Fasano, this would have been the best thing I ate all week.
And that’s that for this SP visit. A couple of interesting museum visits, including the Jewish Museum, which I hadn’t been to. It was Friday, and the woman behind the counter asked me “where are you going for Shabbat?” To which my reply was “for sushi omakase” which elicited a laugh, but an offer if we changed our minds, for a place to celebrate the sabbath. And, another visit to the Instituto Moreira Salles, where there was a very interesting photo and video exhibit tracing Brazil’s interactions with a particular group of Amazon tribes, from first contact in the mid-1800s to today.
