Brazil Hotels

It's hard to generalize about Brazilian food, largely because there is no single national cuisine but numerous very distinct regional ones. Nature dealt Brazil a full hand for these varying cuisines: there's an abundant variety of fruit, vegetables and spices, as you can see for yourself walking through any food market.

There are four main regional cuisines : comida mineira from Minas Gerais, based on pork, vegetables (especially couve, a relative of spinach) and tutu, a kind of refried bean cooked with manioc flour and used as a thick sauce; comida baiana from the Salvador coast, the most exotic to gringo palates, using superb fresh fish and shellfish, hot peppers, palm oil, coconut milk and fresh coriander; comida do sertao from the interior of the Northeast, which relies on rehydrated dried or salted meat and the fruit, beans and tubers of the region; and comida gaucha from Rio Grande do Sul, the most carnivorous diet in the world, revolving around every imaginable kind of meat grilled over charcoal. Comida do sertao is rarely served outside its homeland, but you'll find restaurants serving the others throughout Brazil, although - naturally - they're at their best in their region of origin.

Alongside the regional restaurants, there is a standard fare available everywhere that can soon get dull unless you cast around: steak ( bife ) or chicken ( frango ), served with arroz e feijao , rice and beans, and often with salad, fries and farinha , dried manioc (cassava) flour that you sprinkle over everything. Farofa is toasted farinha, and usually comes with onions and bits of bacon mixed in. In cheaper restaurants all this would come on a single large plate: look for the words prato feito, prato comercial or refeicao completa if you want to fill up without spending too much.

Feijoada is the closest Brazil comes to a national dish: a stew of pork, sausage and smoked meat cooked with black beans and garlic, garnished with slices of orange. Eating it is a national ritual at weekends, when restaurants serve feijoada all day.

Some of the fruit is familiar - manga, mango, maracuja, passion fruit, limao, lime - but most of it has only Brazilian names: jaboticaba, fruta do conde, sapoti and jaca. The most exotic fruits are Amazonian: try bacuri, acai and the extraordinary cupuacu, the most delicious of all. These all serve as the basis for juices and ice cream , sorvete, which can be excellent; keep an eye out for sorvetarias, ice cream parlours.

Snacks And Street Food

On every street corner in Brazil you will find a lanchonete , a mixture of cafe and bar. They sell beer and rum, snacks, cigarettes, soft drinks, coffee and sometimes small meals. Bakeries - padarias - often have a lanchonete attached, and they're good places for cheap snacks: an empada or empadinha is a small pie, which has various fillings ( carne, meat, palmito, palm heart and camarao, shrimp, the best); a pastel is a fried, filled pasty; an esfiha is a savoury pastry stuffed with spiced meat; and a coxinha is spiced chicken rolled in manioc dough and then fried. In central Brazil try pao de queijo, a savoury cheese snack that goes perfectly with coffee. All these savoury snacks go under the generic heading salgados.

If you haven't had breakfast ( cafe da manha) at your hotel, then a bakery/ lanchonete is a good place to head; and for a more substantial meal lanchonetes will generally serve a prato comercial, too. In both lanchonetes and padarias you usually pay first at the till, and then you take your ticket to the counter to get what you want.

You can get food at a growing number of fast food outlets in cities, which look garishly American but take the hamburger or hot dog and "Brazilianize" it, much improving it in the process. All sorts of things are added, and the menus are easy to understand because they are in mangled but recognizable English, albeit with Brazilian pronunciation. A hamburger is a X-burger (pronounced " sheezboorga "), a hot dog a cachorro quente; a bauru is a club sandwich with steak and egg; a mixto quente a toasted cheese and ham sandwich.

Food sold by street vendors in Brazil should be treated with caution, but not dismissed out of hand. You can practically see the hepatitis bugs and amoebas crawling over some of the food you see on sale in the streets, but plenty of vendors have proper stalls and can be very professional, with a loyal clientele of office workers and locals. Some of the food they sell has the advantage of being cooked a long time, which reduces the chance of picking anything up, and in some places - Salvador and Belem especially - you can get good food cheaply in the street; just choose your vendor sensibly. In Salvador try acaraje, only available from street vendors - a delicious fried bean mix with shrimp and hot pepper; and in Belem go for manicoba, spiced sausage with chicory leaves, or pato no tucupi, duck stewed in manioc sauce.

Restaurants

Restaurants - restaurantes - are ubiquitous, portions are very large and prices are extremely reasonable. A prato comercial is around $3, while a good full meal can usually be had for about $10, even in expensive-looking restaurants. Cheaper restaurants, though, tend only to be open for lunch. One of the best options offered by many restaurants, typically at lunchtime only, is self-service comida por kilo , where a wide choice of food is priced according to the weight of the food on your plate. Specialist restaurants to look out for include a rodizio , where you pay a fixed charge and eat as much as you want; most churrascarias - restaurants specializing in charcoal-grilled meat of all kinds, especially beef - operate this system, too, bringing a constant supply of meat on huge spits to the tables.

In many restaurants you will be presented with unsolicited food the moment you sit down. This is the couvert , which can consist of anything from a couple of bits of raw carrot and an olive to quite an elaborate and substantial plate. Although the price is generally modest, it still has to be paid for. If you don't want it, ask the waiter to take it away.

Brazil also has a large variety of ethnic restaurants , thanks to the generations of Portuguese, Arabs, Italians and Japanese who have made the country their home. The widest selection is in Sao Paulo, with the best Italian, Arab and Japanese food in Brazil, but anywhere of any size will have good ethnic restaurants, often in surprising places: Belem, for example, has several excellent Japanese restaurants, thanks to a Japanese colony founded fifty years ago in the interior. Ethnic food may be marginally more expensive than Brazilian, but it's rarely exorbitant.

The bill normally comes with a ten percent service charge, but you should still tip, as waiters rely more on tips than on their very low wages.