Rio De Janeiro | Rishi Sankar: Ah Trini Travelogue / Ah Trini Traveller

At the Copa! Copacabana….

2009, Brazil, Rio de Janeiro 1 Response »

Dec 092009

So after a long day’s work, Jeff and I decided to try and head up to Sugarloaf for some nightshooting. We thought that we had enough time to make it from Caesar Park to the mountain but of course Rio’s famous rush hour traffic put paid to that thought. So as a detour, we decided that it would be feasible to try and hit Copacabana beach for a little nightshooting.

One of the most palpable things about Rio thus far was how unsafe I felt. Now to me, manageable travel safety is defined as the following:

“The combination of high travel experience, confidence to diffuse an unexpected situation, moderate to high ability to negotiate in a foreign language without knowing that language and low situation of risk”

In Rio, for all the days I was there, I felt that while I had all the other skills, I felt like I had very low ability to negotiate and high situation of risk; hence this to me makes it somewhat unsafe. However on Copacabana beach at night, with tons of tourist police around, I definitely felt a bit safer. So after aborting our Sugarloaf mission, we jumped out just before the Copacabana Palace.

This is the most famous hotel in Rio, having been featured in movies and of course, we being the rockstars that we are, sauntered into the hotel with not a care in the world. From the outside, the hotel definitely looks a bit posh and inside reflects that; of course if one is trying to be cool walking in, you don’t take pictures like a gawking tourist, hence no pictures on my camera.

One does get a drink and take pictures by the pool though..

So after a caipirinha at the hotel bar, it was time for some beach walking. It’s amazing the level of activity on the beach at night. People run on the beach or play soccer or futevole (sp) till the late hours.

Drinking on the tourist beach is a given, with all the little bar shacks along the waterfront

And all along the beach, there are intricate sand sculptures

and then there are some that just defy the imagination

and of course one makes new friends

After all that walking along the beach, it was time for dinner and the dish of the night was the famous Filet Oswaldo Aranha

Filé à Oswaldo Aranha, one of Rio de Janeiro’s best known dishes, is a tradition created by a Brazilian minister in the Getúlio Vargas government in the 1940s, when Rio de Janeiro was still the capital of Brazil. Like many other politicians of his time, Oswaldo Aranha liked having lunch at Cosmopolita, a Lapa restaurant opened in 1926 which used to be called Senadinho (“Little Senate”) during the Vargas government thanks to its clientele.

Oswaldo Aranha always ordered a thick slab of filet mignon, prepared in a frying pan with sliced garlic and served with sliced potatoes, farofa and plain white rice. I ordered a side of extra garlic in the end.

After that gut busting meal, it was back to the hotel for the night.

Copacabana at night…

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Feijoada at where else….Casa de Feijoada!

2009, Brazil, Rio de Janeiro 1 Response »

Dec 082009

After starting off the trip with wanting to try Feijoada at the Caesar Park (since it is reputed to have some of the best in the city), Laura and I went off for dinner at one of the only places in Rio that serves the meal daily – Casa de Feijoada. With little more than a couple slices of mango and juice in my tummy, we went looking for a late lunch there… it was 5pm btw. I had been practicing my pronounciation of “fay-zho-a-da,” all week, so now the same way I say “Ho-do-via-ree-ah” for bus station and sound almost like a native, elicits a stream of Brazilian Portuguese to which I then give up all hope of understanding.

Facts I knew about the dish:

You get a lot
It is beans and meat
There is some fat in the dish
You only get it on Saturdays – who knew why?
They give you orange slices with your food.

So we get to the small little restaurant and it wasn’t terribly fancy. It was a 6 block walk down the beach from the hotel, nestled in a little nook intersecting three streets.

We were ushered to a corner table by the window. Immediately, food started to appear at our table… olives, toast, teeny little pots of black bean soup (the waiter demonstrated that we should be sipping this soup)… soon after appeared scoops of fried little sausages … and quite soon after the waiter appeared with two glass bottles. One had an orangey colored liquid in it and the other a pale green. The orangey colored liquid turned out to be passion fruit liquor… or the passion fruit version of a home made, aged and high-powered caipirinha. Caipirinha… mmmm. The pale green liquid was “lime” flavored, and the flavor that I normally associated with the caipirinha. So introductory batidas out of the way.

When the waiter finally came over to ask for the order, we saw the menu and ended up with the “traditional” feijoada but the choice of meats included some of the following and you had the choice of one, some or all of them

Pig ears
Pig Tail
Pig knuckles
Jerk Meat
Chorizo
Regular sausage
Bacon
Beef

Of course, I am just not about eating the non business parts of the animal, so I asked for the Sausage, beef and Jerk, while Laura just ended up with the bacon … we were the only ones in the restaurant at the time and we truly had no frame of reference for the size of the ship that was going to hit us.

Then the food tsunami hit us.

and the video above the picture below don’t capture how much it was.

By this time, it was too late, because the parade of food began again. To our table appeared white rice, black beans, “collard” greens (bright green cabbage), yuca fries, “farofa”, pork rinds, and two large steaming bowls of stew. One bigger bowl contained my concoction of meats , while the other was just filled with huge thick slabs of bacon for Laura.

The overall meal for meal was like a huge hot Creole meal in Trinidad, so I was pretty much in my element. The collard greens by the way…. DELICIOUS … just like pan fried Bhagi without the sada roti. My plate ended up like this …

After eating and eating and barely denting the huge amount of food.. we packaged the leftovers (you have to pay for the containers), we started our waddling back to the hotel. This is the reason, they serve this on Saturday’s only… you need the entire weekend to digest.

Casa de Feijoada

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Pao de Azucar at night…

2009, Brazil, Rio de Janeiro No Responses »

Dec 052009

This is another one of those tourist attractions that doesn’t need much explaining or blogging. It is pretty much the following sequence of events:

You go
You ride
You take pictures
You ponder for a while
You have a drink
You ponder for while
You talk with strangers about the view
You take more pictures
You ride down
Look at pictures

Then the sunset comes over and it gets dark and then you have a new beauty

Pao De Azucar at night…

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Oink Oink! Porcao Rios…..

2009, Brazil, Rio de Janeiro No Responses »

Dec 042009

I think this picture captures the essence of Porcao Rios. Porcao means “Big Pig” and they seriously are all about the animal there, as long as it has 4 legs, they will cook it and serve it. After a long week working, this was the perfect little end of the week here… tons of fresh salads, fresh sashimi (the sashimi was really, really good) and of course, the meat!

I had been to Porcao in Miami years ago and it wasn’t that expensive, I think it was about 40$ or so for the service and the food. I had read online about Porcao Rios and most of the reviews had all been highly positive, unfortunately we didn’t get a view of Sugarloaf as it was dark and overcast last night. Porcao is on the water with direct sightlines of Pao de Azucar. The buffet alone knocked our socks off as a fabulous meal unto itself. It included 5″ long prawns and sushi as well as a hundred-fold other great items.

We were given the red/green coasters to signal the waiters, but really it was pointless. My little coaster sat at Red, yet the meat kept coming and coming .

The Rodizio service was awesome and and sat back to watch the best prime meats, poultry, lamb, and chicken come our way in small or very large portions. Tender, tasty, terrific. There were small little tongs at the table, where you could ask for the tiniest slices of well done meat and pull it directly from the skewers.

The only little downgrade for me was the non rodizio service, trying to get side orders of anything else but meat was much slower, but to be fair, the place was packed and there are multiple dining rooms, so one can’t really annoyed with that … it was really busy on a Friday night. I tried to keep the eating to something respectable and I think my strategy of eating salad and sashimi in the beginning was a good thing. Like all Brazilian places I’ve been at here, the meat does tend to be on the salty side.

Overall, definitely a must do while you’re in Rio. As for the price, well that wasn’t any surprise, this is an expensive place. The buffet service starts at 81 Reais (50$ CDN) but with service and drinks, the final price went up to around 127 Reais (80$ CDN). That aside, if you want to go crazy with meat and seafood and you have the space to do this place justice, then it is well worth it.

Porcao’s

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Always ask what the hell you’re eating….

2009, Brazil, Rio de Janeiro No Responses »

Dec 022009

Whether one is passing through a city for work or play, hopefully you end up meeting some locals and heading out to a bar or restaurant. The thing is that the first instinct one has when entering a restaurant is to look at the menu and order the most familiar thing on the menu. This is why the average vacationer ends up with a burger and fries; why???

It is consistent
You know what to expect
You know what the ingredients should be
More importantly you know how should typically taste.

I have tried to unsubscribe from this most basic tenet of traveling when somewhere new, but being lactose-aversive/intolerant, I tend to be picky about food as I don’t want unexpected dairy on my tastebuds. I will typically ask questions or try and research new things to eat; in the past three days in Brazil, I have come up with the following observations:

Food is not spicy at all. There are tons of bottles of hot sauce and condiments, but really the Brazilians are not fans of spicy food.
Brazilians love salt on everything. In a typical meal, the meat is usually only “seasoned” with salt (?!?!?!?!), yes … really, a Brazilian actually used the phrase, “we season our meat with salt”. Coming from a country where the KFC is hot, this made me laugh.
Churrascaria is typically a bit salty but good.
Guarana soda is pretty fricking awesome. There are a couple brands of Guarana soda, but I seem to like the “Antartica” brand. I have learnt that you cannot only ask for an “Antartica” though because you will end up with a tonic water.
Brazilians love ridiculous desserts. The sweeter, it is, the better… but this really seems to be a Latin American thing in my mind….
Caipirinhas, while a lovely drink and quite refreshing, does not really go down that smoothly. As somewhat of a rum snob/officianado/collector, drinking cachaca is a bit uninspired, but I’ll reserve judgement until I have a couple different types of good cachaca
Cariocas also seem to like buffet style restaurant that weigh your food by the kilo… not the pound. Definitely not a bad way to fill up but the food isn’t that cheap either. In fact they have restaurants actually called “Kilogramme” …

Of course, one other traveling tenet I subscribe to is:

“if it looks like something you know, and it smells like something you know and you like what you smell and see, just eat it without asking questions”.

Brazilians love food by the kilo.. in fact they have places called “Kilogramme” . I have to say that great fruit is readily available (obviously) … but after going another “Kilo” restaurant with the team, I start sampling a couple dishes and I end up around around this big huge steaming pot of “Stew Chicken”, it even looks like the brown thick consistency of the stew chicken sauce….so i take a whole whack of it and put it on some seafood paella…no problem right?

Well as I was about to eat.. one of the brazilian girls tells me…
Girl: Do you know what that is?
Me: yeah.. we have this in the islands… its like stew chicken….
Girl: yeah it is? <Asking the question> I’m surprised you guys make it the same way. Do you guys make it with chicken blood also?
Me: <Insert blank stare, fork drops and partial dry heave> Wow, that is so interesting <Pushes anything that the sauce touched away on my plate (thankfully I didnt eat)
Girl: You don’t like it anymore?
Me: No, I just felt like eating a ton of mangoesinstead.

Latin americans generally don’t waste any part of the animals. After some research, I found out that the dish I had was called
“Falso Frango Ao Molho Pardo” (Brazilian Chicken With Brown Gravy)

In a dish, put a cup of lemon juice and spoon the chicken’s blood at the time of slaughter. Mix and set aside. Wash the chicken, cut into joints and boil lightly with water and lemon. Drain, rinse and set aside. In a saucepan, heat the fat, salt with garlic and let brown. Add the chicken, fry lightly and drain excess fat. Add the annatto dye, onion and add water gradually.Separately, mix the blood with a little water, add one tablespoon of corn meal or wheat flour and mix well. Strain in fine sieve and incorporate into the broth. Stir gently. Leave for a few minutes. Serve with rice or polenta.

The lesson for today….”don’t pretend like you know what something is….even it looks and taste like something you know… always ask to confirm”

Older Entries

Rishi Sankar: Ah Trini Travelogue / Ah Trini Traveller

At the Copa! Copacabana….

Copacabana at night…

Feijoada at where else….Casa de Feijoada!

Casa de Feijoada

Pao de Azucar at night…

Pao De Azucar at night…

Oink Oink! Porcao Rios…..

Porcao’s

Always ask what the hell you’re eating….

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