Sao Paulo, Brazil

Is there really not an existing discussion, or did it get lost in the shuffle during the switch to LTHForum.com 2.0 (or are we at 3.0 now) ?

I don't know what nabe I'll be staying in, or if I'll have a car, but might as well get some far & wide discussion since there doesn't appear to be any on the board. Any suggestions at this point are fair game and much appreciated. From the simple & traditional to Japanese home-cooking, it's all fair game.

Thanks !

Nab

The area of Sao Paulo known as Jardins offers lots of possibilities. I highly recommend the Golden Tulip Paulista Plaza Hotel as a good place to stay. It has all of the amenities of the elegant Renaissance located about a mile up Av. Alameda Santos. But, the cost is a fraction of the price. The hotel has an outstanding breakfast that is included in the price of your room. It includes a traditional Brazilian breakfast with the addition of some egg dishes for the Americans and a Japanese style buffet breakfast. It is well located near parks and the MASP.

It is located in the heart of the Jardins and is right across from baby Beef Rubaiyat, the outstanding Sao Paulo Steakhouse whose owners raise their own beef in the western grasslands of the country. Baby Beef serves grass fed beef at its best.

http://www.rubaiyat.com.br/alamedasantos/index.htm

If you've been in Sao Paulo a while, and you have a hankering for some American fare, there's a pretty good American style burger joint just up the street whose name escapes me at the moment,

For riodizio, there are literally hundreds of options priced inexpensively (around $7 for all you can eat) to more expensive (around $20 for all you can eat). The quality of the food varies according to the tariff. I hate to say it, but the most consistent and best riodizio in Sao Paulo is Fogo de Chao. The tariff there runs closer to $20 US.

There seem to be a wealth of Pizza places in Jardins. Unlike here, where pizza is a casual meal, it is served, for the most part over white table cloths. I was a fan of a place called Piola which served what I might call a more upscale California style Pizza. Piola is located on Alameda Lorena.

http://www.piola.it/mondo2.php?id=10

You'll also find a wealth of por kilo restaurants that offer buffets with custom cooked meat on a per kilo basis. These places can be quite affordable and are a good option id one wants to sample feijoada on a Saturday. Basically, you'll find a number of vegetable, stew and cassarole type dishes on the buffet. If you choose, you can proceed to a grill where you can have your choice of chicken, steak or sausage. If you're hungry, pick up a slice of cake from the dessert buffet, then walk to a register and put your food on a scale to be weighed. It should be noted that many por kilo restaurants change their tariff to a fixed amount after the lunch rush making them a really good deal for Americans who are used to eating a bigger meal at night.

in Jardins is another place, probrably owned by the same group - http://www.rubaiyat.com.br/figueira/index.htm

I would go there for fujadara on wed or sat for lunch, one of the best meals I've ever had, and an opportunity to spend 100 bucks on a plate of beans.

I would suggest going to the Mercado Central for lunch one day - a great market. specialialties are the Mortadella sandwhich and the cod fritters, but it is essentially a large food market with a dozen or more blue colar resteraunts and a few dozen sandwich shops, as well as all sorts of fruit and vegetable and meat stores.


what ever you do - you have to have pizza, go to an all you can eat steak place (I like the Jardin chain, not to be confused with the Jardin neighborhood) and have fujuada. you need to have fujuada on sat or wed. so plan around that.

Globetrotter-- do you mean feijoada? Just noting this in case of future searchers looking for feijoiada in Sao Paulo.

JeffB wrote:Globetrotter-- do you mean feijoada? Just noting this in case of future searchers looking for feijoiada in Sao Paulo.

sorry, yes

I never get around to posting about places, and always end up putting it off. but as there is a fellow forumite here now, I thought that I would make a few suggestions:

there are a few things that must be tried in Soa Paulo

Pizza - one of the maybe 6 distict types of pizza in the world is Sao Paulo pizza. there is a chain called "pizza and Pasta" all over the city, and then there is a place called piloa in the Jardins area, which is very good. I had a Lisbona pizza, with gargonzola and spicy salami.

feijoada - essentially beans and rice. you really need to have this. the obsolute best in the world is at http://www.rubaiyat.com.br/ the fig tree resteraunt. but they only serve on the traditional sat and wed lunch. there is a place that is almost as good called Bolinha that serves every day. if you go on Sat or Wed you will need reservations, other days not so much.

brazilian style steak house - they are all over the city, here is a very good one http://www.ventoharagano.com.br/

also it is highly recomended to go to the municipal market, there is a huge range of fruit to try, as well as mortadella sandwiches, various types of meats and salamis, and codfish fritters.

Thanks for the heads up. It has almost been five years since my last trip to Brazil. I am contemplating another this coming fall though the real is at a nearly all time high to the dollar. That beautiful city and country just isn't the bargain that it once was.

It's been a few months since work brought me to Sao Paulo for a week, and I realized that I still hadn't posted any of my thoughts on the food (I did post about chicken feet wallpaper).

(click any photo for a larger version at flickr)

YourPalWill wrote:I highly recommend the Golden Tulip Paulista Plaza Hotel as a good place to stay. It has all of the amenities of the elegant Renaissance located about a mile up Av. Alameda Santos. But, the cost is a fraction of the price. The hotel has an outstanding breakfast that is included in the price of your room. It includes a traditional Brazilian breakfast with the addition of some egg dishes for the Americans and a Japanese style buffet breakfast.

This was the same place my coworker recommended, in between his apartment and our office. I would agree with Will - the hotel was really nice, reasonably priced, and the breakfast buffet was very good. From my balcony I could see Paulista Avenue, including this building, which I really liked (the architecture all along Paulista is fascinating).

On my first day in Sao Paulo, a coworker took me around to show me various parts of the city. Right near his apartment is a farmers market, which had some food vendors at one end. We sat down and had pastéis, which are rectangular empanadas made from a very thin sheet of pastry, filled with your choice of filling. At the table there were a couple of kinds of hot sauce and small tied baggies, filled with a slightly spicy cabbage slaw/salsa, which I prompt scooped in to my pastel. Washed down with cold sugarcane juice, a very nice snack.

Pastéis - one beef, one heart of palm


Cabbage slaw

globetrotter wrote:Pizza - one of the maybe 6 distict types of pizza in the world is Sao Paulo pizza.

I tried pizza at a couple of places near my hotel and enjoyed them both. Without any background in Brazilian pizza, I couldn't say which of the two were closer to this distinctive style.

At O Pedaco da Pizza, I ordered a slice of mushroom (and, as it turned out, peanut) pizza by pointing at it, as no one in the shop spoke English. I also ordered a chocolate something from the menu board overhead, not knowing anything other than it contained chocolate... little did I know it was a slice of cheese pizza, reheated in the oven, then topped with fudge sauce and banana.

Brazilian pizza by the slice


The second pizza place I tried, Pizzaria e Choperia Urca, was a sit-down restaurant, but I grabbed my pie to go. Unfortunately it was over-topped (toppings under the cheese) and had really mediocre quality meat. I really liked the pizza itself, I just wish I had ordered it with one topping, or maybe none at all. Both pizzas had a nice char to the crust (here's a crust shot of the mushroom slice).

Whole pizza, to go


Near the Catedral da Sé is Sao Paulo's oldest bakery, Padaria Santa Tereza, where I stopped to try a couple of snacks, including a coxinha de frango com catupiry, which is a small wad of shredded chicken and some gooey cheese, all wrapped in dough and deep fried. To be honest, I thought it was an interesting concept, but kind of bland.

Coxinha de frango com catupiry

globetrotter wrote:I would suggest going to the Mercado Central for lunch one day - a great market. specialialties are the Mortadella sandwhich and the cod fritters, but it is essentially a large food market with a dozen or more blue colar resteraunts and a few dozen sandwich shops, as well as all sorts of fruit and vegetable and meat stores.

Mercado Central is a very cool indoor market and I had a great time wandering around, checking out all the fruit vendors, bacalhau mongers, and dry goods sellers of all sorts.

The fruit vendors have the most attractive, and attractively arranged, displays of fruit I've ever seen. I knew that I wanted to try fresh cashew fruit while I was there, and spotted them at a few of the vendors (see the orange/red fruit in the middle of the bottom row in the photo below). The fruit itself is juicy as can be, and strangely tannic. I'm not sure that I liked it, but I'm glad I tried it. I also tried atemoia for the first time, which I liked a lot better.

Arranged fruit display


Brazilian charcuterie shop


Overlooking the bustling market is a second level (kind of like Milwaukee's indoor market) which has a bunch of restaurants in a row, which all seem to have basically the same menu. We picked one basically at random, and ordered a few sandwiches to share.

Carne seca sandwich with olives and cheese


Mortadella


Bacalhau

I know what you're thinking, "that sure is a TON of salted fish for one sandwich," and you're right. It was a big, salty sandwich. I love salt cod and enjoyed the sandwich, but I'd pity the person who didn't have a cold beer to wash it down.

Unfortunately I don't have any photos from my lunch at Imperio da Costela, a low-key churrascaria. We were served sizzling platters of slow-cooked whole beef rib (what looked like the whole rib primal) and sausage. Sides included roasted beets, beans, potato salad, fried bananas, rice, and all sorts of things I've forgotten. One thing I won't forget is the beef chicharrones which were served as a snack immediately after we sat down - they blew every pork chicharrone I've ever had out of the water. Salty, rich, crunchy, beefy - really good stuff. An appropriate way to start a gluttonous lunch.

Overall, I enjoyed the food in Sao Paulo, but wasn't blown away. Vento Harragano, which was mentioned upthread, is a great churrascaria and definitely worth trying once. I appreciated the salt cod fritters and kibbeh which were available at every bar as a bar snack. The I didn't have a chance to try feijoada, which was a disappointment, but otherwise I feel like I crammed a lot of eating in to a 1-week work trip.

-Dan

Addresses for some of the restaurants mentioned:

Padaria Santa Tereza
Pc Dr João Mendes, 150
Sao Paulo, Brazil

O Pedaco da Pizza
Rua Doutor Rafael de Barros, 91
São Paulo, Brasil

Pizzaria e Choperia Urca
Avenida Brigadeiro Luís Antônio, 2401
São Paulo, Brazil

Imperio da Costela
Rua Machado de Assis, 327
Bela Vista, Osasco

Great post, Dansch. Just look the size of those figs in the fruit display. A few years ago on a visit, a local fruit market sprung up on a Sunday morning near my hotel. With some local cheese and a fig the size of my hand, it made for a great breakfast that morning.

I'm head back in two weeks for a Midwestern Winter Escape. I will be in SP for a couple of days before heading down to Floripa. I will absolutely use your guide to find something newer and more interesting than the riodizios that are everywhere.