Curitiba and Paraná State Brazil

Curitiba is not exactly a destination city, its more like a necessary stop when traveling through Southern Brazil and the closest big city to Foz do Iguaçu . Its mayor from the sixties and seventies was a disciple of efficient urban planning and public transportation. The pedestrian streets downtown, plentiful public parks, wide boulevards with cars moving fast and bus stations that resemble subway stations are the pride of the city. The diverse and metropolitan city is home to descendants of non-Iberians including large numbers of Ukrainians, Polish, Italians, and other groups. The suburban boulevards have giant scale Churrascarias and Italian places with signage and parking areas big enough to be seen from outer space. One Italian place in the Santa Felicidade neighborhood, Madalosso, claims to seat up to 4,600 people. The absurdly titled burger place Elvis Costella (Short Rib Elvis) was closed for renovations during my visit.

Across the street from the busy Rodoferroviária (Bus and train station) is the Mercado Municipal.

The Mercado Publico was about 90% food vendors and lunch places, but I didn't see anything worth shouldering my way through the sea of people to grab a picture. Fresh fruit, butchers, nut vendors, dried meats, fish, shoes, beauty supplies were all in abundance. There was a few Asian food supply places as well.
Mercado during slow time:


Food Court:

This is just one of the three food courts, behind stretches the market stalls. Without looking at any online resources to check, I would assume the building was once a bus station, the vaulted area is just huge. The food courts form a second floor that covers about a third of the Mercado. The restaurants and lanchonetes were nothing special, but catered to the office working crowd offering affordable prato executivo (office worker lunch specials) and porquilo (by weight) lunches.

This is Barreado, the most famous dish of Cocina Paranáense, from the coast of Paraná State. Slow cooked lightly spiced beef, topped with farofa, served with a steamed banana, salad and rice.

The train station across the street has a special tourist train that travels into the Serra Do Mar mountains to visit a historical city, Morrettes, which claims to be the birthplace of this dish. Other towns in the coastal region also claim ownership, and multiple legends of the birth of the dish exist.


Ki Pipoca Com Bacon

There were no shortage of popcorn vendors on the streets of Curitiba, each with a popping machine next to their cart. Imagine the cheapest bacon ever, dried and salted up and tossed in with even more salty popcorn, then put in a bag for R2.00

Mercado Municipal Curitiba
Av. Sete de Setembro, 1865 - Centro
Curitiba - PR
http://www.mercadomunicipaldecuritiba.com.br/

Coming soon: food festival in Praça Gen. Osório:

Part 2:

Praça General Osório is one of several tree canopied green spaces in the central downtown area. Its a couple blocks from the old historic area and is very close to several bus stops and the tubo de ônibus that runs like clockwork. The week I visited this place was filled with quiosques for a holiday food fair. Belgian Waffles, Swiss Chocolates, Hawaiian fish sandwiches, local honey and baked goods along with tacky gifts were all being sold. The central area around the fountain was surrounded by a ring of food vendors of the various local cuisines, I had to start somewhere.



Its always interesting to see other foods localized for foreign markets. There were fried and stuffed breads from Bolivia, Argentina, and India available. I had eaten enough pastels by now and the idea of an Indian flavored one just wasn't at the top of my list. Many of the stands only had one or two items to try, and the menus all seemed to have things crossed out or unavailable. There was one kiosk titled Brazil that served corn based foods, another named Indigenous Brazil with more corn, and yet another titled Amazonian without any corn.

Espetinho de Alcatra com farofa from the Gaúcho (Rio Grande do Sul) stand:

This was just a skewer(espetinho) of beef that is sold on the street nearly everywhere, with the option to roll in farofa to pick up a layer of flour.


Bolinho de Bacalhau from Portuguese stand:

This Bolinho had nearly no salt in it, a welcome relief from so much saltiness in the food around here. The filling had a lot of bread and didn't taste like much fish inside. This was rolled and fried right in front of me and arrived super steamy. Opened up:


Polônia

Wikipedia claims Curitiba has the second largest Polish diaspora population. The famous city planner and mayor of Curitiba was of Polish heritage, there are Polish people all over the place, it seemed like a good idea to try the Polish food. Pierogi com recheada de frango em molho de calabresa:

These pierogies filled with chicken were boiled up to order. This was a great value for R8.00 and the sauce of calabresa sausage cooked in onions was delicious. Very mild flavors but this was the tastiest thing I had at the food fair.

Brazilian at Casa de Pamonha:

The Casa de Pamonha didn't have Pamonhas, but they did have cornmeal Cuscuz, Suco de Milho and the pudding Lelê de Milho, I went with the corn pudding pie topped with leite condensado (condensed milk):

Milho Verde is a popular street food throughout Brazil, and this was the busiest stand by far:


Indígena Brasileira: Delicias do Milho

There are native Brazilians outside all the tourist attractions selling handicrafts and souvenirs, but this was the first place selling their cuisine. I had to try their dish that heavily resembles what we call a tamale, the Pamonha:

Opened up:

The Pamonha is a Tupi indian dish that originally meant "sticky" in their language. The corn is ground up with just a pinch of salt, but a boatload of honey and sugar or even coconut milk. The steaming keeps a ton of moisture inside and the mixture requires a spoon or fork. These are popular in Northeast brazil and can also be found stuffed with meat.


Bahian Fish dish (probably Vatapá):

I wasn't able to get a name for this dish, I saw a fried shrimp cake Acarajé and some other sweet things, but the colorful fish entree caught my eye. The fish meat tasted like a strong curry, but with more flavors. The consistency was like a flaky fish mixed with a sponge, it may have been mixed with bread before cooking to get the strange texture. The sides included rice, farofa, and something that resembled a sweet potato puree. I think my camera memory card ate my photo of the stand, I could have sworn I took a picture but now I can't find it.

Amazonia

Tapioca and açaí are everywhere, but there are boatloads of exotic foods from the amazon region. They have like twenty species of local catfish to try. This was the first place I found Tacacá:

The Bahian fish dish was strong and exotic to my tastebuds, but it couldn't prepare me for the complete weirdness of Tacacá. The leaves in the soup numb you lips and have a strong aftertaste, the white stuff floating around has a consistency like glue. This soup served only in its special bowl with a wooden stirring stick is just totally foreign in flavor, served very hot:



Coming soon gratuitous Foz pics:

Great shots and narrative!

Part 3: Foz do Iguaçu

The main drag through Foz is Avenida Das Cataratas, going from the town, past hotels, a waterpark, more hotels, a chocolate and cachaça outlet store, the airport and a bus line that drops tourists and locals in front of the National Park entrance. The region has cattle pastures all over the place, and large churrascarias compete for tourist money with huge billboards and signage. At least two Rodízio style restaurants have live dancing performances for tourists to watch when they eat. Some tourists have uploaded videos of women in carnival costumes dancing onstage to save other people the time and money of going inside.


The only street food on Avenida Das Cataratas is by small time Coconut Juice vendors who set up their coolers of coconuts beside the road with a spread of stuff for sale like ponchos, potato chips, and hammocks for tourists. You can relax in a reclining chair and watch the busy street while a guy hacks apart a coconut with a machete:



The Tri-Fronteir Region is a center of Middle Eastern migration to South America, mostly from Lebanon but also from Syria and the Levant region. Brazil celebrated Roman Catholic holidays that the average American has never heard of, and these restaurants are open throughout the holidays. The cuisine is labeled Comida Árabe Brasileira, and has its own local quirks. The signage had some cartoon Arabic faces that might not fly in another country, but picture menus were the norm and made ordering easier.



This sidewalk cafe under the school to learn English and Spanish says Brasa Burger on the sign, but its menu is for Sabores do Brasil Conveniências. I couldn't pass the claim of "Best Schawarma in Foz" without checking this place out. I wound up choosing the Beirut Sandwich, which was invented in Sao Paulo and found throughout Brazil.

It usually has rosbife on pão árabe with lettuce and zataar, always thin and wide. This version had schawarma beef and a garlic cheese sauce. This would have been better if the bread could hold up the sandwich, it was overloaded and the juices soaked through and couldn't be lifted. A very tasty sandwich nonetheless.



Casa da Esfiha Beirut

When visiting a cafe with Casa da Esfiha in the name, I thought it made sense to try the Esfiha. The picture in the menu made the decision a little bit easier.

Esfiha is a staple of Comida Árabe Brasileira and can be folded triangle shaped flatbread, or open face meat on flatbread, but always meat on bread at an affordable price. This portion of Sfiha Balbakie looked better than it tasted, but was baked fresh and the lime juce on the cheap meat and spice mixture worked well:




One extra trip into town meant one more trip to a rotating cone of meat establishment, Casa Da Esfiha Istambul. This chicken schawarma didn't knock me out, but the prices on the Comida Árabe Brasileira around town were rock bottom and decent schawarma with french fries is available at several places.

Prato De Schawarma, served atop pão árabe with tomato, pickles, lettuce, sour cream, and batatas fritas:



água de coco gelada
Avenida Das Cataratas

Sabores da Brasil Conveniências
Av. Brasil, 319, Centro. (R. Xavier da Silva)

Casa da Esfiha Beirut
Avenida Juscelino Kubitschek, 453

Casa da Esfiha Istambul
Avenida Juscelino Kubitschek, 409


Special Bonus: a trip to Habib's

Habibs is the major Middle Eastern fast food outlet in Brazil, their wikipedia page has some particularly bad auto translation but there are over 300 locations and it could grow beyond Brazil someday. It was founded by a Paulista who had hired a Lebanese man only to learn he could cook. Its locations are busy everywhere and the prices are just ridiculously cheap. The esfiha starts at R0.69 and people order ten or twenty at a time. I ran inside one late at night to see what it was like. I didn't come to Brasil to try Kibe Crua at a place like this, or anywhere else for that matter. The Prato Primavera looked good in the picture, with stuffed zuchini, grape leaves, and spinach wraps. What could possible go wrong?

This was kept in a steamer way too long, dripping wet meatloaf mixture everywhere, sauce was not hot sauce but just tomato sauce, about what I would expect for cheapest fast food in Brazil.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habib%27s
http://www.habibs.com.br/

Green Billed Toucan is not impressed.

Beautiful!

Such a great travelogue!!! Thanks for posting.

Really outstanding post, every bit of it, from the tacaca to the vast array of cuisines represented in this region. But it's that corn pudding pie that is really calling my name. What is it like? I did a quick search and found virtually nothing.

I did my own research to try to find a name for the corn dessert and found a bunch of places named Casa Da Pamonha with corn based menu's. The nearest thing I found was Curau de Milho Verde. The pie was only slightly sweet with no crust but a browned top, and the condensed milk added richness to the simple corn pie. I remember the filling being dense, and served at room temperature. There were other corn desserts available. I looked for a photo of the booth from a different angle, but couldn't find one, the menu's and the food available at the stands didn't always match up, and I just ordered by pointing at what I wanted. I am confident that it cost R4.00

Interesting - thanks for reporting back. I might have to take my own stab at this some time.