Paraty, Costa Verde, State of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil

Part 1: Sweet stuff



I was going to put these into a Rio thread, but I only had a couple photos of Rio and left my camera behind most of the days I spent there. Paraty, or Parati, pronounced "paratchee", just a 4 hour bus ride from Rio De Janeiro or five hours from Sao Paulo. The Costa Verde around Paraty has no shortage of tropical forests, waterfalls, cachaça mills, islands, beaches, old mansions and fortresses from the plantation era, even a quilombo. Paraty was once an important trading town between the mining district of Minas Gerais and the old colonial capital in Rio. When a new route through the mountains was discovered, the town fell off the map for two centuries. Economic marginalization preserved the unified architecture of the old town in a way that no gentrification or restoration ever could. One or two old buildings in the center of a town is nice, but a whole pedestrian neighborhood with endless stone streets between the ocean and mountains was magical to visit. The coastline from Rio to Santos and Sao Paulo was only connected by modern roads in the seventies. Paraty was only developed as a tourist destination since then. The lack of cars in the main historic area makes the town calm and quiet even with boatloads of visitors. The odd shaped and large stones that pave the street are a pain to walk through, even the horses pulling tourists around move slowly and pick their steps carefully.



Mobile cake cart vendors, why aren't these things everywhere. Who doesn't want a slice of cake when they are walking from one place to another. Carts with rain and insect guards opened up to reveal a giant selection of cakes and the tiny chocolate brigadeiros which are like Brazil's version of bon bons. The cakes were R4.00, the tiny things were R3.00 and there were many choices.

"Só tem delícias", isn't that what we all want in life, to only have delicious things?

coconut cake:


apple and coconut cinnamon cake with too much sugar settled near the bottom:


limão cake:


maracujá or passion fruit cake:




Icegurt Lady: Nothing rolls off the tongue naturally like the word Icegurt. Its hard to complain about something that only costs R1.00, Now with even more Icegurt for you:




There are several ice cream places, sorveterias, some right next to each other in the middle of the old town. Its pay by weight with the usual flavors and topping and a couple Brazilian fruits and flavors thrown in. My eyes were pulled to the yellow colored ice cream with a familiar name:

I couldn't pass up another Milho dessert, a little less sugary than most Sorvete De Milho Verde:




Roving Cake Carts
Three or four every late afternoon to evening, one at the rodoviária, another at Praça do Chafariz.

Icegurt Vendor
Praça do Chafariz

Manga Rosa Sorveteria
Rua Dr. Samuel Costa


Coming Soon: a trip to the market, lunch, shopping, and a rising tide:

I do have a sweet tooth and that coconut cake is calling my name. Beautiful pictures! Thanks for sharing.

Part 2: Miscellaneous, and the stones make my feet hurt.



Paraty has a lot of people just wandering around taking photos of the old town. In contrast with the old town, the new town is just as noisy and chaotic as any place in Brazil. There are a couple tourist offices selling jeep excursions, diving excursions, boat excursions, one always had a guy in a pirate outfit standing outside. There is also fast food and por quilo restaurants, but no franchises or chains yet, not even a Bob's Burgers. Bob's is almost everywhere. Not too many people live in the old town, and the car and bus traffic indicates the new area is where the locals spend more of their time.


Just around the corner from the bus station, Istanbul Cozinha Turca was run by an actual Turkish guy who spoke English with all the tourists who wanted kebabs. This place also has the sfihas with the bread folded completely over the meat, and some turkish desserts. This wasn't the best Doner Kebab, but the place was nice and the service was friendly for the foreign visitors.
Menu:

Doner Kebab:





The butcher shop, Açougue Santa Rita, right next to the Churrasquinho is the busiest meat market in town. Meat on hooks for all to see:





Tourists grab as much Cachaça as they can when visiting Paraty. Several Cachaçarias operate nearby and have outlets in the old town.

The retail space has pimenta (hot sauce) and some other fruit and pepper stuff in bottles stacked to the ceiling.

Another Cachaça store, I just liked the graphics here:




The Mercado Do Pescador was marked on the tourist map as Mercado Publico. The building was small and only one store seemed to be open, with fish on big piles of ice in plastic boxes. There is a covered space outside for people to set up stands and sell stuff like fresh fruit, but this just didn't seem like the day for something like that. The market is in the lower part of the town, across from the picturesque Igreja de Santa Rita de Cássia which was closed for renovations at the time.



Its worth mentioning that the old town was built at a low elevation, and the tide will rise into parts of the town. The old stone streets hold puddles of water when it rains, and the rising tide leaves more opportunities for reflections in the coloful old part of Paraty.
Early in the day a Blue Volkswagon making delivery:


Tide creeping up:


Still open with water rising:


Same Blue Volkswagon escaping before tide comes in:


Mercado closed at high tide in the afternoon:


Same corner as before, a little later in the day:



Istanbul Cozinha Turca
Rua Manoel Torres

Açougue Santa Rita
Avenida Roberto Silveira

Cachaçaria Cana Caiana
R. do Comércio

Mercado Do Pescador
Rua Dr. Pereira


Coming Soon: the last post from Brazil!

Beautiful! What is cachaca? Obviously a wonderful spice!

Oh, it's wonderful all right, but it's not a spice. It's the key ingredient in the national cocktail of Brazil, the caipirinha.

Looks wonderful and tasty!

Part 3: getting out of my price range and going to a couple actual restaurants.




I meant to post Pastelloni in the previous post, but I didn't remember. The sign reads Thirty Centimeter Pastels, and it seemed like a good idea at the time, and every filling was available with cheddar or catupiry cheese. Pastel com Linguica e Cheddar:

The "cheddar" turned out to be the most awful tasting orange filling I could ever imagine, definitely scratching Brazilian cheddar off my list from now on.




Benditas looked like nearly every other restaurant in the old town with a translated menu of seafood and Brazilian dishes. The outdoor seating was open so I grabbed a spot for a snack late one afternoon. The Bolinhos De Feijoada are the snack food variety of the classic Feijoada served on weekends at many restaurants. These were rolled balls of black beans served with slices of orange:

Opened up, stuffed with spinach and bits of pork:




Restaurante Caravelas was a block away from the main pedestrian route, right next to one of the ancient churches, and was completely empty at lunchtime. The space was relaxing and quiet with sidewalk seating or a garden with chicken wandering around and palm trees swaying in the breeze. Their specialty seemed to be Moqueca, the fish stew from the coast of Brazil. I was able to order a version with little bits of shrimp and squid with a crab and fish floating around too.
Moqueca lunch spread with rice, hot sauce, and banana side:

Zoom in to see fish and crab in orange oily liquid:

Banana in farofa mix:





Pastelloni
Pç. Mins. Hélio Pires, 2
(R. Ten. Francisco Antônio)

Benditas
Rua Samuel Costa 267

Restaurante Caravelas
Rua Da Matriz 334

Tyrgyzistan wrote:going to a couple actual restaurants.

Haha we all have to go to a few real ones now and then. Great stuff over the last couple weeks, all of it. Definitely my style. Thanks for sharing.

Yes, a very nice look at a place most of us will never see, even those of us who make it to Brazil from time to time. Your photos are great. They put me in certain places I know, like the outskirts of my home town of Tampa, or the North Shore area of New Orleans - mostly empty by day in oppressive muggy heat with musky smells and decay, standing water, and greasy food. I mean this in the best way.

LikestoEatout wrote:Looks wonderful and tasty!

I really wanted to post a video clip of Jennifer of the Two Fat Ladies in mid-caipirinha mix, singing a Brazilian song while dancing around and shaking a cocktail shaker, but unfortunately, the only clip I could find on YouTube cuts off just as the song starts. I'll keep looking.

LikestoEatout wrote:Looks wonderful and tasty!

It's generally rough white liquor made from the remnants of the sugar industry, with a taste ranging somewhere between pure alcohol and alcohol with dirt. Same thing, essentially, as aguardiente or white rhum agricole. Been drinking it since bringing bottles back in '97 when one could hardly find it in the US-- though Max "The Hat" Zimmerman carried it, of course. Wonderful enough, but tasty doesn't come to mind. Mix it with lots of limes and sugar, then it's tasty.