The Rio de Janeiro food scene is having its moment. Long overshadowed by São Paulo’s immigrant-fuelled gastronomic diversity, Rio rested on its laurels as a city of stodgy bar snacks at hole-in-the-wall joints known as pé sujos — literally “dirty feet.” That’s changing fast.
Recently, however, Brazil’s most beautiful city has been getting easier on the taste buds too, with a sensational new wave of creative street food stalls, fine dining restaurants and beach bars that are, at last, worthy of the world’s most breathtaking urban seafront. Rio is now a foodie destination worth crossing an ocean to explore – deep, diverse anddelicioso.
British travel journalist, Tom Yarwood, gives us the lowdown on four of his favourite places to eat in Rio.
Aconchego Carioca
Far from the tourist hotspots of Ipanema and Copacabana, this family joint in suburban Praca da Bandeira is the neighbourhood restaurant of choice for several of Rio’s most famous cooks, including Claude Troisgrois and Roberta Sudbrack. Chef Katia Barbosa specialises in the African-inflected dishes of Brazil’s north-east – notably moquecas and bobós, seafood stews heavy with dende oil and coconut, and sharp with chilli and lime. But she also reimagines them playfully in the form of classic Rio de Janeiro bar snacks. Best-known of her unique jeux d’esprits is the bolinho de feijoada – the ubiquitous Brazilian bean-and-pork slop, here buttoned up in neat falafel-like balls, each spilling salty, shiny kale and completed by a sweet sliver of orange and a spine-tingling swig of artisanal cachaca.
Tacacá do Norte
Slow-creaking ceiling fans and cracked azulejo tiles lend this tiny Amazonian cafe bar an air of faded, post-rubber-boom glory. Principally serving immigrants from Belem – a city at the mouth of the great river, as far from Rio as Moscow is from London – it offers authentic local takes on the singular tropical ingredients at the heart of Brazil’s trendiest metropolitan haute cuisine. Tacacá itself is a citrussy and sour prawn soup swimming with tongue-numbing jambu leaves and concealing an unnerving, elephantine glob of clear, snot-like tapioca gloop. Equally invigorating is açai, the super-fruit mash that’s a craze among Rio gym bunnies, here served in its traditional Amazonian form – free of guaraná; smooth, not crunchy with ice; and with bracingly bitter cocoa notes set off against its seductive sweetness.
