Getting to know Rio also means eating like a carioca. More than in famous restaurants, the city reveals itself in corner bars, juice bars, street markets and on the beach — simple places where food is part of everyday life.
Saturday is feijoada day: black beans slow-cooked with pork cuts and dried beef, served with rice, farofa (toasted cassava flour), sautéed kale, orange slices and pork cracklings. It usually comes with a caipirinha — cachaça, lime, sugar and ice — and, in some bars, live samba.
On almost every corner there is a juice bar (casa de sucos), with dozens of fruits on the counter: açaí, cashew fruit, passion fruit, acerola, cupuaçu and many more. Açaí na tigela — the frozen berry blended thick and served in a bowl with granola and banana — is almost a meal in itself.
On the beach, vendors walk by selling Globo biscuits, made from cassava starch, and iced mate tea — the most carioca pairing on the sand — as well as queijo coalho, a firm cheese grilled over coals. At street markets, the classic is a pastel with sugarcane juice (caldo de cana).
Botequins are the soul of the city: ice-cold draft beer (chope) and snacks such as codfish fritters and carne-seca com aipim (dried beef with cassava). At lunchtime, the “prato feito” — rice, beans, a meat and sides, all on a single plate — feeds working Rio.
Tips: try a traditional boteco, the kind with an old counter and a waiter who has been there for years, and eat where cariocas queue — it is a sign of good food. Try fruits you do not know at the juice bars, and set aside time for Saturday feijoada: it calls for a whole afternoon.