Eating in SP - Pastel

After pizza, pastel is the most typical food snack in São Paulo. Basically, it consists of a deep-fried pastry with different fillings, the most traditional of which are minced meat (usually with added bits of boiled eggs and olives) or cheese.
However, gone are these boring days. Today you could find almost anything inside a pastel, from pizza (yellow cheese and tomatoes) and palmetto to dried meat and pumpkin, endives and sweet fillings such as bananas, chocolate, caramel fudge... creativity is the limit. Prices will go from R$ 2,00 to 5,00.

Pastel de Carne

If you want to taste a pastel like paulistanos do it, head to a street market (Feiras Livres). These weekly outdoor markets have a stall selling pastel in almost every end. This is so traditional that the city has been holding an annual contest to choose the best pastel sold in feiras livres. For a pastel to be considered good, its fillings must be plenty and tasteful, and, though they are deep fried, they must be dry, golden, and crunchy! Check this site for a list of the 10 finalists and the locations of the street markets where they operate:

http://vejasp.abril.com.br/noticias/dez-melhores-pasteis-de-feira

To make it a complete experience, order also caldo de cana (a kind of juice obtained from squeezing sugar cane), but beware, it is really SWEET.

Caldo de Cana - add ice and lemon drops

Since Feiras Livres close at around 2pm, you have some other options... some stalls and some specialized snack bars called pastelarias. Here we go with some addresses:

- Pastel Yoka

R. dos Estudantes, 37 (Liberdade subway station)

- Hocca Bar (home of the famous cod-filled pastel)

Mercado Municipal de São Paulo (aka Mercadão)

R. da Cantareira, 306 (São Bento subway station)

- Barraca do Zé - a stall without the street market

Pça. Charles Miller, s/n - in front of the Pacaembu Stadium

(no subway station really close, best bet is Marechal Deodoro subway station, but this implies a good walk. Streets to get there are beautiful and lined with trees, though).

- Pastelaria Brasileira

R. Turiassu, 2113 (in front of the Bourbon Shopping Center)

(Barra Funda subway station - long walk; take any bus that runs along Av. Francisco Matarazzo and get off in front of the Mall, the pastelaria is opposite)

- Pastel Croc 30 - huge 30-cm pastel

R. Sena Madureira, 450 (Vila Mariana or Santa Cruz subway stations)

Street Markets - Feiras Livres

Seemingly incongruent with the life of a hectic large city, whose main characteristics are heavy traffic and serious pollution, feiras livres, traditional street markets selling mainly fruit and vegetables, are still easy to find around São Paulo.

They are usually held once a week on a certain street (you can find a list of all feiras here, listed according to their neighborhood). Regular hours are from 7:30am to 1:30pm.
Also they are one of the few places in São Paulo where you may actually bargain! If you go early in the morning you will basically have to accept prices as they come; as hours go by salespeople start throwing their prices down and will be open to negotiate. For example, if they are selling a bunch of bananas for R$3,00, you could offer to buy two bunches for R$ 5,00, and so on. Fresh fish can also be found at reasonable prices.

The environment is usually quite friendly: salespeople - called feirantes - will offer you to taste their fruit, other people will chat with you, and almost everyone will stop at one of the stalls on the corner (no matter where you go, every corner will always have one stall) to eat a pastel. Most of all, they are typical old times' classics, places where you'll find people from all walks of life going around their regular lives.

A DAY OUT – Parque da Água Branca

Parque da Água Branca is a park in the west zone of São Paulo, easily reachable by subway and buses. It is a small but pretty park, whose area was previously occupied by cattle fairs, the signs of which you might still see in some of its facilities. Except on Sundays, it is so calm that you could sit on its benches for hours on end reading a book or even taking a snap!

The park has a lake with koi, a small area with books and chess pieces available for visitors, nice lanes for strolling amidst its green areas, and a large sandy area where children may play. On Saturday mornings, it holds a renowned fair selling organic fruit and vegetables, as well as other homemade organic products; on Sunday afternoons, it is common to find a large group of elderly people who get together to play the guitar and sing popular Brazilian country songs (a picturesque sight!).

The opposite side of the park is home to a recently opened trail amidst the trees called Trilha do Pau Brasil (Brazil wood trail), in which most trees received labels identifying their names and origin.

If you begin to feel hungry, the park does not offer much besides the coconut water and popular snacks. Although there is a shopping mall nearby where you could resort to some fast food chain, I’ll give you some other options:
The park has a secondary entrance/exit, on R. Germaine Burchard. Right on the corner you'll find a pleasant bar, for a beer in late afternoons or early evenings, called Bar do Parque.

In case you are there around lunchtime, I suggest a nearby street – across Av. Antártica - which is home to several kilo restaurants: R. Barão de Tefé.

I heartily suggest two of them:

- Sucre (R. Barão de Tefé, 137) Apart from the kilo options, the restaurant also offers a la carte items based on fish (specially cod) as the patrons also own a Portuguese restaurant

- Mussy Mussy (R. Barão de Tefé, 79) Nice and varied assortment of dishes, topped up by its magnificent desserts.

As this is an office area, most restaurants around will be crowded from midday to one p.m., so it would be wiser to go a little later.

Parque da Água Branca - Av. Francisco Matarazzo, 455

http://www.parqueaguabranca.sp.gov.br/

By subway:

Barra Funda subway station

When leaving the huge station, follow the signs to Memorial da América Latina. Once out, go “up”, or ask for the park or the avenue, both are widely known.

By bus:

From Av. Paulista:

875P – to Barra Funda subway station

877T – to Av. Francisco Matarazzo (bus stop right in front the entrance of the park)

From the city center, all these buses will leave you on the bus stop in front of the park:

From Parque D. Pedro:

8615 - PQ DA LAPA

From R. Xavier de Toledo (near the Theatro Municipal) :

8000 – TERM. LAPA

8400 – TERM. PIRITUBA

8677 – JD. LIBANO

8622 – MORRO DOCE

8594 – JD. D’ABRIL

8696 – JARAGUA

From Largo do Paissandu:

8686 - V. MANGALOT

A NIGHT OUT - Karaoke

As the idea for this blog is to give out suggestions for off-the-beaten track places, here we go! Your travel guide probably suggests you should visit Liberdade, the Japanese (and now also Korean and Chinese) neighborhood in São Paulo, whose streets are adorned with typical Japanese lights and red posts, plus Japanese and Chinese restaurants, shops, not to mention an arts and crafts market on Sundays (very entertaining, actually).

But let's imagine you want to spend the night out with friends and would like to do something a bit weird, but fun... that's what I did yesterday, I spent the night singing at Samurai Karaoke (R. da Glória, 608 - Liberdade). Samurai holds an oriental restaurant on the ground floor and the karaoke room on the top floor. Entrance is R$ 10,00 for women and R$ 15,00 for men (for the karaoke room only) and you may sing as much as time allows you (hostesses take people from each table in turns, so the emptier the place, the more you sing). They've got lots of songs in Portuguese, English, Japanese, and even a good deal of songs in Italian and Spanish. You may also order food and drinks from the restaurant below. The whole place has an air of decadence, receiving loners, groups of elderly people, Japanese ladies, and even large crowds of young people celebrating birthdays... you feel somehow inside the movie 'Lost in Translation', but if you like to sing and you do have some nice company, you certainly will have a good time! The place is open from 6pm from Monday to Saturday and closes after 3a.m.

Rua da Glória is parallel to R. Galvão Bueno, the main shopping street in Liberdade. Just go one block down... Actually the area has some other karaokes, the most famous of which is Karaoke Choperia Liberdade, on the 523. This is a much larger, crowded and completely kitsch place in which you have to pay R$ 2,00 for each song you sing and sometimes wait for hours to sing one song. But the atmosphere is that of a large party, but if perhaps you don't really have a large group of friends and would like to meet some locals (and maybe singing is not really your goal) this is the place to go!

TRANSPORT - Buses to Congonhas Airport

São Paulo is home to a second airport, called Aeroporto de Congonhas. This airport is the base for domestic flights and some flights for South America, especially Buenos Aires (which is almost home, since it is closer than many other destinations inside Brazil). Unlike Guarulhos, the international airport, this is inside the city (actually so much so that it does not operate during the night, so as to allow its neighbors to sleep a bit… during the day they simply can’t).

So Congonhas is much handier if you are going somewhere inside Brazil. Flights to Rio de Janeiro will leave from here, in the so-called Ponte Aérea (literally ‘air bridge’, meaning a shuttle, as airplanes come back and forth from Rio to São Paulo all day long).

Taking a taxi to Congonhas, which appropriately is located in the neighborhood called Aeroporto, in the south zone of São Paulo, will be much cheaper than a ride to Guarulhos.

Some buses also will lead you there, just remember buses in São Paulo have no room for luggage, so if you are carrying large volumes forget this option.

Bus lines serving the Congonhas Airport:

875A or 875M (destination AEROPORTO) – both go along Av. Gal Olímpio da Silveira and Av. São João (downtown), passing in front of the Marechal Deodoro subway station, then they go up R. da Consolação and all along Av. Paulista, then on to R. Domingos de Moraes and Av. Jabaquara, as far as the Saúde subway station. From this point on their routes diverge a bit within the neighborhood known as Moema, but both will go as far as the Congonhas Airport. If you want some instructions on how to take a bus in São Paulo and   how to pay for it, check my previous posts on the topic.

From the Conceição or Jabaquara subway stations you may take another bus, 5128-10 (also destination AEROPORTO). If you are coming from Guarulhos (Cumbica Airport), instead of taking a taxi, you may take the coach “Airport Bus Service” straight to Congonhas (it stops at the Tietê bus terminal and at the República subway station). See times and other details here.

AVENIDA PAULISTA - Supermarkets

One of the first things I look for in a new city is a supermarket. This may come in handy for any unexpected necessity, and for my customary daily supply of mineral water – I refuse to pay the amount hotels charge for a small bottle, and I do drink lots of water during a day.

If you are staying or hanging around Av. Paulista you have at least two choices of supermarkets to count on:

EXTRA SUPERMERCADOS – Av. Brigadeiro Luis Antonio, 2013. One block from Av. Paulista, on the even-numbered sidewalk. (www.extra.com.br)

A large market with all ranges of products and reasonable prices. Good choice of fruit, if you care to taste some local specimens Also nice for foreigners who like to buy cigarette packages, which are apparently much cheaper in Brazil – in this case you must ask for the cashier, for the cigarettes are visible on a glass display at the entrance, but must be asked for and brought to the cashier by one of the market’s employees. Order (or write on a piece of paper) “(number of packages wanted) pacote(s) de (cigarette brand you desire)”.

PÃO DE AÇÚCAR – Alameda Santos, 2071. One block from Av. Paulista, right behind Conjunto Nacional (odd-numbered sidewalk). (www.paodeacucar.com.br)

Unfortunately this is a small shop of this nice supermarket chain, and as a consequence of the lack of space, the shop is somewhat crammed and confused. If you care to walk a little longer, you’ll find another Pão de Açúcar on r. Pamplona, 816

This supermarket will not have huge supplies of anything, and prices are not the cheapest in town, but they do offer variety and uncommon things. Lots of imported, organic, or  homemade products, different brands, typical Brazilian brands, etc. Good for foreigners who would like to take home some Brazilian coffee, but to have more choices for their pick. Also Brazilian chocolates with local fruits such as cupuaçu, take-away food and sandwiches, fresh juices, and always new and interesting items.

Eating in SP - Bread

As soon as you get your first breakfast here (or mostly anywhere in Brazil) you’ll get acquainted with our most common local bread, named here “Pão Francês,” literally “French bread.” You’ll have this for breakfast and this is the bread that will envelop your sandwich in case you choose to have one for a meal at one of our several Padarias.

 Freshly-baked Pão Francês

Slightly salty, a fine loaf of Pão Francês must be crunchy on the outside and soft in the inside… its crust should be crispy, and make a delicious noise as you bite it. Some rubbery versions may indicate that the bread is not fresh, or maybe just that the recipe is not good.

Some suggestions to try at any local padaria:

- pão na chapa (an open loaf of pão francês that receives a generous amount of butter and is pressed for some minutes on the grill where other sandwiches are prepared; a classic for a quick breakfast when you’re on the go);

A typical order: pão na chapa with coffee and milk

- sanduíche de churrasco com queijo (a nice piece of meat is grilled together with a bountiful amount of yellow cheese… if you prefer something less fatty, ask for yours “aparado”, this means the evident fat of the beef will be removed):

- sanduíche de carne-louca (a classic in old-times kids parties is now offered by some places; well-seasoned shredded beef, wet with tomato sauce, fills in a loaf of bread for that quick meal; nice with a glass of orange juice or a Guaraná).

Carne-louca means "mad meat"!!!