Get In My Belly

May 27th, 2007 Posted by Tiff

The day and night I died and went food heaven (na bocca de cielo)

I take the splendid executive decision to go the municipal market as it’s finally stopped raining. I thought it would be good. I didn’t think it was the most ridiculous foodie paradise I’d ever been to. (Previously that honour went to Maputo Fish Market).

It’s a long taxi ride to the Praca de Se in an obviously poor part of the area, the first street boys we’ve seen juggle at the traffic lights and the neighbourhood is obviously pretty rough. Inside the market though it is a totally different picture. It’s everything you would imagine Brasil’s finest food market to be. A riot of colour from the fruit stalls, shouting bargaining and bantering from the vendors, wave after wave of nasal symphonies melting through the air and an electric buzz pulsing around the punters.
We go around nut stalls selling about 15 different kinds of caju – cashews- and dried stalls with deliciously sweet dried bananas com chocolate. Next it’s the fish and meat stalls…row after row of bacalahu(salt cod) octopus and all different kinds of prawn.
Fish we’ve never seen and can’t name whose Indian looking titles suggest they from the amazon. Shark, dolphin ,swordfish….if it’s ever swum and you can grill it…it’s there.
At the meat stalls the national fetish for offal becomes bloodily apparent. Waste nothing eat the feckin lot seems to be the Brasilian approach, lung, stomach tripe…and not just regular, tripe especial too, take some home to the missus for her special treat. Or perhaps a bag of pigs’ ears to say ‘desculpe o meu bem, Ficei no bar e bem sei estou porco’ …sorry cupcake I stayed in the drinking den all night. I know I’m a pig’. Who needs bossa nova when you can give her testiculos de porco? Yes that’s a Fast Show moment right there…

Needing to sweeten ourselves after that we head to the Disney’s fantasia scene that is the fruit stalls. Metre after metre of fruit stalls with the biggest brightest juiciest strangest looking fruit I’ve ever seen. Crimson furry berries from the Amazon, star fruits from the NE, giant papayas…and the perfume! If heaven has a smell it must surely be a little like this.
We make so many new friends, everyone is welcoming, curious and as warm as the food is fascinating.We are invited to try anything we want and several things we don’t! Even when we don’t buy we’re juggling fruits and drinks and shaking hands.
Beleza! What’s hilarious is that all the geezers on the stalls want whiskey, ingles? They say . nao escoces ‘hehe’ he comes back the smokey crackle, ‘wheeskey wheeskey bring a –hus wheeeskey!!’
After promising everyone 10 year old malts we retire upstairs for delicious sushi then unable to resist, as bacalau is my favourite fish in the world bar none, I go to a stall selling freshly made pasties de bacalau.They look like giant fresh ravioli laid on the table. You ask for one and watch as the girl lowers them into fizzing spitting olive oil on a giant fish slice. What comes out is incredible, a crunch pastry golden with bronze crispy edges filled with soft soft salted cod with spring onions that melts away in your mouth, mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmyum!

We emerge stunned, stuffed and satiated into the daylight and into the first dose of Brasilian street madness we’ve encountered. The street is noisy, hectic and full of nutters! But it’s absolutely brilliant and for the first time Sao Paolo feels like the Brasil I had in my head. Brasilliant! A man stands in the street with an antique wooden speaker on wheels belting out tunes that occasionally stop then sporadically start again. The pavements are heaving with people, a crazy old women that talks like daffy duck starts belting me on the leg for no reason, piñatas hang from the shop ceilings…phew its a poco louco out here its crazy as a coconut.

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