Thursday, January 24, 2013

São Paulo, Days 5-6

We went to famous "Mocoto" on Wednesday with L's parents. The restaurant was one of the places Anthony Bourdain went in his layover São Paulo episode. The food is simple northern Brasilian food done well.

Cheese and a reduction of sugar cane juice.

The place is reasonable in price and the lines quickly grow with people wanting to eat the Chefs delicious food.

Carne seca with roasted garlic and pickled hot peppers. (I'm buying several jars of these to take back home!)

The restaurant is purposely out of the way- so according to chef Rodrigo "he can choose the people that come here." He treats the tv reporter and the guy that cleans the street the same here at Mocoto. (From the Bourdain episode) We had entirely too much to eat, and it was all fantastic. The main thing that strikes me about food here, is the quality of ingredients. I feel that if I cooked one of my specialties here, it would taste 100x better than in Chicago. The simplicity of the food and how all the ingredients can be tasted is something i rarely find in the USA. It's really hard to explain this further.

There's graffiti on everything. In fact it's hard to find a building without some sort of tag. It's really sad, because this city is beautiful. People who live here really don't know how good they have it. (plus There are a lot of socio-economic issues to sort out as well)

There are some really beautiful graffiti art murals here.

These are under their public transit system.

We went for another run in Ibirapuera, and I made some new friends- including a horned dinosaur chicken (helmeted guinneafowl). Ok ok, I piggy backed on the kid that was feeding these geese and took advantage of the situation to get close to the birds. I even pretended to have food so they would get closer to me. They might attack me next time I go for a run there...

We also got some fresh, straight from the coconut, coconut water. For about $1.50usd, it was cold and hit the spot after 2 laps around the park.

We had lunch with L's parents at a place that had live music. It was wonderful- I can't remember the last time I went for lunch somewhere during the week and experienced live music.

Then we got our race "kit" for tomorrow's 10k to celebrate São Paulo's 459th birthday. The pickup was in the parking garage of a supermarket.

No frills, no expo, just picking up your number, chip and shirt (also came with a cool hat and a bar of soap!) and then we had to go to the chip verify station to make sure the data was correct. Simple!

Looks like between the 10k and 6.3k, there will be over 10,000 participants. I'm pretty excited to run in the race and have little expectations except to just have fun. L and his dad are also running the 10k, should be a blast!

We had a "light" dinner at the Portuguese restaurant near our hotel and I had Caipirinha number 7. This one was with Sake and lychee fruit. Absolutely delicious!!

Boa noite


- xaar


  1. Looks like you are having an amazing time!!

  2. Fun! The food looks and sounds amazing. Glad you are having a great time.

  3. What does L think about the food quality thing? Had he brought that up before? It sounds like you are quite surprised by it. I find it very intersting. I felt that way in Roma, a bit. I bought fresh produce every day. It was a lot different than living in the states.

    Are the tags showing certain territories?

  4. I am absolutely loving hearing about your experience! Similar to what Kim mentioned, I do think that food tends to be much better when purchased fresh at vendors every day. But I had no idea that our food quality was considered THAT subpar!

    So cool that you got to visit one of the places that Anthony Bourdain went to!!! The graffiti is incredible. I think I heard somewhere that some universities offer courses on graffiti art and all the socioeconomic symbolisms behind them, etc., etc. Cool, eh?