Lunching in São Paulo

Hi everybody.

I was reading the paper (The New York Times) and I found this really nice article about feeding in São Paulo. It’s really interesting to understand how foreign people see Brazil. I think when you see Brazil through third eyes you have the opportunity to rediscover our place, whether about beauty, or food or other characteristics we have but we haven’t been looking anymore.

It’s also really interesting how some foreign people think our system to have lunch is difficult to understand. Yeah, they think that, but once they get that they really love it because at lunch hour these buffets are cheap and the food is extremely good.

The biggest problem about feeding is to find a good and cheap place for dinner.

So, understand how people around the world see our São Paulo, and learn more about ourselves.

Enjoy the reading.

November 16, 2010, 11:00 PM

Lunching in São Paulo

By SETH KUGEL

Seth Kugel Blackboards often announce the daily special.

In the six years since I first came to Brazil, it has transformed from a place worth visiting for the favorable exchange rate (3 reais to the dollar) to a must-visit destination despite the obliterated greenback (1.7 to the dollar) and steady inflation.

So how to keep costs down while visiting a place like São Paulo, Brazil’s business and cultural capital, where dinner in one of the city’s fine sushi, Italian, or contemporary Brazilian restaurants can run $30, $50, even $100 a person?

Here’s one solution: Eat dinner like a tourist, but eat lunch like a Brazilian, for about $10.

That means avoiding places where you sit down and order off a menu. Instead, you need to brave the sometimes hard-to-decipher Brazilian buffet and lunch counter systems.

Here’s where to find them, right near top São Paulo tourist attractions.

Buffets

Don’t be put off by the slop common to all-you-can-eat American buffets: heavy competition in Brazil means these lunch spots often offer surprisingly high-quality food, and the salad bar is almost always excellent.

There are two kinds of buffets: all-you-can-eat, and pay-by-weight.

The all you-can-eat ones – often indicated by signs with the phrase “buffet à vontade” – can be more than 30 reais ($18), sometimes not including a drink.

An even better deal – though a bit more complicated to figure out – are the pay by weight buffets, often referred to as “kilo” spots and marked with a sign with “Comida

por Kilo” or the borrowed English phrase “Self-Service.” Forget “por favor” or “obrigado,” the key Portuguese word to learn here is “comanda,” either a slip of paper or an electronic card you’re given to keep track of how much you spend; you pay at the end. Grab a plate, fill it with whatever you wish and take it to the scale. Someone will weigh it, mark your comanda, and often take your drink order.

Lunch Counters

Even cheaper meals, however, can be found at the ubiquitous lunch counters, often called “bars,” found on every corner in working-class neighborhoods but still common in elite neighborhoods as well. (Security guards, construction workers and maids have to eat somewhere.) The items on the list of “pratos comerciais” top out at 9 or 10 reais ($5 to $6) even in the toniest areas. That will get you some kind of beef or chicken or sausage, a mountain of rice and beans, the yuca-flour meat garnish called farofa, and either a pitiful salad or a scoop of vinagrete, a sort of Brazilian pico de gallo.

Seth Kugel At Bento House in Liberdade, a worker marks the “comanda” of a customer.

These lunch counters also often have daily specials, the rotation of which is similar throughout São Paulo. Wednesdays it’s feijoada, the classic Brazilian black bean and pork stew – and for 10 reais or so, far cheaper in these places than fancy, touristy spots. But my favorite is the Monday special, virado à paulista, a plate of pork in various forms, with all kinds of sides.

The point is, no matter where you go in São Paulo, you’re never far from a bargain lunch. Which is good, because you’re also never far from an outrageous dinner.

Leandro Cantoni