Pé Sujo – Dirty Foot

Literally translated, Pé Sujo means “Dirty foot”. This is the term used to describe the many low-end bars that pepper the city. You will find a Pé Sujo on almost every street in Rio. As the name suggests, these bars are not known for their standards of hygiene – if your feet weren’t dirty when you went in, they most likely will be by the time you leave. They say that when the waiter wipes your table with a cloth, it actually makes the table more dirty! But these grubby drinking dens are loved as a quintessentially Brazilian place to drink beer and share gossip. 

Typically there will be a beaten-up steel-topped bar, some large freezers and plenty of beer crates, sometimes piled up to the ceiling. The tables and chairs are usually cheap plastic, resembling garden furniture. One or more waiters will mill about, taking orders and delivering ice cold bottles of beer to the tables. 

When I arrived in Rio I quickly realised that I was going to get thirsty if I persisted with the English tradition of trying to catch a waiter’s eye in order to get served. Here, customers will call to get the waiters attention – Oi! [hi/hey], Moço! [sir], Amigo! [friend] are fairly common, though occasionally you will hear people being more playful and inventive: Capitão! [captain] and even Imperador! [emperor] have been used (though not by me!). 


It’s interesting because back in England, calling out to a waiter like this would be seen as overly assertive and even disrespectful. And yet here, the Brazilians don’t think twice about it and there is no disrespect either intended or felt – they want another beer so they shout to the waiter to let him know, simple as that. It makes the repressed English approach seem utterly ridiculous to me now!


Many Brazilians have great affection for these unprepossessing little bars and I can see why. They have almost palpable soul – the ancient guy behind the bar who is chatting to his old friend who comes in every day; the stains, scratches and other scars that are starkly missing from the fancy, air-conditioned place across the road; the way the waiter will get to know his regulars and make sure he can find them a table, even when it’s busy. Of course they can be a bit grotty sometimes – stinky toilets, crappy chairs, grubby tables – but there is also something magical about these places.  

A Pé Sujo in the neighbourhood of Botafogo, close to where I work

On one occasion, after drinking with friends in a Pé Sujo for several hours, we had amassed a huge collection of empty bottles. It was late, all the other customers had left and the waiters were clearing up the tables and chairs. Our waiter came over to the table to ask us to leave, at which point one of my fellow drinkers called out SAIDEIRA! – literally, ‘the leaving one’. The waiter nodded, disappeared and then returned with another beer! To my delight, the guy next to me explained that in these places, if the table has drunk a lot of beer, the bar will often give you a free one with the bill as a leaving incentive. How nice is that? And if you’ve drunk a lot of beer (and you’re cheeky enough) they will next bring the Caideira (the falling one) and finally the Expulsadeira (the kicking out one!). This last one is usually drunk with feet in the air as the waiters empty buckets of soapy water onto the floor to clean up.