Rio after Melbourne (Part 1)
So after a wonderful fortnight in Australia, I find myself back in Rio. Apart from the sexy announcements, Galeão (Rio’s international airport) is a miserable place at the best of times, but when it’s 2am, you’ve just completed 20 hours of combined flights, all the cash machines are out of order and the taxi company is attempting to charge you R$80 to get into town, things hit a new low. A few days later we’ve settled back in and it feels good to be home!
After my recent trip to Lima and then Melbourne it feels about time I got back to writing about Rio. But if you think I’m going spend 2 weeks in a city like Melbourne and not tell you all about it then you’ve got another thing coming. Let’s start with the food shall we?
The Melbourne Food Scene
Hmmm, ‘food scene’ sounds a little pretentious doesn’t it? Oh well, call it what you like, when it comes to food and drink, there’s a lot going on in Melbourne. We were lucky enough to be taken out for a proper ‘Melbourne brekky’ (breakfast/brunch) a couple of times and what a treat!
Cafés are dotted all over Melbourne, serving up excellent coffee and delicious breakfasts such as Eggs Benedict (see previous post), baked egg pots and BRAT (Bacon, Rocket, Avocado and Tomato) on sourdough. Swoon!
From the Thomson Cafe Food Store in Northcote, this is the baked egg pot with house beans, bacon, pork sausage, spinach and eggs with house made chutney and organic sourdough.
Being back in Melbourne meant I could meet up with Steve, an Aussie mate I met in Colombia back in 2009. Even back then he was going on about how much he missed the Parmas of Melbourne. For the uninitiated, a Parma is a Chicken Parmigiana – chicken breast slightly flattened, coated and fried in breadcrumbs then layered with ham, tomato sauce and cheese. They might not be pretty but these are seriously tasty – pick one up from The Standard when you’re in town.
I got this one at the Northcote Social Club and it was delicious, but just pipped by the Parma at The Standard – a top pub/hotel.
Spend any time chatting to waiters or restaurateurs in Melbourne and you will likely hear them praise the great quality and variety of produce available in the city’s markets. Regular readers will know how much I love a good street market and I was lucky enough to visit 2 during my stay – the enormous Queen Victoria Market and the gourmet’s dream, Prahran Market. The quality of produce, particularly the fruit, vegetables, seafood and dairy was really impressive.
Prahran market was not cheap, but the perfectly manicured produce was gorgeous.
I was really happy to see my favourite Colombian arepa flour for sale. How can this stuff be so easily available in Australia but hard/impossible to find in Rio?
In another contrast with Rio, Melbourne is richly multicultural and has strong links to South-east Asia. This makes for some good eating, especially for someone like me who developed a love of Pho while in Vietnam a few years back.
Pho – a rich, spicy Vietnamese noodle soup that I ate for breakfast everyday when I was in Vietnam. I picked this one up in central Melbourne and it was great!
Another thing that Melbournians do well is beer. What a treat! I don’t think a day went past without me treating myself to some new Pale Ale or other delicious beery treat. Words like ‘Fat Yak’, ‘Carlton Draught’, ‘Mountain Goat’ and ‘Little Creatures’ now bring back happy memories of delicious, tangy beers.
The beers in Australia were a delight. In fact they were so good that I am now considering starting a new project – brewing! Watch this space…
In the next post I’ll finish up with Australia by telling you a little about my antipodean wildlife encounters and show you some of the sights that made even this couple from Rio stop in awe.
But before I leave the subject of food in Melbourne, I have to mention one place: The Commoner. This must be one of the best places I’ve eaten in ages – a beautiful restaurant with delicious, seasonal food and lovely service. Mrs Eat Rio and I enjoyed our lunch at The Commoner so much that we went back the same evening with the rest of the family for a farewell dinner. Big thanks to fellow Chowzter, Cara Waters, for the recommendation.
The following images are from The Commoner’s gorgeous website
Beetroot salad. Image © Blake
Image © Jaqui Melville
Image © Jaqui Melville
Image © Jaqui Melville
Big thanks to Jo and the rest of the crew from The Commoner. Image © Jaqui Melville
You should not use the caixa electronicas at Galeao anyway. They almost always have interception devices planted in them. I’ve used 2 different ATM’s there, and both times the card I used was compromised and copied. Fortunately in both cases whoever had the bootleg copy of my card tried to take out more money than the limit I have set on it, and the card got invalidated. Was an inconvenience to get it replaced though.
Oh man – what a nightmare! I hadn’t heard that before, but I will just add it to my long list of things I hate about Galeão… As Mrs Eat Rio put it, Galeão is uma vergonha. In the last few months I have been through airports in Lima and Buenos Aires and I have to say that Galeão stands out like a sore thumb because of its lack facilities, poorly functioning infrastructure (half the escadas rolantes were em manutenção) and dated appearance. If Lima and Buenos Aires can do it, why not Rio?
But what is so bad about Galeao? Granted, it’s nothing compared to first world counterpart airports like Heathrow or Hartsfield Jackson, but I don’t find it so bad. I can’t say I much enjoyed the many hours I spent sitting and waiting at the Policia Federal office there, but on the other hand I quite enjoy sitting in that coffee shop on the third floor of Terminal 1, watching the jets take off and land. Every time I arrive into Galeao I am happy to get there, and every time I depart from it I am sad to be leaving.
Aha, I agree with your last sentence – always happy to arrive at Galeão because it means I’m arriving in Rio :) But that doesn’t make it a good airport.
I purposefully didn’t compare it to the airports in Australia that I have also been to recently. But I think that Rio should be able to stand alongside Buenos Aires and Lima as a city, yet those airports are streets ahead of Galeão. Galeão looks to me like it hasn’t been maintained or improved since the 1970s. And if you want something decent to eat you have to walk the miles of corridors to get to Terminal 2 where they have some better food outlets, but even those were mostly closed last time I was there. There are moving walkways between the terminals, but I’ve never see all of them working.
I see they are now doing some fairly major building work, so I expect things will be much better by the time the hordes arrive for the World Cup.
In my opinion evreything is better in other cities than in Rio. I visited London in 2009 and evrerything were perfect from the Heathrow airport to public tranports the same thing happened in Buenos Aires and Montevideo here in South America. The cities are more organised and everything is clean. I was born here but I’m not proud of being a carioca.
Hi Marcos – I think it’s sad that you are so negative about Rio, but I know there are a quite a few Cariocas who feel the same way. Brazil and particularly Rio, seems to polarise many people. There are people who only want to hear the positive stuff and constantly tell you this is the best and most beautiful city in the world. Then there are those other people who will just talk about the negative things.
I certainly agree that Rio has been shamefully neglected by its politicians for decades – you can see the evidence of this in many places – the favelas, the transport system and other areas of infrastructure. But there is a whole lot of good in Rio too, don’t you agree? It’s a beautiful city populated by wonderful, warm people. Rio is full of rich culture and tradition – think of the music, the food, the bars.
There is a lot of room for improvement in Rio (and I think Cariocas should demand more), but I still see a lot of things that Cariocas should be proud of.
Finesse…
‘In the next post I’ll finish up with Australia by telling you a little about my antipodean wildlife encounters”
So this is how the pilot’s announcement that the plane will soon be descending into Galeão feels like :-)
Welcome back dude.
Thanks Gritty – it’s good to be home! :)
Most airports in Brazil are managed and operated by Infraero, a company owned by the federal government. Executive positions are filled by political apointees, who have been involved in more scandals than one can remember, and always unpunished.
The airport situation in Brazil came to a point such that, against their will, people who command the government decided to privatize, like they are trying to do with major highways. There are then two problems here: one, they are too incompetent to put together a decent scope specification; two, their Stalinist background only accepts business running things that belong to the government if business agrees to do so at zero profits,
It will eventually get worse. Their only competency is the capacity to stay in power.
Thanks for that Bruno – interesting and depressing in equal measure.
Tom, Melbourne looks like a foodie´s and real beer/ale paradise. The markets, restaurants and breakky places all look worth it. Melbourne looks like its mixed the best of local culture with the best from around the world. It looks like you could eat around the world in one week without leaving Melbourne. The only thing for me is the isolation factor with the rest of the world. You got take mid-long flights to get anywhere (As said by a spoilt european!)
Hey Chris – you nailed it. Lovely food and beer (and wine and weather and the list goes on…) – basically a really nice place to live I’d say. On each occasion that I’ve spent time in Australia I’ve always found myself thinking the same thing as I leave: this would be a brilliant place to live one day. As you say, the isolation from Europe and the Americas would be the only downside for me, but I can imagine there are plenty of people who might see that as a bonus! ;)
Hey Tom! Thanks for choosing Little Creatures to illustrate your aussie beer experience, it’s just around the corner from where I am and they have a beautiful setting by the water with delicious food too! A must visit in WA (I told you you were on the wrong side of the country!) As to the markets I have to disagree with you, no place in the world has it better than Brazil. On this side parmigiana is not that popular, again, more popular in Brazil. Always interesting to read impressions from a foreigner to both countries though! Keep it up!
Ah, I’d love to see the Little Creatures place in WA (it’s in Fremantle right?). They have a nice place in Melbourne too and we enjoyed multiple tasty ales in that establishment. Seeing as I picked the Fremantle Dockers as my team (had to pick one of the teams in the AFL Grand Final) I guess I should definitely head over to Perth on my next visit! :)
Looking back over my post and comments, I don’t think I actually said that the Melbourne markets were better that the markets in Brazil did I? They’re certainly quite different and for me it was a real treat to see such a variety of cheeses and gourmet items like salmon roe, sourdough bread, goose eggs, etc. But would I swap it for my beloved Sunday market in Glória? Not sure that I would :)