Eat Rio Blog - Page 20 of 106

The reason I started Eat Rio

18/04/2014/5 Comments/in Musings

Next month Eat Rio will be 3 years old. During this period I’ve written over 400 posts and 48 static pages; you guys have left more than 4,500 comments, and I’ve filtered out almost 2,000 spam comments (if I ever do inherit 22.9 million dollars from a long lost uncle in Nigeria, I’m almost certainly going to miss out). The Eat Rio Facebook page has almost 1,000 likes (come on people!) and the Eat Rio Twitter account has almost 1,000 followers (are you trying to torture me?).

Now I don’t want to get too misty eyed here but, for me at least, Eat Rio has meant more than just the numbers. Writing this blog has pushed me to investigate and learn more about this great city. I’ve also made lots of friends through the blog, had several of those mythical ‘free lunches’ and just recently I was able to escape a less than satisfying job and switch career paths completely. Not bad for 3 years!

It feels like an age ago now, but I still remember why I started this blog in the first place.

Photo of the day: 16th April 2014

16/04/2014/0 Comments/in Photo of the Day

This market worker looked like he was sitting proudly as king of all he surveyed. When I got closer I saw that he was actually fast asleep!

Brownie do Luiz

16/04/2014/7 Comments/in Food and drink

Sweet, sweet temptation…

I waited across the street from the small shop in Laranjeiras and watched. In just 20 minutes I saw more than a dozen people enter with cash and leave moments later, hurriedly tucking tins or small foil envelopes into their bags and pockets. The clients were content for another day now that they had their fix.

This dangerously addictive substance, known as veneno da lata (literally ‘poison in a tin’, but meaning something closer to ‘good stuff in a tin’), is sweeping across the city of Rio and it has been winning over thousands of fans. But who is responsible for this and what should be done about it? The trail leads back to a guy called Luiz Quinderé, and it all started when he was just 15.