Eat Rio Blog - Page 34 of 106

Brazilian Brands: Sal Cisne

22/10/2013/12 Comments/in Food and drink

There’s a significant amount of irrationality in branding isn’t there? We consumers make choices based on colours and designs, often without even realising that we’re being influenced. If we stopped to think logically about it, I expect many of would concede that there’s probably no significant difference between product A and product B. All the same, for some reason we keep picking product A.

Today’s Brazilian Brand is one that I took to instantly, though I’m fairly sure it is in no way superior to other brands. I just like it.

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Sal Cisne

Name: Sal Cisne

Product: Table salt

Description: The Sal Cisne salt refinery was built in Cabo Frio (150km east of Rio de Janiero) in 1949. They have a range of products, from big bags of sal grosso (coarse salt, essential for the churrasco) to smaller containers of table salt. But of all their products, one (or should that be two?) stands out.

The official name for this chirpy couple is the rather dull saleiro ovo (egg salt cellar), l but I think that most of us know them better as Senhor e Senhora Sal. As you can see, Mr Salt wears a blue cap while Mrs Salt has a pretty red boater. When I first saw this pair in the supermarket, I wondered “Apart from the hats, what’s the difference between Mr and Mrs Salt?”. The answer? Absolutely nothing! They both contain perfectly normal table salt.

Verdict: I like them! What can I say? I’m an irrational consumer! I could try to justify my preference by saying that the egg shape fits in the hand nicely, that the little hats actually do a very good job of keeping the salt dry and free-flowing, but in reality I just like having a happy little salt man in the kitchen.

Vinícius de Moraes

17/10/2013/0 Comments/in Art and culture

When I get to the end of my life, I hope I’ll be able to look back and say that I lived a little. I guess things are going pretty well so far – I’ve travelled more than most (and had scrapes and adventures along the way), I’ve had some interesting jobs and I’ve met a good number of weird and wonderful people.

But no matter how interesting my life turns out to be, I doubt I’ll come close to the subject of today’s post. This Brazilian was born in 1913 and died in 1980 and during his 66 years he worked as a diplomat, musician, composer, poet and playwright. He married 8 times, had 4 kids, wrote a play that was adapted into an Oscar winning film and was central to the development of a new and hugely successful style of music. Oh yeah, and he co-wrote the second most recorded pop song of all time.

In case you haven’t guess yet, I’m talking about this guy:

Vinícius de Moraes – a man of many talents.

Rio strikes back

14/10/2013/13 Comments/in Musings

I feel like I’ve been mildly unfaithful recently. I’ve been off having flings with other cities and neglecting my beloved Rio. First I was seduced by Lima with its exciting food and reasonable prices. Then Melbourne caught my eye with its fancy restaurants and excellent transport system.

My first week back in Rio wasn’t easy. The people who told me that jet-lag is worse when you travel from west to east were so right. More than a week after arriving back, I am still waking up at 5:30am each morning and falling asleep at 9pm. On top of that there has been the usual trauma of returning to full-time work after 2 weeks of lounging, snoozing and other forms of general relaxation.

So, have my dalliances with other cities made me think twice about whether Rio is the one for me?

Rio after Melbourne (Part 2)

10/10/2013/8 Comments/in Art and culture, Musings

In my last post I showed you some of the culinary highlights of my trip to Australia. Today I wanted to show you some of the other things that caught my eye. I’m aware that this is a blog about Rio, not Melbourne, so I promise that after this we’ll be back in Brazil for the foreseeable future!

Beaches and coastline

With the beaches being such a central part of life in Rio, Mrs Eat Rio was very keen to see how the beaches of Melbourne compared. Although St Kilda was nice, it didn’t really come close to the city beaches of Rio. Once we got out of town we saw some much nicer beaches, but I still think Rio wins this contest!

Along the Great Ocean Road lies the beach town of Lorne. Pretty quiet this time of year and not an umbrella or beer seller in sight!

Nice waves for surfing in Lorne.

Rio after Melbourne (Part 1)

09/10/2013/15 Comments/in Food and drink

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.