Eat Rio Blog - Page 45 of 106

Milho Verde – Brazilian Sweetcorn

09/05/2013/36 Comments/in Food and drink

Some time ago I was browsing the Brazil section of Reddit when I saw someone asking for advice: “I’m moving from the US to Rio in a few months – is there anything I should bring with me that is hard to get over there?”.

This caught my interest, so I had a look at the responses – most of them seemed pretty sensible, but then I saw one reply which struck me as odd. It said something like “You should bring can openers – they don’t have them here. Also bring good ballpoint pens, gem clips, file folders and sweetcorn”.

Items apparently not found in Brazil…

The whole list just made me go “Urgh?”. First off, there was the can opener thing. I bought a can opener here in Rio when we moved into our apartment so I couldn’t understand what the guy was talking about (did he think Brazilians opened cans with their teeth?). I was also perplexed by the items of stationery – I had picked up all those things and more at a stationers in Botafogo.

But what really got me was the sweetcorn. Sweetcorn?! Sweetcorn accounts for a whole category of street vendor here and what’s more, it’s delicious! I couldn’t let that go – I replied, saying that sweetcorn is common in Brazil and also very tasty.

At this point someone else got involved and asked if I had “ever lived in North USA – the corn there is delicious. The corn in Brazil is so bad that they wouldn’t feed it to the cattle”. Woah! [deep breath, count to 10] Now I haven’t lived in any part of the US, so I can’t compare, but if you think the corn in Brazil is bad, you need to change the place you’re buying your corn!

Nhac Nhac!

07/05/2013/5 Comments/in Language

Some time ago I installed a Portuguese-English dictionary on my phone. It’s really useful as it doesn’t need an internet connection and it has the handy feature of keeping a list of all the words you look up – a ready-made revision list for when you’re feeling studious. It’s not 100% perfect though – there are rare occasions when it doesn’t list a word I’m looking for. This happened last weekend when we were in Cachoeira Paulista.

The word I was looking for begins with “Nh” which still strikes me as a strange combination of letters to start a word with. As far as I can tell (disclaimer: I know even less about Spanish than I do about Portuguese) “Nh” in Portuguese is the equivalent of the Spanish “Ñ” – it makes that “nya” sound that you hear in words like “new” and “lasagna” (jeez, now I’m straying into Italian! Turn back!).

When I checked my phone dictionary for words beginning with “Nh”, I found just 2 entries:

Nhoque

This is how Portuguese speakers spell Gnocchi, those little dumplings you find at the cheap end of the menu in Italian restaurants. It’s actually a great word to illustrate how the Portuguese language takes a word from abroad and adapts the spelling to fit the rules of Portuguese. As far as I know (disclaimer number 2), a word beginning with “Gn” would be pronounced “Ge-ne” (with a hard g), so they replaced that with the “Nh”. To make a hard “Ke” sound they needed to use “que”, so you end up with an identical sounding word that is spelt completely differently!

Gnocchi, Nhoque, Ñoqui (Italian, Portuguese, Spanish). Source

Invasion of the Mermaids by PXE

06/05/2013/3 Comments/in Art and culture

I’ve been spending a lot of time in Copacabana recently. A few months back they closed the Metro station in Ipanema, so nowadays the bus drops me on the beach in Copacabana each night and I wander the streets looking for either Siqueira Campos or Cardeal Arcoverde stations to complete my journey home. At first it was a real pain – I got lost quite a bit – but after a while I found that I was getting to know my around the neighbourhood.

As I walked the streets of Copa, I noticed one set of letters appearing over and over: PXE. I’ve seen these letter on walls, shop fronts and especially on those nondescript, grey boxes that contain, erm, telephone wiring? Electricity stuff? Clearly I have no idea what these boxes are for, but I do know that they look better when they’ve received the PXE treatment!

Image source

PXE

PXE, or Marcio PXE to his friends, has a pretty cool blog. I have noticed several themes running through his work and these themes have meant I’ve had to learn some new vocabulary!

Gol incentivises pilots to save fuel

03/05/2013/18 Comments/in Musings

I was gazing out of my window a few days ago when I saw a rather nice wisp of cloud floating around the top of Pão de Açúcar. I grabbed my camera and was taking a few snaps when a plane came flying through the shot – bonus!

A Gol flight passing Pão de Açúcar. If you look carefully you can just make out the contrails coming out the back.

Later on, when I transferred the images to my computer, I took a closer look at the plane and made out the airline: Gol.

Gol is a low-cost airline and Brazil’s second biggest carrier by market share. Times are tough for many airlines right now, with rising fuel prices really squeezing profit margins. Gol has been suffering more than most – according to Bloomberg, they lost 11 cents for every dollar of sales in 2012 (R$1.5 billion net loss for the year).

While some budget airlines have devised novel pricing ~~scams~~ schemes, Gol have come up with their own approach: use less fuel. Gol management have introduced a new scheme of bonuses for pilots and flight crews to incentivise fuel economy. Hmm, how does a pilot use less fuel?

Comida di Buteco 2013

30/04/2013/3 Comments/in Food and drink

What a busy weekend we had! We managed to visit no less than four of the bars participating in this year’s Comida di Buteco competition. I like this competition for a few reasons: it stimulates creativity and competition between bars; it encourages people to support these local small businesses; it’s a great way to discover new bars; it gives me an excuse to go out and eat, drink and be merry with Mrs Eat Rio in the name of ‘research’.

As I understand it, bars don’t just choose to participate in Comida di Buteco – they are invited – and it looks like it gives a serious boost to business. All the bars we visited were packed full of happy customers enthusiastically evaluating the petiscos, cervejas and caipirinhas on offer. Here’s a little taste of how things went…

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Botero

Bar: This must be the perfect example of the ‘CdB Effect’ in terms of discovering new places. Botero opened last August but none of my fellow drinking companions had heard of it until it was listed in the competition. Clearly this place is no secret though as it was packed on Friday night. Even though it was really busy, the waitress brought our drinks quickly and even pulled over a beer crate so we had somewhere to put them while we waited for a table.

Dish: Three pairs of bruschettas, one topped with shredded beef rib, one with linguiça and herbs and one with a tiny fried quail egg. Seriously delicious, I scored it 9 (out of 10).

Overall: I really liked this place – we tried a couple of other things from the menu and they were seriously good. This could be my new favourite local bar!