Probably my favorite food in Brazil is definitely acai. It's so good, and it's so different than what we have here in the US. They eat it like a dessert there. It's kind of like ice cream, and then they just put like every topping on it. They put sweetened condensed milk, caramel, chocolate chips, granola, fruit, anything you can even think of, bro. And it tastes so good.
My like favorite, favorite food was just their churrasco, which is just like Brazilian barbecue, but they cook it way better than American barbecue. My favorite meat was called picanha, which is just like top sirloin. It's like the best cut of the cow basically. Super, super good. But other than that, I mean, I just loved that you'd always have rice and beans, but the way that the people made the rice and beans was like a little bit different. They'd have their own touch to it. And so sometimes you were more excited to eat the rice and beans at one house than you were at another, but I really loved it. It was always really, really good.
So my favorite foods were acarajé, feijoada, and tapioca. It's just so good. You know, acarajé is just like, I don't know how to describe acarajé, but it's crunchy and it has a lot of seafood inside and a lot of pepper, be careful, but it's delicious. It's just like awesome. Feijoada is this is like brown beans with a lot of meat and it's just so good. You can eat it with rice and it's delicious. You learn to love it and you put a little farofa, how they say. It's a kind of a dust or it is. It's so good. It's so perfect. Tapioca is more like a tortilla, but it's white and it's healthy and it's really good. You can stuff it with basically whatever you want, candy, salt, whatever. It's good.
The lunch in Brazil is gonna be always the same thing every day. Actually, lunch and dinner. Like every day, no matter where you are, because we eat the same thing like from north to south when it comes to lunch. It is gonna be rice and beans and then you add things to that. You can add meat, salad, you know, whatever, you know, but you have to have the rice and beans. Otherwise, it's not real food for us. Dinner is gonna be basically the same thing, yeah. Lunch and dinner for us is just like rice and beans again, you know. Also, we like something called feijoada, which is beans with some things in it. Also, açaí, which is really good, a super food, and coxinha. You can google that.
One of my favorite Brazilian foods has to be pastel, which is fried and it's kind of like an empanada. It looks like a toaster strudel, but you can fill it with like meat, cheese. It could be like sweet or savory foods, so I think that's one of my favorite all-time Brazilian foods.
One is called a stroganoffi. It's basically stroganoff, but you make it with cream of chicken and ketchup and mustard, and you put it over rice, and it is delicious. Also feijoada. It's a bean stew made with pig. Any part of the pig you can throw in there, they'll throw in there. It's very good. I also love just rice and beans. You put farofa over it, and it's delicious. And if you like barbecue, if you like meat, they always have hojizio, which is basically buffets of meat, and you will have the best meat. Pork, lamb, cow, you'll have the best meat you've ever had in your life.
The food in Curitiba is so good. I love pão de queijo, which is like cheese bread, cheese inside of like a little roll, and coxinhas are so good, which is like a fried delicious goodness with chicken inside. And then I like brigadeiros, which are little balls, like little chocolate balls with sprinkles over it. And rice and beans are so good too. And you just learn how to get used to it and like it. You need it all the time. And the food's just delicious.
So one of my favorite foods from Brazil is churrasco, which is similar to American barbecue, but it's a little bit different in that it's better. I don't know how to describe it. It just tastes more grill-like when they cook their meat, and there's like sausage that they cook that's really yummy. And their steak is really, really good when it's cooked through churrasco, so that's something that I miss. And then I also love their carrot cake, and it's different from American carrot cake in that it doesn't have like a ton of fruits in it, or nuts or anything like that. It's just plain carrot cake, and then they put a chocolate frosting on top called brigadeiro, which is amazing.
Koshian, it's like this potato dough that they fry with shredded chicken on the inside and oh man, it's so good. Rice and beans, I never got tired. I just, I love them so much. And there's lots of candy that's just amazing. The desserts, there's this pudding, it's kind of like flan, Mexican flan, but I think it's better. And I look forward to lunch every day. One of the best parts of every day was definitely lunch. So just love the food. Decide you're going to love it, and you will.
So in Salvador, there's a lot of food that's specific to the state. It's called comida bayana and it's some of the best food that I've ever eaten. And one of my favorite foods is called acarajé. It's kind of like, imagine what a baked potato looks like, except it's dough made out of fried beans and then on the inside there's shrimp and types of peppers and vegetables. It's really, really good. And then there's some other ones called like vada pa, which is, it's shrimp as well. And caruru, they're all kind of shrimp based. They have okra in them. A lot of the food is kind of similar to like Cajun food. That's probably the best I would describe it. But all of it's really tasty.
Rice and beans. It's a staple every single day at lunch. I look forward to lunch every day because I got to have rice and beans. And in Manaus, they have something also called farofa. They have it in other places in Brazil, but it's not as big as it is in Manaus. It comes from farinha, which is, it comes from, I don't know how to say it in English, mandioca. It's almost like a potato, and they grind it down really small, and then they, that's what farinha is. And then farofa is when they grill that or fry it in oil with bacon or sausage, onions, other vegetables, stuff like that. So that's really good.
My first night, they asked me if I wanted to have pizza with chocolate-filled crust. And at first, I know what you're thinking. I thought the exact same thing. Like, what the heck? That sounds disgusting. But it is delicious. It's the best pizza I've ever had. It's like a salty pizza with cheese, sauce, whatever toppings you want. All natural ingredients, by the way. And then the crust is stuffed with chocolate. And it's just the best thing ever. It's like you have dinner, and then dessert is just right there afterwards.
Loved it all, but some of my favorite things are anything with passion fruit. I love passion fruit and I also love guavas. I would eat them like apples. I love guava so much, so that's one thing you definitely need to try, those two fruits. And then other than that, feijoada. It's like a bean dish with different types of meat, usually types of pork in it. They put in different parts of pork in it and it's amazing. I love it. It's one of my favorite foods of all time. And of course the churrasco, the barbecue food basically is what it is. Their barbecue is incredible.
Definitely the pizza is delicious. It's different than the U.S. Same core ingredients, they just use more. They have like hard-boiled eggs they put on their pizza. It's really good. Chicken, they use a lot on their pizza. They have this thing called catupiry, which is kind of like cream cheese, but it's not. It's more pizza-friendly. It's really good. They have a hojillo, which it's like steak. It's basically a steak buffet where they bring the food to you. It's so good. Outside of restaurants, rice and beans gets pretty old after a little while, so the best thing to have is, well, they have this rice dish where they cook chicken into the rice with cheese and vegetables. Really, really, really good.
Beans and rice every day is just delicious. At first it's a little bit, it gets a little boring, but then after a while you start to kind of depend on it. I remember one time we went out and got a pizza for lunch and at the end of the day I was like, man, I just don't feel quite right. What's wrong? Oh, I didn't have my beans and rice today. You always have beans, rice, and chicken. It's just the cheap food that everyone eats every single day and it's a complete protein. You know, it just, it takes good care of you.
Acai is where it's at.
My favorite is definitely churrasco. It's like the Brazilian barbecue. If you've ever been to Tucano's or Rodizio, it's like the giant meat on the skewers. They make that pretty frequently down there. You will love that. In Rio Grande do Sul, where Santa Maria is, it's the beef capital of Brazil, so you're going to have a lot of that. But rice and beans, you're going to have 50 different variations of that. So good. They also have this one food called estroganofe, basically like stroganoff. It's like meat and batata palha, and it's really, really good. One thing that I fell in love with too is they have tang, it's tangy is what they call it, like 50 different flavors. So you can have like guava, peach, passion fruit, lime, all these different kind of juice packets that you can dump in your water to switch it up. That was really good. Their desserts there are really good. They have torta de bolacha, bolo, all these different kind of things. The food is amazing.
There's some foods you have to try. There's pesto, which is p-a-s-t-e-l. It is essentially what I think of as puff pastry, but it's a savory flavor. Sometimes people put like chicken and cheese in it, but my favorite was always beef, ground beef, in it. So you put, picture this, you have this like dough and you put ground beef that has really amazing seasoning and flavor in it, and then you crimp the edges on this dough and then you fry it. So it's this delicious fried dough with ground beef in it. I love pesto. You can find it at street carts and lots of little bakeries, I guess you would call them. So please, if that sounds interesting to you, try some pesto.
I definitely loved Mousse du Jumate Cujat. It's like passion fruit mousse. They also make smoothies with avocado that are delicious. The avocados are a lot bigger than they are in the U.S. And there's a black chocolate cake they call Nega Maluka, which basically means crazy African-American woman. And the cake is super rich and dense and delicious.
My favorite food is pastel. It's like fried hot pockets with meat inside. It's so good. That should be the first thing that you try. It's absolutely amazing. Another thing was feijoada. It's a sausage stew that's also extremely good with black beans and rice. It's so good. And the desserts of Brazil are like just the icing on the cake. I love all of the Brazilian food.
I would have to say coxinhas were my favorite. They're like these fried chicken balls, but I just also loved the rice and beans and then their meat. They just had such good meat and you know it was so simple sometimes, but it was just exactly what you needed.
So my favorite foods in Brazil was definitely the couscous. It's really good and you can eat it with like everything, so that's really good. They make lasagna, which is a little bit different, not completely different, but it's really good. Stroganoffi, which is like a stroganoff. They make it a little bit different and so it's really good as well. Coxinhas are really good. They're like the little dough balls with meat, like they have chicken in them usually and it's really good. They make like a Chinese food. That's pretty good. We would go to the city center and we would get Chinese food and pastels, which are just like things. Those are real good. The beans, I mean, I like the beans and rice. It's pretty good. They make it a little bit different than we do here. It's not refined. It's like legit beans and white rice, but yeah, the food's really good. You're gonna like it, hopefully. And bread, pão francês.
Sao Paulo is known for its pizzas in Brazil as being the best pizzas ever there. So there's lots of interesting flavors. You get a lot of corn, peas, bacon. It's great, it's pizza, but the best part is definitely the crust, which is stuffed with chocolate, which sounds weird at first, but it's amazing and it will change your life.
There's really two of my great loves of culinary Brazil are coxinhas, which are small like fried teardrops, and they're really, really good. And also any acai you can get your hands on. You may see it here in the stores in America, but it's not the real deal. It's mostly in juices and stuff up here, but they make ice cream out of acai, and it's very good, and they put a lot of interesting mix-ins in it, like sweetened condensed milk. Sweetened condensed milk, they put on everything that's sweet. And yeah, those are probably my two favorite things. They're great. They're great. I'd like to get my hands on some of them up here, but it's tough.
Pizza con borgia chocolate, chocolate stuffed crust. I know it sounds gross but you just have to try it. You have to go to Donatello's. It's like you get a little dessert at the end. It's like a savory pizza and then you have your dessert. So that's really good.
Best food ever is couscous. Oh, so good. But it is an acquired taste, so you got to give yourself some time to get comfortable with it. At the beginning, it kind of tastes like sawdust, but if you make it right, it's amazing. Couscous with ovos, with eggs, and then if you make couscous with cheese inside, that's amazing. Couscous with beans, with fried macachera. Oh, macachera, so good as well. You have to have fried macachera, that's so good. And then just the fruit, honestly, is probably the best thing. Just enjoy it, because all of it is amazing. Even if you don't like it, something about the fruit there is different, so just soak it up.
I love this one dish called stroganoffi, which is basically like a cream soup and they put meat in it. So it'll either be chicken or beef and it's made with mushrooms and they serve that over rice with what's called patata frita, patata balia, which is kind of like little tiny fried french fries. And then all of the desserts are wonderful, very sugary. It took me a little bit to get used to the the sugariness of the desserts, but I honestly loved all of the Brazilian food that I eat.
I love farofa. It is really just a topping, but it's for any, whether it's spaghetti, whether it's rice, whether it's beans, you sprinkle farofa on it, it's like bread crumbs, but they mix meat in it, they put eggs in it, it's marvelous and so good, especially from northern Brazil.
I loved everything. My favorite thing is probably the acai. You have to try it. You'll have tons of vendors on the side of the road and they all have different things like acai, churros, pastels, which are like fried meat-filled things. But the acai, you eat lots of fruit. It's from a berry and it's kind of like ice cream and you cover it with condensed milk and granola and it's amazing.
When you get to Brazil, first thing you want to go and eat is acai. Go to like a little corner, like street corner, like get it like on the street corner. You want to get it from like the most native people ever. They'll scoop you some acai and then get leite em pó. Leite em pó, like dust milk basically, translation. Leite condensado, condensed milk, bananas, and that's money, that's money. Acai, eat it, gives you energy, it's a good dessert, it's money.