Brazil: Meat, Caipirinhas, and Meat III

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Brasilia, Sao Paulo, Curitiba

The Brasilia show for the South American tour was a late addition; we were due to play at 1:20am… 1:20AM! Trivium's latest stage time to date had only been around 11:00pm or so - so we knew it was going to hurt to play a 90-plus minute set that "early" in the morning, then sleep for 2 hours and fly to Sao Paulo. But Hell… we were in South America.

We wrapped up a very tight soundcheck (tight as in we played well together… not the 90's lame-bro/ Jersey Shore-douche terminology) and headed to lunch. Marcos had to take us back to the same lunch spot as the previous day due to the fact that it was the Brazilian Independence Day and everything was pretty much closed or packed to the brim. We arrived back at Feitiço Mineiro for some lunch. This time it was the whole Triviums, Ashley, and Marcos. By this time, we began getting to know Marcos pretty well; we learned of his half-Spanish, half-Brazilian ethnicity and trilingual skills. Marcos has been a vegetarian for the last 20 plus years and doesn't drink - a feat that I would imagine to be quite difficult in such a meat-oriented, cachaça-drinking country. He taught us that back in the 90s, being a veggie would have been very difficult - but nowadays he has it sorted. It's pretty awesome that he certainly knows his stuff on the meat-based places however; I'm assuming he does his research using local meat-eating pals. 

Marcos owned a label several years back called Liberation Records - distributing Lifeforce to Metal Blade, Roadrunner to Trustkill; nowadays due to lessening CD-purchasing, he sticks purely to booking bands in South America. Marcos books everyone from Lamb Of God to As I Lay Dying to us and everything in between. Throughout the trip, we'd all be getting to know each other better through our common love of Florida. Through the entire tour, Marcos took very good care of us - taking us to the best local restaurants and filling in sight-seeing whenever possible.

Marcos showed us that today, due to the Independence day, Fetiço had a new giant-table spread of black cauldrons of bubbling black soup-looking delicacies. At least 10 pots were on display, one for pig ears stewed in black beans, beef stewed in black beans, offal-cuts and scraps and good cuts in black beans… every cut of the animal. My kind of eating!

Feijoada is a very traditional Brazilian dish. Mention it to any Brazilian and you get that smile that takes them back to mom's and grandma's houses where they would eat feijoada with their loved ones. Feijoada originated as a slave's dish: the Africans that were brought to Brazil would only be left with the offal and scrap cuts of the animals their masters wouldn't eat. They'd boil all the parts down along with black beans, top the meat on top of more black beans, on top of rice. Atop the layering deliciousness, the slaves would add chopped collard greens, and then farofa. The combination of all the aforementioned ingredients then became feijoada. One could certainly see that Brazil's cuisine has quite a major African influence, mixed in with their Portuguese and Latin flavors.

Feijoada is a delightful dish - comfort food at it's finest. Stick-to-your-ribs and fill-your-gut-up goodness that is void of pretense and filled with historical significance. Couple that bad boy with the icy-delicious caipirinhas that were just waiting to be guzzled by the gallon… and you were in good shape. 

Traditional sweets awaited me after my lunch: some flan, coconuty-caramel sticky pudding, some kind of tropical fruit that was candied in a sweet liquid, and then this traditional compressed fruit/condensed milk sweet that is eaten with Brazilian cheese. All the deserts truly emphasized sugar. Brazilians love their sugar - and their deserts display that affection. Too good. 

We headed back to the hotel to nap as long as possible to rest up before the insanely late/early show; I took some Zantac first of course…

Brazil: Meat, Caipirinhas, and Meat II

Brasilia, Sao Paulo, Curitiba

Upon our return to the hotel, some of us walked to a mall that is parallel to our hotel for some waters and to check out a Brazilian mall. It reminded me of a cross between mall, flea market, and outdoor South American market. Tons of people walking about with the happy chatter of the Portuguese-language all about us; loud electronic stores and car salesman of some sort trying to sell us an odd-looking VW by the food-court. Oddly, people keep speaking Portuguese to Ashley. I think everyone thinks she's Brazilian. I know it seems crazy - but I think she does look a little like the blonde-haired, fashionable glasses-wearing Brazilians that maybe one doesn't see as much in comparison to who they'd typically imagine seeing when thinking of a Brazilian. Anywho - we hit a store called "Americanas" which is basically a small store modeled after a Wal-mart of sorts. It's set up like a Wal-mart, only completely condensed into a store the size of a small apartment. Nonsensical flying helicopter kits are setup across from chocolate bars, next to the underwear for boys and potato chips. We grab our waters and head out. 

Dinner is a very short walk from the hotel, and alongside basically everyone but Nick (he was sleeping), we head into a local Churrascaria. This is what one imagines when thinking Brazil-chow, dudes in dress-shirts and vests with sword-skewers of delicious animal, carving it off onto your plate until you have heart-failure or have developed gout. All you can eat you say? This seems to be my kind of country.

There is a salad bar - and Paolo and I think that maybe it ain't such a bad idea to get some fruit and vegetables in to balance all that meat-feasting out. They had hearts of palm, broccoli, beans covered in farofa, potato and vegetable salads, ubiquitous black beans and rice, and lots more in the healthy-department. Before I even take my seat, a dude in full chefs-whites comes by with a drink cart with a bowl of limes and some bottles of cachaça (sugar cane rum) and I know exactly what he's here for. I raise my hand and say "yes please!" 

It is well known that I am into a good cocktail. I have had my share of cocktails all over the world in speakeasies and cocktail bars and New American restaurants and all that (Brazilian) jazz. The caipirinha is Brazil's national drink. It consists of limes, sugar, and sugar cane rum. I've tried it in a couple spots around the world - never Brazil. The caipirinha I drank at this steakhouse whose name escaped me was - and I state this with no exaggeration - the best cocktail I've ever had. Ever. Flavor-wise, it lies somewhere in between a margarita, mojito, and aviation? With just three ingredients - a liquor, sweet, and an acid - it's about as simple as you get when speaking in terms of cocktails. Imagine the first time you had a lemonade as a kid on a hot summer day… it's like that.

Reminiscence alert.

I remember when I was really young, in the summer time, I was doing a project on the planets of the universe… working diligently away as a third or second-grader does, when my mom brings in a snack of sour cream and onion chips and fresh home-made lemonade. The salty snack washed down with sugary, lemony, icy beverage was a flavor that still sparks memory to this day. That's what that caipirinha was like. Drinking lemonade for the first time in your life on a hot day after working non-stop and eating something salty. Hopefully that makes sense.

Back to Brasilia and the steakhouse. Skewers of chicken wings, sausages, beef, ham, tongue, chicken hearts, spicy sausage, linguiça and special cuts basically keep coming by until you wave the dudes away. Everything is grilled simply - maintaining key emphasis on the flavor of the meat. Salt and grill-char open the introductory flavor of each cut, and every once in a while you get a piece of meat that stands out - the ham was otherworldly. Salty, porky, cured and grilled. The chicken hearts were for the Asians only at our table (Ken and I (Ken is Filipino)) and man were they good. The sugary, limey, icy, perfect caipirinhas couldn't have been a better match for the protein-feast; I put down around 4 or so by the end of dinner. 

Besides the carnivorous flesh, there were farofa de ovo e cebolinha (scrambled eggs with farofa), fries, and a cheese-filled empanada of sorts. Trying Brazilian desert for the first time was something special too - a heavy emphasis on sugar was the key feature of the sweets. Sugary sweet was the flan and caramel/coconut pastey-pudding; tropical fruit terrines and mixtures and an açai pudding were also offered - all fantastic. 

Meat coma. We all have a couple more caipirinhas and call it a night.

Brazil: Meat, Caipirinhas, and Meat I

Brasilia, Sao Paulo, Curitiba

Having never set foot in South America previously, obviously I was eagerly anticipating things of the culinary-realm. I've said it before and I'll say it again - you learn more from a country from their food than from anything else they can offer. An added bonus of the trip to South America was that for some reason, Trivium had grown a massive following whilst never actually playing a single show in the territory. From all our band friends like David Draiman to John Petrucci, Lamb Of God to In Flames - they all pretty much said the same thing - "you are going to have the best time out there; with some of the most insane fans you've ever seen."

The flight to Brazil was actually a piece of cake. Trivium is used to the uber-painful 3-5 connections-flight in coach-in-the-back-of-the-plane-middle-seat kinda way, so the 2 flights over was a treat in comparison to the latter. We met our promoter Marcos in Atlanta before the flight to Brasilia, where I quickly and excitedly (probably annoyingly) filled him in of the fact that we need to be eating as much as possible of the traditionals when we hit the ground. His response was "South America is a meat culture… with lots and lots of meat." We all smiled and boarded the plane. 

I suited up in the classic Heafy-flight-sleeping-kit-outfit (hood, scarf on mouth, eye mask, ear plugs, doctor-approved-sleeping-pill) and was out till arrival. The weather was staggeringly beautiful - a cool 70's or so, sun shining, breeze blowing; all our band and crew busy picking their jaws off the floors when they started seeing all the Brazilian women in the flesh. It was gonna be a good tour… I felt it in my bones (the guys felt it in theirs).

We grabbed our shuttles over to our hotel, grabbed some aiight free hotel breakfast and everyone went their separate ways until our first Brazilian meal (lunch) was to come beckoning. Some napped, some showered, some exercised - but when lunch time hit, Joey, Ashley, Paolo, Ken, Mark, Mat, Marcos, and I all headed to Feitiço Mineiro. Our soon to become best-pal-in-South-America shared with us that this restaurant serves food in the style of Sepultura's home-town. Metal. 

There was indoor and outdoor seating with loads of business people and locals alike - no gringos here (I was adamant on strictly non-tourist spots). We opted to sit outside and were told everything is buffet-style, "eat as much as you like!" Shit yes. A massive skillet-table held several cast-iron skillets and pans and pots of sizzling  meats and vegetables. The aroma of sizzling garlic and onions and pork and beans greeted our curious noses with a familiar scent, however just behind that initial scent were notes and hints of spices and recipes we knew we didn't know previously. The amount of cuts of cow and pork and offal displayed made my knees buckle; the cauldrons of soupy-beany-goodness I knew, would be a litte too good for my own good. 

Deep fried bananas (not plantains) and pineapple slices and potatoes and yucca, rice with toasted seeds of garlic (I think), rice with beans, beans with meat and garlic, black beans, mashed potatoes (or was that yucca?), okra grilled lightly, okra grilled heavily. They had ground ground manioc flour known as farofa (something I literally just saw on Bourdain's No Reservation's Amazon episode (so, like a groupie - I was ready to put that stuff in my mouth)), linguiça sausage, soupy beans with tripe, pork-skin cracklins, Brazilian cheese-stuffed mini-bread rolls. They even had long, chopped collard greens that looked unlike any collard I'd ever seen. Oxtail stew, salads and fruits and vegetables unfamiliar. They even had the Brazilian paella: rice, beans, sausage, offal, meat, sausage, vegetables… basically I think everything from the skillet table tossed into the biggest goddamn paella-pan man has ever come to know. 

Seated with most of the band and crew and Marcos, Marcos fills us in on what many of the dishes are; we offer up questions about all things South American and Brazilian, and chow down on some intensely wonderful, rustic Brazilian food. I wash down my meats and beans with a Bohemia beer, which I can only describe as tasting like a true Japanese beer (not that Canadian-brewed imitation Asahi and Kirin and Sapporo that you probably accidentally drink at a sushi restaurant thinking your drinking Japanese). I know that the world-wide perception of Brazilian cuisine is purely limited to the skewer-meat-style spots (as was my perception) - but with this restaurant, I was reminded of the comforting flavors of southern American food (southern USA, not South America) in things like collards and okra and beans and rice and potatoes… but with that Latin American spin in spices, ingredients, and utilization of all parts of the animal (which is a constant in true southern American food as well). A nod to the Portuguese culture was mixed ever-pleasantly with African cuisine as well. Stick-to-your-ribs, unpretentious, simple, grandma-style comfort food. Incredible. 

Having zero room left in my stomach (most likely from my 3-4 plates of food in comparison to most everyone else at the tables' one), we call it quits and head to the hotel for a recharge and digestion before dinner.