Rio de Janeiro does not care about your expectations. You will arrive thinking about caipirinhas and beach bodies, and you will leave talking about pig's-ear feijoada, tapioca folded by women who have been making it since dawn, and the precise texture of açai eaten at a plastic table while wet sand dries on your calves. The city is not a food destination in the way Paris or Tokyo are. It is something more aggressive and more honest: a place where millions of people eat three meals a day in public, on the street, in bars that have not changed their floor tiles since 1962, and they do not care if you are watching.
The first thing to understand is the boteco. These are not tapas bars. They are not gastropubs. They are working-class drinking halls that happen to serve some of the best food in the city. A proper boteco has a zinc counter, folding tables on the sidewalk, and a television showing football with the volume too high. You order a chope, draft beer served so cold it forms ice crystals in the glass, and you eat what they have. That means bolinhos de bacalhau, salt cod fritters the size of golf balls, crispy outside and cottony within. It means pastéis de camarão, deep-fried turnovers filled with shrimp and catupiry cheese, a soft, slightly sour processed cheese that sounds wrong and tastes right. It means caldo de sururu, a mussel broth thickened with manioc and coconut, served in a ceramic bowl with a spoon that has been used ten thousand times.
Bar da Laje in Santa Teresa is a boteco on a terrace overlooking downtown. It has no sign. You climb a hill of cobblestones and cracked stairs, and when you arrive, sweaty and annoyed, they serve you fried chicken thigh with okra and a chope that makes you forgive the climb. It costs around 35 reais for a plate that would feed two people, though you will eat it alone. In Lapa, Bar Brasil has been open since 1904. They serve codfish balls that have not changed their recipe in a century, and they serve them until 3 AM to people who have been dancing since midnight. The floor is tiled in black and white. The waiters wear white jackets. It is a museum that happens to sell beer.
Feijoada is the national dish, and in Rio it is treated as a religious obligation. The traditional day is Saturday. A proper feijoada is a black bean stew cooked with every part of the pig the plantation owners did not want: ears, tails, feet, snout, and dried beef. It is served with rice, collard greens sliced into ribbons, orange slices to cut the fat, and farofa, toasted manioc flour that you sprinkle over everything to add crunch. It is heavy, salty, and unapologetic. Casa da Feijoada in Ipanema serves it every day, which is sacrilege to purists but convenient to tourists. A full plate costs about 75 reais. The pork is so tender it separates at the touch of a fork. Do not ask for a vegetarian version. They will look at you with a mixture of pity and confusion.
The beach is not a place to swim. It is a place to eat. Along Copacabana and Ipanema, kiosks called quiosques serve food to people in bathing suits who have no intention of entering the water. You order a biscoito de polvilho, a tapioca flour cracker that shatters when you bite it, and you dip it in requeijão, a cream cheese that is looser and saltier than anything European. The açai comes in a Styrofoam bowl, frozen into a dense purple slurry, topped with granola and banana slices. It is not a health food in Rio. It is fuel. Surfers eat it before paddling out. Construction workers eat it at 10 AM. It is bitter, earthy, and cold enough to give you a headache if you eat it too fast. A large bowl costs 15 to 20 reais. Do not order it with seventeen toppings. The correct version has granola and banana, and you eat it with a plastic spoon while standing.
Tapioca is the other street food that matters. Not the pudding. In Rio, tapioca is a crepe made from moistened tapioca starch cooked on a griddle until it forms a chewy, slightly elastic pancake. It is folded in half and filled with whatever you want. The classic is queijo coalho, grilled cheese on skewers, chopped and stuffed inside with a little butter. The more adventurous version is carne seca, dried beef rehydrated and shredded, with tomato and cream cheese. The stands appear on street corners at dawn, operated by women who work fast and do not make small talk. A tapioca costs 10 to 15 reais. It is eaten on the way to work, or on the way home from the beach, or at 2 AM when everything else is closed.
Churrasco is the Brazilian barbecue, and in Rio it is a theatrical event. The rodízio system means waiters circulate with skewers of meat carved at your table, and you eat until you stop. The cuts are different from American or Argentine barbecue. You get picanha, the top sirloin cap with a thick layer of fat that renders into the meat. You get costela, beef ribs smoked until the bone separates cleanly. You get chicken hearts, marinated in garlic and lemon and grilled until they pop slightly when you bite them. Porcão Rio's in Flamengo is the most famous rodízio, and it is a tourist trap that is also genuinely good. Dinner costs 150 to 200 reais per person. The salad bar is an acre of options, most of which you should ignore to save room for the meat. The waiters wear gaucho costumes. It is ridiculous and delicious.
Seafood in Rio is about moqueca, a stew from Bahia that has colonized the city. It is made with fish or shrimp, cooked in palm oil, coconut milk, peppers, and tomatoes, and served in a clay pot that keeps it bubbling. The flavor is bright, oily, and slightly sweet. The fish is usually robalo, sea bass, or cação, small shark. The correct accompaniment is pirão, a porridge made from fish broth and manioc flour that has the texture of wet cement and the flavor of the ocean. Aprazível in Santa Teresa serves a moqueca that costs 120 reais and is worth every cent. The restaurant is in a wooden house on a hill. You sit on a terrace surrounded by jungle and eat stew while looking at the bay. It is the kind of meal that makes you understand why people tolerate the city's chaos.
Juice bars are everywhere, and they are not smoothies. They are lanchonetes that serve fresh juice from fruits you have never heard of. Acerola, a small red berry with more vitamin C than orange juice, tastes sour and slightly metallic. Caju, the fruit of the cashew tree, is astringent and sweet and leaves a film on your tongue. Maracujá, passion fruit, is tart enough to make you squint. A glass costs 8 to 12 reais. The bars open at 6 AM and close at midnight. Polis Sucos in Ipanema has been squeezing fruit since 1986. They have a menu of thirty options. Order acerola with orange and a little honey, and drink it at the counter while the city wakes up.
What to skip is as important as what to eat. The restaurants on the main beach avenues in Copacabana are overpriced and underwhelming. They serve grilled fish to tourists who are afraid to leave the sand, and they charge double what the same meal costs three blocks inland. The all-you-can-eat rodízios in the hotel zone are factories. The meat is tough and the salad bar is wilting. The açai chains in shopping malls serve a sweetened, watered-down version that is closer to ice cream than the real thing. And the street vendors who walk the beach selling shrimp on skewers from coolers should be avoided. The shrimp has been sitting in the sun for hours. The cooler has no ice. You will regret it.
Practical details. Rio is not a cheap city, but the food is honest about what it costs. A meal at a boteco with two chopes and three dishes will cost 60 to 80 reais per person. A street tapioca is 10 to 15. A beach açai is 15 to 20. A rodízio is 150 to 200. A moqueca at a serious restaurant is 80 to 120. Tipping is not mandatory, but 10 percent is customary and usually included on the bill. The metro is safe and efficient, but for food you will need buses, taxis, or Uber. The neighborhoods that matter for eating are Lapa, Santa Teresa, Centro, Ipanema, Leblon, and the beachfronts of Copacabana and Ipanema. Do not walk alone at night with a phone in your hand. Do not wear jewelry to a boteco. The city is hungry, and it is not always polite. But the food is worth the risk. Eat the feijoada on a Saturday afternoon when the city is slow and the beans have been cooking since morning. Eat the tapioca at dawn from a woman who does not look up from her griddle. Eat the açai with sand on your feet and the sun in your eyes. This is how Rio actually tastes.
By Tomás Rivera
Madrid-born food critic and nightlife connoisseur. Tomás has been reviewing tapas bars and underground music venues for 15 years. He knows every back-alley gin joint from Mexico City to Manila and believes the night reveals a city is true character.