Ask a paulistano to describe their city and you might get a negative response. It’s huge, they’ll tell you, scary, violent and dangerous. It’s inaccessible, with infamous traffic, and too hilly to make walking much fun. The crack epidemic is out of hand, there are sex motels everywhere. It’s grey and drizzly, ugly, and there aren’t any beaches. It simply isn’t Rio.
No wonder tourists regularly swerve it, favouring the glamorous beaches and postcard beauty of its more laid-back neighbour. But to look at São Paulo, the biggest city in South America (and the Western Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere, for that matter) solely through that prism is to miss the point.
It is all those things, but so much more. It’s a city of culture, of hundreds of museums and endless street art. It’s a city of music, of partying late into the night. Of fervently supported football teams. Of tree-lined avenues fighting to be seen among the concrete jungle – if you squint a bit, São Paulo is surprisingly green.
Most importantly, it’s a city of food. Seriously good food. Street markets in every neighbourhood – where people actually shop. On every corner a barzinho: a small bar where you can stop for an ice-cold beer, an affordable, filling lunch or just a packet of chewing gum. High-end, trend-setting fine dining rests easy alongside cheap all-you-can-eat joints. Street food and 24-hour bakeries everywhere. Food from every corner of Brazil – every corner of the globe. Forget London, New York or Paris. São Paulo’s dining scene is where it’s at.
The Sé Cathedral took four decades to complete
“People probably don’t realise how good São Paulo is,” says Rafael Cagali, a São Paulo-born chef who now runs two-Michelin-starred Da Terra in London’s bustling Bethnal Green neighbourhood. “It’s not Brazil’s main tourist attraction, people just think about the beaches, and São Paulo is a passing-by point. But once people explore the nightlife and restaurants, they kind of go, ‘oh yeah, there’s a lot going on’.”
I first visited in 1991 – the year I was born – and have returned every Covid-free year since. It’s my mother’s hometown, a second home for me. I’ve long been fascinated by its food; its mix of refinement and deep-fry-the-shit-out-of-anything attitude. It’s a blend of simple, rustic charm and loud ostentation; rigidity (Wednesdays are for feijoada, Sundays for pizza) and fluidity (you can find any cuisine at any price point).
This year, I spent six weeks in the city, my first extended stint in years. Food was always a big part of our family visits, from churrascarias to sushi joints, pizza to feijoada, but I wanted to see the place through my own eyes. I rediscovered a food scene of almost infinite breadth, where every budget is catered for – and well.
São Paulo is a city obsessed with food. As in many Latin countries, breakfast is a token gesture: coffee, perhaps with pão na chapa (grilled bread and butter), served at the bakeries you see everywhere. Snacks are taken throughout the day, deep-fried coxinhas, or ‘little thighs’ of soft dough filled with shredded chicken, or perhaps a kibe, a meat-and-bulgur-wheat croquette brought by immigrants from the Middle East. Lunch is the main meal, and people from all walks of life stop what they’re doing and head to a barzinho or restaurant for a prato feito (a cheap set meal that changes daily but usually features an arrangement of rice, beans, a protein and salad). Even fine-dining spots offer it. For dinner? Well, the city’s your oyster.
The city grew at different angles and speeds, and is now shaped like a hammer, with a long jutting handle
You can’t tell the story of São Paulo without talking about the immigration that has shaped it. As the renowned Brazilian food journalist Josimar Melo has said, “São Paulo was little more than a village until the late 19th century, so the history of São Paulo is really the history of its immigrants.” Looking at the urban sprawl today, where more than 20 million live in a seemingly endless metropolitan region, it’s difficult to imagine that as late as the 1870s there were just 31,000 residents in this hilly outpost on the road from the agricultural interior to the seaside ports.
“The city became a metropolis, and lost many of its original, countryside roots,” Melo tells me.
Since the late 19th century several waves of immigration have created a melting pot to rival London or New York. From Europe came Italians, Spanish, Portuguese, Germans, Jews, East Europeans and more. Formerly enslaved Africans (almost half of all Africans forcibly taken to the Americas went to Brazil) came to the emerging city in search of work, as did Japanese, Chinese and Koreans from Asia, and Peruvians and Bolivians from South America. Huge numbers arrived from across Brazil, particularly the poorer northeast – most famously the current president, Lula – bringing their food with them. As in Los Angeles, São Paulo’s food tells the story of its multiethnic population.
Like its mishmash cuisine, São Paulo’s layout is chaotic. The centre, once grand but crumbling (and now gentrifying), isn’t, as in most cities, the middle of a circle. The city grew at different angles and speeds, and is now shaped like a hammer, with a long handle jutting down to the south – it can take hours to travel from the south to north in bad traffic. Public transport is thankfully improving, with a brilliant modern metro system, though it doesn’t reach every neighbourhood.
Don’t let that stop you from visiting. “It’s definitely not relaxing, but it’s a great city,” says Cagali. “You’ve got to know where you’re going, mainly because it’s so big and there’s so much to see. The most exciting thing is the variation of places São Paulo can offer. You can eat a different cuisine every day.” Knowing someone who knows the city is certainly helpful. Solo visitors often find it overwhelming – apart from a few areas, it isn’t walkable, and there are few sights worth seeing.
Food at A Casa do Porco
Mauro Holanda
But the hungry traveller will fall in love. Start in Liberdade, in central São Paulo and perhaps the city’s most fascinating neighbourhood. Now home to the largest Japanese community outside Japan, until the late 19th century it was known as the execution site of enslaved people, and soon after, freed slaves settled there (Liberdade means liberty). On weekends a huge and heaving market sprays out from the metro station. Stop for a flat, round prawn tempurá – like a huge hash brown studded with whole prawns – before heading to one of the area’s many wonderful Japanese spots. Sushi here is serious business. At Sushi Yassuh, where my mum has been coming since the 1970s, the private tatami rooms are perfect for groups. Order a sushi boat (a huge mixed platter served on a wooden ship), several beers and settle in for the afternoon. Over at Sushi Deigo, founded in 1974, the place looks like it hasn’t changed one bit. The same chef, the same waiters, probably the same decor, and a mostly Japanese-speaking clientele knocking back whisky and sake long into the night.
But my favourite spot is Izakaya Issa. London has seen a rise in Japanese-influenced bars of late – mainly in Mayfair – but São Paulo’s are far more modest. Prepare to queue for this perennially busy spot, where the idiosyncratic owner Margarida Haraguchi, affectionately known as Dona Margarida, serves a series of stellar dishes perfect for pairing with beer. The prawn tempura is the best I’ve had; crunchy, crispy and delicate with no hint of excess grease. The takoyaki are sublime, the smoky chargrilled aubergine with a ginger-soy glaze and bonito flakes are dishes to die for.
The Japanese are said to have introduced Brazil’s most popular snack, the pastel. These deep-fried rectangles of pastry, filled with any possible permutation of meat or cheese, are ubiquitous, and wherever there’s a street market there’s a pastel stand or four, teaming with locals opting for a pastel washed down with plenty of sugar cane juice. In the trendy neighbourhood of Vila Madalena (which is a lot like Shoreditch, for better and worse), you’ll find some of the city’s best.
On a scorching hot day (it’s not that drizzly here, at least by British standards), about halfway along the market – after stopping for a requisite cheese pastel – I meet Luay, a Syrian refugee who escaped the civil war and arrived in Brazil in 2015. Brazil is home to a large Middle Eastern community, mostly from Lebanon, Syria and Armenia, most of whom arrived in the early 20th century and settled in São Paulo. Their dishes have become much like tikka masala in Britain, widespread and often adapted to suit Brazilian palates.
Supposedly, there are more Italian descendants in São Paulo than Rome, more pizzerias than in any Italian city
The war has seen a new influx of Syrian immigrants, and Luay makes dishes every Brazilian knows, as well as selling those from other Syrian refugees. There are esfiha, small flatbreads topped with minced meat and spices or cheese and stuffed vine leaves, hummus and baba ganoush. “There’s plenty of good Syrian and Lebanese restaurants in São Paulo,” he says, “but it wasn’t really what I would eat in Syria. The flavourings in the kibe are different, the kafta seasoning is different. I want to bring the flavours I had in Syria.” So, he has made a point of introducing dishes not commonly found in São Paulo, such as ouzi, filo pastry stuffed with rice, meat and vegetables. “It’s a famous dish in Damascus specifically, and no one makes it here,” he explains.
If you’ve watched Anthony Bourdain, you’ve probably seen the Mercado Municipal. At this raucous covered market, in a slightly decaying central São Paulo neighbourhood, São Paulo’s Portuguese, Spanish and Italian heritage is particularly prevalent – hams hang from shop ceilings, salt cod is piled high and its smell infuses the air. Supposedly, there are more people of Italian descent in São Paulo than in Rome, and more pizzerias here than in any Italian city. That may be apocryphal, but you can’t visit the city without seeing Italy’s influence, from the Italian flags waved at Palmeiras football matches to the obscenely packed fried mortadella sandwiches at the market.
São Paulo from above
If it all gets a bit overwhelming – and it probably will – a mile to the west, a gastronomic empire is taking shape, representing the finest of modern Brazilian cuisine. If there’s one thing Melo thinks São Paulo could be doing better, it’s the recuperation of native Brazilian cooking, and that’s certainly something Janaína Rueda is doing. Rueda runs the exceptional Bar da Dona Onça, at the foot of the iconic Oscar Niemeyer-designed Copan skyscraper, where traditional paulistano food (think oxtail stew with polenta or virado à paulista, a mix of rice, beans, meat, plantain and a fried egg) is elevated with quality ingredients. In 2015, she opened A Casa do Porco, along with then-husband Jefferson Rueda, and the pork-oriented restaurant has risen to seventh on the World’s 50 Best list. At £37 the tasting menu is reasonable even by local standards, and the food, which aims to showcase traditional Brazilian fare, is sublime and inventive: pork ‘sushi’ is inspired by the Japanese population but adds a glaze of tucupí, an Amazonian sauce made from fermented manioc root, and the most intensely sumptuous crispy pork belly with rice and beans.
A Casa do Porco is a uniquely Brazilian affair, blending European, indigenous, African and Asian influences – Brazil, in a nutshell. It is unpretentious, a symbol of how São Paulo moves with the times but sticks to its roots. Restaurants from the 1950s or 1960s are ten-a-penny, but don’t feel like relics. There is innovation aplenty, but room is saved for the classics.
Back in London I return to 45 openings that feel as if they’re all the same place; to the same three restaurants reviewed in every newspaper on rotation; to endless restaurant closures. I yearn for São Paulo, where you can book a great restaurant the night before (except, admittedly, A Casa do Porco), and where if a bar is crowded to capacity, they’ll probably find a table where they can squeeze you in, or at least a chair. Where quality restaurants are open late into the night.
Next time you go to Brazil, don’t skip its biggest city. It may be loud, polluted, intimidating, and some visitors haven’t been able to look past the chaos. But dig deeper and you’ll find a welcoming place, with friendly locals and brilliant food on every street.
