One of our main activities in Rio was an Eat Rio food tour. While the tour was expensive, it was good for three reasons: First, the food! We sampled a variety of food from various places that we had never tried before and most likely would never have otherwise tried. We toured the market and tried different Brazilian fruits and vegetables as well as a nutella crepe made from tapioca, which meant it was…nope…still not healthy.
We took the metro and went to a food stand selling delicious pastries. We went to a juice bar and tried three types of fruit juices and we finished at an Amazon restaurant and tried some Acai, among other things.
The food was excellent and varied and we were all stuffed by the end.
The second reason the tour was good was because of where we went. We went several miles away from the beach (yes, away from the beach!) to get to the market, where we walked among the locals. We took the metro, which we would never have done on our own, only to find it spacious, spotlessly clean, air conditioned and very safe. We also toured some ‘in between’ neighborhoods and found Rio to be a very charming city away from the beach.
The third reason the tour was good was that we did it at the beginning of our stay and we were able to pepper our poor tour guide with questions about Rio – where to go, what to do, how to do it etc. etc. She batted our questions away with ease and was a big help for us.
After the food tour, we didn’t eat again until 6.30pm when we had the ridiculous idea of going to a Brazilian steakhouse. The rodizio type with all you can eat meat. For the past few years we’ve been seriously cutting back our meat intake and we’ve almost completely eliminated red meat from our diet. However, we were in Brazil, home of the steakhouse, we had to make an exception…big mistake!
We paid the price for this ridiculous decision, and I’m not just talking about the bill. No way we got our money’s worth and we all had awful indigestion. The next day we barely ate and C could only stomach a salad. In that regard, I suppose the steakhouse seemed less expensive.
We tried another nice restaurant a few days later. Again, rodizio style but this time on the side dishes – vegetables. It must be hard to distinguish yourself as a chef on vegetables alone (at least it was for this chef!) because it was all just okay and again not worth it.
The boys loved the extensive but mediocre and very expensive, hotel breakfast buffet (though their criteria for a fantastic breakfast buffet can be summed up by “it has pancakes”). However, we found a cheap but tasty little diner called Bibi. The food was nothing too exciting – we typically just got chicken sandwiches and fries, plus one of an extensive list of fruit juices, but it was tasty and all five of us liked it, a somewhat rare occurance. We ate there for lunch three times and dined very well for under $50 for all 5 of us. This inexpensive taste will serve our boys well in later life (you know, other than their taste for expensive hotels)!
Our last noteworthy item in this food-themed post is this small bakery we walked to a few times. Some among us argued there was nothing special at this bakery, and there were others closer that we could go to. However, the rest of us were a bit more savvy. When we arrived the first time and saw people purchasing these strange dry cheese breadstick type things in bulk (like people were leaving with HUGE bags of them!), we knew they were something we had to try too. Sure enough, these tasty morsels were crunchy and melted in your mouth, and super addictive.
We enjoyed them enough to leave Rio with our own (somewhat more reasonable sized) bag. Of course, I’m not sure we had even left Rio airspace before we finished them off…
