Rio

Pavão Azul: Play It Again, João

There’s one thing about the very popular Copacabana bar Pavão Azul that remains a mystery, even after 60-odd years of business: its name. Pavão azul means “blue peacock” in Portuguese, but even the owners don’t know where this curious name come from. Some customers who have been frequenting the bar since it opened in the 1950s say that it was named after the bar in the movie “Casablanca” – except that that place was actually called the Blue Parrot. What’s not a mystery is the bar’s popularity. Once just a regular old botequim – a small bar serving simple food – Pavão Azul was discovered by food critics thanks to its patanisca.

Rio

Galeto Sat's: Spring Chickens and Sugarcane Spirits

Although there are plenty of bars on Copacabana’s famous Avenida Atlântica – or even at the beach, at the so called quiosques – very few are worth a visit. Many are just tourist traps. Others are much too expensive. No, the really good bars in Copacabana are inland, along Barata Ribeiro street. That road, along with some of the side streets that let onto it, reveals the true face of Copacabana's popular gastronomy. One of the first bars you encounter on Barata Ribeiro is Galeto Sat's. Open seven days a week, always until 5 a.m., the bar is a bohemian temple – but it’s far from being only that. For many cariocas, Sat's serves the best galeto in town. A galeto is a very young chicken (no more than three months old) cooked over a big coal-fired grill.

Rio

Titú: Octopus’s Garden

When we first entered Titú, a new spot in the trendy Botafogo neighborhood, our mind immediately went to SpongeBob SquarePants, oddly enough, or more specifically, the Krusty Krab, the diner where SpongeBob works as a fry cook. Like the Krusty Krab, this recently opened bar specializes in seafood burgers – when we popped our head into kitchen, we saw a mountain of patties awaiting the grill. The only difference between Krusty and Titú – besides the fact that latter is real and the former is merely a fantasy under the sea – is that at Titú the burgers are not made of crab, but of octopus. Delicious and tender baby octopuses, captured in the waters off the coast of Rio de Janeiro.

Rio

Art Chopp: Smoked Success

Five years ago, Diogo Gomes, the owner of Art Chopp, a bar in the Jacarepaguá neighborhood, was seated at one of the bar’s 36 tables. There were no customers: only him, the cook and two waiters. The heavy rain falling outside began to drip from the ceiling and soak the floors. Even wetter, though, was Diogo’s face – he was crying, he later explained to us, because he was sure that he would have to shutter the empty bar and give up on his lifelong dream. In addition to the lack of customers, he was facing a mountain of debts; Diogo was one step away from bankruptcy.

Rio

Spoiled for Choice in Copacabana

The huge counter at Adega Pérola in Rio de Janeiro contains a multitude of culinary surprises. The botequim offers more than 50 types of petiscos (the Portuguese terms for tapas) from both land and sea, and we have yet to try one that we didn’t like.

Rio

Pop up Peru: Home Cooking

Over the last couple of years, Rio de Janeiro’s food scene has experienced a Peruvian invasion. Encouraged by the buzz of the 2016 Olympic Games, more than 10 restaurants and bars focused on Peruvian cuisine opened up shop in Rio. But many of those spots are fine dining establishments, plating up the kind of sophisticated cuisine found in Lima – the capital of Peru is a culinary powerhouse and one of the best places to eat in the world. But there are exceptions. We stumbled on one in an old house in the Botafogo neighborhood. At this restaurant, called Pop up Peru, there are no fancy decorations, nor any kind of complex contemporary recipes. Even Lima’s influences are conspicuously absent.

Rio

Põe na Quentinha: The Edible Samba Parade

When it first began five years ago, Põe na Quentinha was an informal get-together for people who were equally passionate about food, beer and samba; they spent the day eating, drinking and dancing in preparation for Carnival. Fast-forward to 2017, when what had now developed into a proper street parade drew in over 5,000 people over three different days during the Carnival Season. This year, the food-focused event, the only one of its kind in Rio, is even larger, hosting a full month-long schedule of parades that started in mid-January.