A overseas customer strolling by way of Praça Brasil, a leafy sq. within the Amazonian port metropolis of Belém, would possibly suppose that the whirring blenders at a dozen close by meals carts have been creating probably the most genuine açaí bowls on earth.
That will make sense, for Belém is the capital of Pará state, the worldwide epicenter for rising, choosing and exporting açaí, the blueberry-doppleganger-turned-super-fruit headlining smoothie outlets worldwide. However in Belém, the deep-purple fruit is generally consumed as a savory aspect dish for fish and shrimp, and the concoction offered at Praça Brasil — referred to as guaraná da Amazônia — is a protein-packed shake whose substances embrace cashews, peanuts and a syrup comprised of guaraná seeds, which resemble espresso beans in seems however trounce them in caffeine content material.
The shakes are hardly ever accessible outdoors the Amazon. The identical may very well be mentioned for a lot of dishes standard on this food-obsessed metropolis of 1.5 million, these comprised of recent substances — with Indigenous names like tucupi, jambu, taperebá and pirarucu — which might be robust to return by in Rio de Janeiro, not to mention outdoors Brazil. This fall, I visited Belém for 3 days and ate myself foolish, hitting up 20 or so eating places and snack bars, devouring food and drinks so completely different from even the Brazilian norm that it felt like I had stumbled into some secret culinary kingdom.
Points of interest in a Amazon port metropolis
A “guaraná da Amazonia” prices about 20 reais, or simply over $4 at 4.90 reais per greenback, and sure, it may be ordered with açaí blended in. However the shakes are greatest with bacuri, a fruit with apple-adjacent notes that seemingly everybody loves. Add it to the record of substances that you just’ll discover outdoors the area solely in frozen kind, if in any respect.
That’s as a result of recent bacuri, like lots of the different regionally grown substances, travels badly. So do many vacationers, whose solely city cease within the Brazilian Amazon is the not-quite-as-delicious Manaus, 5 days by boat or two hours by airplane from Belém, and probably the most accessible base for venturing out to rainforest eco-resorts or on fancy boat journeys.
That can change, although, as Belém ramps up its infrastructure to welcome tens of hundreds of holiday makers in 2025 when it hosts COP30, the thirtieth version of the United Nations local weather change convention.
Guests will discover Ver-o-Peso, a buzzing market of Amazonian fish, fruit and Brazil nuts; upscale eating and buying at Estação das Docas, set in revamped Nineteenth-century riverside warehouses; and a historic middle that ranges from charming to dilapidated and is house to the town’s solely boutique resort, Atrium Quinta das Pedras. There are additionally getaways starting from day journeys to close by Combu Island for a style of river life or in a single day excursions to the 16,000-square-mile Marajó Island, house to numerous water buffalo (and their meat and cheese).
Whereas the broader area provides these and different rainforest-based adventures, the highest three sights in city Belém are breakfast, lunch and dinner. Fittingly, one of many metropolis’s most recognizable influencers is all concerning the meals.
Marcos Antônio Gonçalves Bastos, recognized by a childhood nickname, Medici, has documented the native delicacies on his Instagram account. He compares Belemenses to Italians in how they look after and defend native custom. “They are saying that one thing executed a sure manner ought to by no means change,” Medici mentioned, citing the outrage amongst purists when somebody added beets to the shrimp soup staple referred to as tacacá to create a Barbie model this summer time.
Actual tacacá is cloudy yellow as a result of its base is tucupi, maybe the area’s most defining and addictive taste, created centuries in the past by Indigenous teams. Tucupi is made by juicing the bitter manioc root, letting the tapioca starch settle out because the liquid ferments, then including spices and cooking it for days to take away the naturally occurring — and toxic — hydrogen cyanide. The outcome will not be a lot candy and bitter as bitter and candy, and it pairs magically nicely with rice and fish, and stars within the native duck dish, “pato no tucupi.”
Generally tucupi acts like broth, different instances it’s extra a sauce or, when blended with sizzling peppers and bottled, a condiment. Medici, who joined me for a part of my consuming extravaganza, simply calls it “my blood.”
Tucupi turns into tacacá when mixed with tapioca starch, small dried shrimp and one other indispensable and omnipresent staple of Amazonian cooking: the jambu plant, whose leaves and generally flowers are added indiscriminately however deliciously to only about all the pieces, together with cocktails. It comprises a pure anesthetic that causes nice numbness in your lips and tongue that counter-intuitively enhances different flavors. “Tucupi and jambu are like our ham and cheese,” mentioned Medici. “If we may put them in all the pieces, we’d.”
Tacacá is such a well-liked road meals that it usually lends its title to road stands or casual eating places serving a number of different dishes, a lot as a taco stand would possibly serve quesadillas and burritos. I had lunch in the future at Tacacá MJ, wedged between a watch-repair stand and a sweet stand, run by an amiable younger man named Diego Lublime, who retains issues as orderly as he can contemplating the eatery’s seating space is only a line of plastic chairs sharing a busy downtown sidewalk with speed-walking pedestrians.
“Have a seat! Have lunch!” he informed me, and I obtained the combo plate of vatapá, caruru and maniçoba, topped with the predictable tangle of jambu. Vatapá is a creamy shrimp stew, caruru a shrimp and okra porridge thickened with manioc flour, and maniçoba a pork stew whose predominant ingredient is maniva, the bottom leaves of bitter manioc cooked for about seven days to take away the cyanide. Dishes of the identical names exist elsewhere in northern and northeastern Brazil, however with variations. In Bahia state, vatapá is principally a aspect dish made with peanuts and cashews, whereas in Pará it’s a nut-free predominant course.
One axiom of adventurous consuming is that in the event you like all the pieces, you’re doing it fallacious — and maniçoba is the place I drew the road, discovering it too bitter and its colour and texture too near cow manure. To seek out out in the event you disagree, I like to recommend benchmarking your likes and dislikes at Amazônia na Cuia, a type of Paraense tapas restaurant the place native classics are served in small gourds referred to as cuias and price from 18 to 49 reais. They embrace all the pieces I had at Tacacá MJ, in addition to tacacá itself and the famed duck with tucupi. By the top of the meal, your lips will likely be numb and also you’ll know what you wish to strive once more.
Candy and savory delights
After I sampled some staple dishes, I tasted fruits most guests have by no means heard of at Blaus, a neighborhood ice cream store the place flavors included taperebá, bacuri, tucumã and cupuaçu, a beloved cacao relative that to me tastes unpleasantly medicinal.
I additionally tried açaí in its velvety, savory side-dish kind. The extra refined choices are at standard household and vacationer spots like Level do Açaí or Ver-o-Açaí, however at Ver-o-Peso market, counter employees are working recent açaí by way of a machine that strips its very skinny layer of pulp from the pits and provides water. I found out rapidly that the açaí I’m used to will not be actually açaí however a candied model, very like one other Latin American export initially consumed in bitter liquid kind.
“I like to match it with chocolate,” mentioned Medici. “Chocolate isn’t chocolate cake. Chocolate cake has chocolate in it.”
On the Ver-o-Peso market, I opted for a spot recognized for its seafood slightly than açaí, the much-lauded Field da Lúcia. (Oddly, “field” is Portuguese for stall, with Lúcia’s occupying numbers 37 and 38.) There I ordered a shrimp and fish plate with rice, beans and a refreshing, cole slaw-like salad, for 70 reais. Although the thick-crusted, juicy shrimp is Lúcia’s most well-known dish, it was additionally the place I fell in love with filhote, the flesh of juvenile piracui (a kind of catfish) that’s smooth and tender if simply barely too agency to be referred to as custardy.
However not like different native fish just like the tambaqui, filhote is wasted by deep-frying. At an upscale restaurant outdoors the town middle referred to as Restô da Villa Prime, Medici and I had a filhote appetizer referred to as avuado, which is a plate of delicate and juicy mini-filets grilled and doused in olive oil and garlic. We additionally inhaled a steamy caldeirada, or stew, the place filhote was cooked with, shock, tucupi and jambu.
Eminently reasonably priced
With a lot good meals accessible within the streets, it might nearly appear pointless to go to upscale Belém eating places like Restô da Villa. However with the present state of the Brazilian actual, even probably the most treasured spots are eminently reasonably priced and go all out to emphasize native substances.
The Casa do Saulo, named after the chef Saulo Jennings, provides inventive dishes like smoked pirarucu carpaccio — skinny slices of the big pirarucu fish dolloped with jambu pesto and cupuaçu jelly and doused with chopped Brazil nuts (58.90 reais).
On the polished Santa Chicória, pirarucu is fancied up with “three textures” of manioc — chips, foam and tucupi — for 81 reais.
On their cocktail menus, each eating places showcase one among my favourite substances — the taperebá, a fruit with a darkish yellow flesh and creamy tropical taste.
Taperebá will not be completely Amazonian — the identical species is called “cajá” in different elements of Brazil, and because the hog plum or yellow mombin on some Caribbean islands. However Medici begs to vary: Whereas it’s the identical fruit genetically, he mentioned “it’s influenced by the terroir — by variations within the soil and the local weather” of the Amazon. And, contemplating how scrumptious the taperebá jam I took house now tastes on my morning toast, I’m disinclined to argue with him.
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