Food is one of the best ways to experience a culture. It is always a way of bringing people together and is often a strong representation of the local resources of an area. When visiting a new location, finding food and restaurants to eat at can be daunting, especially when you cannot read the menus or the food is completely foreign to you.
Note: Kevin and I truly eat everything. We have no allergies and no dietary restrictions. If you do have a dietary restriction, everything we share below will still apply. I would just focus on the “Google Maps” research as an extra evaluation of the food that you may be consuming. When it comes to vegetarian options, South American has accommodations and plenty of restaurants have vegetarian options as well as entire restaurants dedicated to vegetarian food. For allergies, it is important to learn your allergies in the language that is spoken where you are going so you can communicate it to your server.
Google Maps As a Tool
Internationally, especially in South America, we have used Google Maps as the main resource for finding and evaluating local restaurants. We typically type in a food-related search in the search area and zoom into the area on the map that we want Google to produce results for us. Some searches we use are “restaurants”, “food”, “cuisine type food”. Now, within this map area, you can apply several filters to help define your search, including cost, star evaluation, and day/time that it must be open.
This is a fast way to determine the food options that are around you or around a destination. We often use this when we first arrive somewhere and NEED food ASAP (we both get hangry and that’s not the best when we are together 24/7!).
Canto Madalena, Pinheiros, Sao Paulo
When we first got to Sao Paulo, we needed to find somewhere nearby to eat. It was dark, we had not explored our neighborhood, and we just want to get a meal after a long travel day. Using Google Maps, we searched for Brazilian restaurants near our accommodations that were within our price range. Canto Madalena met our criteria and we quickly walked there to get a nice hearty meal of Baião-de-dois to split. And while we evaluated the restaurant based on its location and food, its ambiance was a pleasant surprise. A local band was playing a show and people had gathered to dance and celebrate. While the photos on Google Maps can try to emote the ambiance of a location, these little surprises are always a welcome delight, especially after a travel day!
Learning About Local Foods
Because food is such a crucial part of every culture, it is important to have insight into local cuisine. This could be dishes, cuisines, or a fusion of the two. Guide books are a starting point but really, the internet has a plethora of information. We often search for the local foods, write them all down, and search for places based on those foods. We also like to look for large immigration populations in different cities. Many of these have developed specific dishes within that city based on their home cuisine.
Esfihas
Esfihas are a good example of this evolution of a cuisine. The large Lebanese population of Sao Paulo brought esfihas to Brazil and they are now a part of Brazilian cuisine. We went to a delicious restaurant called Esfiharia Hayek near our accommodations to try some of these esfihas. These are flatbreads with meat, cheese, or other toppings. There are a number of these types of restaurants around Sao Paulo.
Japanese Food
Sao Paulo has the largest Japanese population outside of Japan and, as a result, the cuisine is everywhere in the city. It can especially be found in Liberdade, the epicenter of the Japanese culture in the city. The streets are lined with shops of Japanese commodities and restaurants of Japanese cuisine. Japanese food is one of our favorite cuisines and we knew we had to get some sushi while we were in Sao Paulo. We decided to go to Sushi Kenzo in Liberdade, an a la carte sushi restaurant. The sushi was fresh, simple, and delicious; it truly satisfied our craving. The variety of Japanese food here truly ranges from all-you-can-eat sushi, to ramen, to izakaya, to high-end omakase.
Reach Out to Your Friends (Or Friends of Friends)
If you have friends or friends-of-friends who live in your destination, have lived for a significant amount of time in your destination, they are a great resource for finding local recommendations that could align with you. They may also point out places that don’t appear as favorably on Google Maps because the reviews may be dominated by tourists who do not understand the local culture.
Day of the Week Dish
We have a local friend in Sao Paulo who helped guide us through the dining scene in the city. Through him, we learned that Brazilians have a set menu based on the day of the week for lunch and he recommended the Monday menu item, Virado À Paulista. The dish was delicious and we felt the comradery of eating along local people who were also enjoying this dish.
Katori
We also took his recommendation for an izakaya restaurant near our accommodations for our last dinner in Sao Paulo. Izakaya is a place that serves smaller dishes along with drinks, similar to a pub or Spanish tapas spot. Katori was an elevated izakaya and was absolutely delicious. We had different small plates, skewers, and ultimately ended with their specialty, their take on French toast. It was a great way to end our time in Sao Paulo with food that we may not be able to find elsewhere on our travels in South America.
Your Tour Guides Are Here to Help
If you don’t have a connection in the city, or even if you do, you can lean on your tour guides to give you recommendations in the city. Given that we always try to do a tour of the location that we are in, we typically have a resource. We always ask our guide for local recommendations that they give to all tourists (places that have the local cuisine) and some hidden gems that are not necessarily known by tourists.
Orfeu
Our tour guide from our free walking tour recommended eating at one of the restaurants located in the Edificio Copan community, one of largest apartment buildings in the world. (You can read more about the tour and the building here). Orfeu is a modern Brazilian restaurant that takes the traditional Brazilian food and puts a twist on it to freshen it up. Not only was the food delicious, the energy of the area was infectious with people hanging out in the alley between the buildings and enjoying the warm Friday evening.
Just Walk Around a Neighborhood and Use Your Best Judgement
Sometimes, you just want to walk around and find a spot that fits the vibe you’re looking for without recommendations or technology. For the best food, use your best judgement. I tend to look at the food coming out of the kitchen to make sure that it looks appetizing. Also, I observe the clientele, making sure that the restaurant is busy during standard meal periods. In addition, I like to try places where the clientele are locals. I always like to look at what they are ordering and order the same thing.
Panificadora Sia Pao
When walking through our neighborhood in Sao Paulo, we continued to walk by a local bakery that was always busy. One day, we decided to stop by and see what they hype was all about. We ordered a “pão na chapa com requeijao na entrada”, bread with butter and local cream cheese toasted on a searing hot grill. Also, the fruit in Brazil is DELICIOUS so we ordered a few fruit juices. This is a typical breakfast in Brazil, taught to us by our local friend, and it was great to find it in our local bakery.
There are many ways to find some places to eat and we hope this can help you find some local spots in your own adventure!