- São Paulo
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Brazil
A great option in Sao Paulo if you want to meet new friends, have excellent appetisers and hamburgers, and play snooker while enjoying live music is the Canucks, located in the Vila Olimpia region. It is a fantastic place and English is spoken (www.canuckspub.com).
Rua Gomes de Carvalho 1666 phone 55-11-3463-5240
www.canuckspub.com
Despite being a chain, Fogo de Chao is one of the most incredible restaurants I've visited. We dined there the night before this year's Grand Prix, and although our hotel had made a mistake with our booking, they still managed to accommodate our party of ten on what must be their busiest night of the year. The service, food and wine was outstanding - there's a set menu and the gaucho waiters will keep bringing various meats to your table and carve them, until you signify you've had your fill by turning over your drinks coaster, from green (Yes!) to red (No more!). There's a wonderful salad bar and wine list, and the staff are great. Highly recommended!
www.fogodechao.com
São Paulo, Vila Olimpia, Av. dos Bandeirantes, 538
(55) 11-5505-079
If Sao Paulo is only a stopover as a transport hub for you, then this is a good hotel that has deals on the net and if you join their scheme (which is free) gives you late check-out at 4pm. Free transport to and from the airport too.
Rua Rafael Balzani, 32
Guarulhos
Tel: 55 11 6475 7500
tryp.guarulhos@solmelia.com
In this respect São Paulo is truly exceptional. When you see these you begin to understand the city's culinary reputation. São Paulo's street markets receive fruit and vegetables from all over Brazil and from Chile and Argentina. What is more, ringing the city are thousands of Japanese-Brazilian market gardens.
The selection of greens alone is massive: mustard, many types of lettuce, chicory, fennel, rocket, bok choy, fresh melokias (not many places outside of the Middle East where you can get it), spinach, kale, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, watercress...stalls and stalls of massive bunches of fresh herbs: dill, mint, basil (several types), lemon grass, rosemary, oregano, coriander, parsley, sage - basically everything you can think of.
As for the fruit, it ranges from Amazonian looking stuff, to tropical: pineapples, papayas, mangoes (palmer, Tommy Atkins, small green citrus-flavoured ones, and more) and jackfruit. A good pérola pineapple when in season will impregnate the flat and your hands with its aroma for the whole day. It will be very sweet, not sharp and not fibrous. It literally melts in your mouth. Similarly a perfect mango.
There is also plenty of fruit more associated with temperate weather: apples, pears, strawberries, blackberries, plums, as well as Mediterranean-climate fruit such as watermelons, grapes and so forth.
Also at the markets: fish stalls, meat stalls, spice stalls (you can find most of the basics you'll need for curries, for example), hardware, cheap toys.
The tradition is to drink a cane-juice (with lime juice) and eat a fried "pastel" (minced meat or palm heart are my favourites).
There are markets all over the city. The ones I've used are:
Friday: Rua Sergipe, in Higienópolis, opposite Zilana. Genteel. You can stop off for excellent coffee and sweetmeats before or after at "Dulca".
Saturday: Corner of R. Helvetia with Barão de Campinas. Far less genteel. The neighbourhood used to be the administrative center of the city. Now faded and nervously on the edge of crack-land.
Sunday: Amaral Gurgel, at Sta Cecília underground station. Huge, bustling, under the flyover (flyover incidentally closed to traffic on Sundays for pedestrians to amble).
Sunday: Praça Roosevelt. A smaller version of the Amaral Gurgel one, at the bottom of Rua da Consolação. Easier to handle, but very bustling nonetheless.
Bakery. 120-years old, belonging to the Albanese family, originally from Calabria. Wood-burning ovens. The bakery bakes 2,000 loaves a day, but the outlet is a small shopfront. Sausages and cheeses hanging from ceiling. The best calabreza sausage-bread in the city, great aubergine bread. Great, crusty and chewy Italian bread. Sfogliatelli and Portuguese pastries, Italian wines etc.
Rua São Domingos, 330 Bela Vista.
Keep going down Augusta, center-bound, until it turns into Martins Fontes. Turn right at Martinho Prado. Keep going past impressive synagogue (incidentally opposite São Paulo's oldest Lesbian bar). Turn left when you reach Santo Antonio. First on right, then right again.
Not easy to find. Never mind there are a lot of similar bakeries nearby (Bexiga) that are nearly as good.
Deli. Santa Luzia and others are wonderful Beverly Hills/Harrods food hall style places to feel rich and maybe splash out. Zilana is a small and functional place, but full of merchandise not to be found in many of the other more chic outlets, and is usually cheaper. Several types of herring, pickles, salmon, even smoked haddock!!! Spices. Fresh horseradish. Good bread, tough rye and proper chewy bagels...
Lebanese ingredients, plus olives, dried fruit, hams, cheeses...
Good spirits on special offer. Arak, vodkas, slivovitz.
Lots of one-off promotions (the only place I've ever seen Stilton in São Paulo, but it didn't last) such as sudden gluts of Hungarian gherkins or cranberry juices.
Jewish food counter with Kreplach, stuffed chicken neck and so on.
Rue Sergipe, 231
Higienópolis
Between Avenida Angêlica and Rua da Consolação, at the lower entrance to the cemetery.
Aparecida is the most important religious city in Brazil; the Basilica of Aparecida, the National Sanctuary, is the second largest Basilica in the world.
The Pope will visit Brazil in May 2007, and will celebrate a mass in Aparecida; this will be a major event for the Catholic community.
The site below, in English, brings more information about Aparecida.
If you want a lazy lunch in beautiful surroundings then this is the place for you. Eat in the tented covered gardens whilst enjoying wonderful caipirinhas then if you like, buy the table and chairs you have been sitting at and on. Every piece of furniture and artwork at the restaurant is for sale. Inside there is a well stocked wine cellar. The staff are very friendly and know their food and drink.
Rua Minas Gerais, 112
Higienopolis
T: 3258.6093
W: restauranteviralata.com.br
Fantastic restaurant/bistro in the heart of the Jardims district with a well being centre upstairs. They serve modern Brazilian and International dishes that are really well put together. Both inside and outside spaces for eating. Start off with a very reasonable "Chandon" - the Brazilian champagne! Yum!
Rua Pardre Joao Manuel, 950.
T: 3082.5709
E: boa@boabistro.com.br
I must warn you before you read this that I am a Manchester City fan and my worldview and my choice of Corinthians is directly influenced by this. Corinthians is perhaps Brazil's best-supported club, unless you ask supporters of Rio de Janeiro's CR Flamengo, the club of Zico.
Corinthians, nicknamed 'Timao' were actually given to me by someone I chatted to about which team I was going to support. The conversation I had on arrival in Brazil for the first time in 1995 ran roughly as follows: "What's your team over here then?" "I don't know, not decided yet" "What do you mean?" "My team in England is Manchester City, and we only really have extreme success or failure - we won 4 major cups in 3 seasons in the late 60s/70s but we've been relegated loads of time and we know how to screw up a game we should have tied up - and the fans are 'muito fiel' (very loyal) I want to support a team like that here." The upshot was that the man basically told me that only Corinthians could fit the bill becuase their support is known as 'O Fiel' and because they too regularly snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
I asked who their famous players were and he said Socrates, Rivelino and Casagrande. My dad used to gush about Socrates and that nailed it for me. As an English lad doing a year of his degree in Brazil it further enthused me that the club's home ground is the Parque Sao Jorge (Saint George Park). However, the club mainly plays home games at the Morumbi Stadium, home of one of their hated rivals, São Paulo (the other rival being Palmeiras, the former team of Roberto Carlos and, later, Luis Felipe Scolari).
It's said of Corinthians that where most football clubs are followed by their fans, Corinthians is a set of fans who happen to drag a football club in their wake. Their most controversial group of supporters, the organised supporters network 'Gavioes da Fiel' (Hawks of the Faithful) organise a massive carnival parade and if football were banned, then as long as there was anyone left in Brazil in the first place, the Gavioes would celebrate Corintianidade ('Corinthian-ness') with drums and dancing anyway. They also famously invade other clubs' grounds and make away games feel like home matches, as they did in the 70s with a legendary clash with Flamengo at the Maracana in the Rio-Sao Paulo Cup.
Brazilian club football has taken many batterings over the years with corruption and low attendances, but if you want a team that will never provide a dull moment, this is it. And their kit looks cool.
This, unfortunately, is only for those who understand Portuguese, but if you're into excellent graphic design, this Sao Paulo-based magazine is also for you. Trip magazine was founded in the 80s by some São Paulo surf nuts and has grown into a beautifully designed and utterly admirable publication. The magazine is not a lad mag, nor a style mag, or a surfing magazine, or a lifestyle magazine - it's all these things but overall, it's just Trip.
Trip was the magazine that inspired me to give up smoking by refusing to accept tobacco advertising and, for a change, challenging the usual boorish magazine standpoint on how to live by encouraging surfing and good health rather than a Loaded-style agenda espousing a rampantly hedonist culture. Part of their anti-smoking campaign featured a 'Frankenstein's Monster', a montage of pictures of ciggie-ravaged body parts.
Trip also houses the wonderful Gonzo-inspired writer Arthur Verissimo, now a television reporter and famous in his own right in Brazil, whose amusing escapades include going from São Paulo to Rio de Janeiro - not the short distance you'd imagine - using only municipal bus tickets for the poor and students called Vale Transportes.
Then we have the 'Trip Girls' and 'Show It' sections, which some European sensibilities might not like - 'Trip Girl' is what it says it is: a section in which a young model is tastefully photographed partially clothed (ok, partially undressed); the 'Show It' section shows off the alpha females of Sao Paulo's elite in their habitats on the state's social scene or on the beach. Both sections, however, simply reflect the sensual and relaxed Brazilian attitude to the body beautiful.
One issue a year features the female staff of Trip itself in an artfully-shot edition of their own. The women get their own back in the form of TPM - or 'Trip Para Mulheres' (Trip For Women). TPM is Portuguese for PMT, by the way - you can't fault their humour ... can you? Add to this the various columns of entertaining intelligence from founder and editor Paulo Lima as well as various correspondents in Brazil, the USA and the Old Continent and you get a slice of the confident, brash but very wordly vibe that makes São Paulo the city you'd be best advised not to underestimate, even less patronise. Should you go to Brazil, this magazine alone is a reason to learn Portuguese.
It's available all over Brazil from good newstands ... but Trip is a São Paulo state of mind.
www.revistatrip.com.br
Their street art is everywhere, livening up the dour concrete with their socially conscious wit and style. The twins' uniquely Brasilian take on graffiti has now risen to prominence and their work has been used in the Fernando Meirelles produced futebol documentary 'Ginga'. It's still best viewed on São Paulo's walls, buildings and underpasses. Keep your eyes peeled.
A huge concrete, five-storey shopping centre where you will find the most astounding array of second-hand records, bootleg and genuine sportswear including Brazilian surf and skatewear and also the shirt and other souvenirs of every Brazilian football team you could expect to find. A stunning place, a bit like Afflecks Palace in Manchester, but way more exciting.
One of the many tributaries running up to and across Avenida Paulista. This is a trendy part of town notable for its multitude of shops, cafes, bars and restaurants. Keep your eyes peeled for the street art. There's some interesting graffiti and amusingly designed stickers to be found here. If you're hungry there is great sushi to be had at gohan cozinha oriental - R.Augusta 2542.
Rua Augusta
Worth catching a cab (the metro station isn't so near to the action) and soaking up what the late night drinking district has to offer, whether your trip is brief or you're hanging around longer.
Vila Madalena Metro station
Newly opened space devoted to organic food - shop and restaurant. Menu is a bit limited and they're overawed by their own tandoor, but all in all, it's a nice relaxing place to eat breakfast/lunch and the food is absolutely fresh.
www.emporiosiriuba.com.br/
Al. Franca, 1590 (Jardins)
Good place to meet other foreigners. Has dartboard and pool tables as well as a small disco upstairs. Good selection of beers and reasonable prices. In the Jardins area near Paulista.
Roberto Burle Marx was born in the São Paulo on 4 August 1909. He studied in Germany, then returned to Brazil and worked as a landscape architect, designing parks throughout South America. These small, beautiful gardens stand as a tribute to him.
Designed by Oscar Niemeyer and Roberto Burle Marx, the park is huge and always packed with people jogging, playing football or just snoozing on the grass. There are galleries, cafes, running tracks, bikes to rent, fountains, etc. Don’t go after dark.
If you want romance, get out of São Paulo. Hop on a plane and go to Rio; one of the world's most romantic cities is only an hour away. Or catch a bus down to the coast and wander through the cobbled streets of Parati. You could easily find sex in São Paulo, and even love, but not much romance.
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