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 bookshop with lots of stuff on Rio with great cafe/good selection of records on 1st floor.
Rua Visconde de Pirajá, 462 A Rio de Janeiro - Ipanema Tel.: 22875157
The best salad bar in Rio, with consistently good food. You'll often have to wait half an hour for a table, but you'll probably be standing next to a celebrity while you do. Dias Ferreira has become the upmarket restaurant street in Rio so there are also plenty of other choices.
www.celeiroculinaria.com.br/index2.htm Rua Dias Ferreira, 199 - Leblon
Rio's 'Covent Garden'. A shopping mall but on an intimate scale without any chain stores. Not very far from Leblon. Also has several theatres with Sat/Sun afternoon programmes for children and a playcentre. If you have small children, you can buy excellent cheap clothes at Bebe Basico on the ground floor. The owners also have a nice educational toy shop on the 2nd floor (Enfim Enfant) which sells hand-made toys and brilliant towelling cushions shaped like elephants and hippopotamuses.
Rua Marquês de São Vicente, 52, Shopping da Gávea - 2º piso Sábado e Domingo, às 17h Mais informações: 2540-6004 Classificação: livre ...
Probably the most luxurious delicatessen in SP - you can burn serious amounts of money here, but you don't have to. Excellent bread (the only place in SP that does proper bagels). And the best sushi bar.
Also has a good selection of wines and cachaças, including RioSol - wine from Pernambuco - 8 degrees South of the Equator (OK, OK, it's still got a long way to go, but it has definite novelty value).
www.emporiosantamaria.com.br
Av. Cidade Jardim, 790
I see another poster has recommended this but I feel obliged to point out that Colombo is more than just tea and biscuits - it is salgadinhos - Brazil's equivalent of dim sum, which are an absolute must for anyone wanting a culinary experience in Brazil - try bolinhos de bacalhau (fried salt cod balls) or rissole de camarão (prawn rissoles). The only place that arguably does them better than Colombo is Bar Bracarense (also recommended by another poster, but note it is in Leblon, not Ipanema - although the address is right).
Colombo is wonderful, but I feel a need to enlist potential tourists to the sacred cause, which is to persuade a narrow-minded management that they need to keep the ground floor cafe, with its belle epoque mirrors, open as a cafe for the general public and not simply close it off to tourist groups (usually multinationals) - which they have a bad habit of doing. Give the maitre a hard time if you find them doing this. You may thus have to stand at the bar.
Rua Dias Gonçalves as above, in the Centro.
The best bookshop in Rio, albeit quite expensive, although you may pick up a bargain since they have a huge and old stock. They're very strong in the humanities and have a separate literature/travel shop opposite. Note, you won't find this unless you look for it. You have to find a big office block with Marques do Herval written on it on the block of Rio Branco after the Biblioteca Nacional (coming from Cinelandia). Go into this and then down a spiral ramp and turn left into a corridor.
MATRIZ Av. Rio Branco, nº 185 Ed. Marquês do Herval - Subsolo - Lojas 2,3,4 e 9 Centro - Rio de Janeiro CEP: 20045-900 Tel: |21| 2533.2237 Fax: |21| 2533.1277
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first submitted a tip on 16 September 2005
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