Porridge seller at the dock
Cafes and snack bars are easiest to find in Venezuela. With the almost legalized black market exchange rate for the dollar, you can gain enough to comfortably afford a lunch consisting of meat or fish, rice, salad, and freshly squeezed juice for 100–150 bolivars. Therefore, it is more profitable to eat out than to cook at home. There are many cafes, but they all operate on their own (quite mysterious) schedules.
In Brazil, it's not so easy. Almost the only budget option (apart from cooking yourself) is to eat at markets. Often there is a separate row of small stalls offering ready-made food. Some even have chairs or stools, so you don't have to eat on the go. We saw the greatest variety of such stalls in Belém.
Our main discovery while sailing the Amazon was the vendors at stops. Like our grandmothers on railway station platforms, they run up to the arriving steamer and offer simple but tasty food. Often these are children, very young ones, and it is very hard to resist buying from them, even if the ice cream is melting.
In the lower reaches, trade takes place on the go: small boats temporarily moor to one side or the other of the ship and offer local fruits for next to nothing.
The most common way of serving food in cafes here is self-service followed by weighing the plate. Payment is per kilogram, and this rate is the same for all food on your plate, from weightless salad to heavy meat. Another, much rarer option, is 'eat as much as you can for N reais'. Sometimes it's profitable (in Manaus N was equal to 10 reais), sometimes not (in the Maringá area this variable grew to 21). Drinks are sold separately in both cases.
In Guyana, there are practically no authentic cafes. Instead, you can find cuisines from other corners of the world: Indian, Mexican, Chinese… On the way from Georgetown to Lethem, you sometimes come across quite unexpected 'exotica': a boiled egg entirely baked in a ball of mashed potatoes.
Main dishes
Among the main dishes, besides the usual rice, beans, and various types of meat (and fried bananas, which we'll talk about later), you can also find local highlights. If for Venezuela soup most likely means a large piece of meat and a fatty broth around it, then for the Amazon it will be a type of fish soup. During the Christmas holidays, if you're lucky, you can taste Brazilian bobo – a yellow gravy-like mass with seafood.
The most unexpected and one of the most pleasant discoveries on the Amazon is their porridge. If you see a cart with a large pot of oatmeal porridge at the dock or market, try it without hesitation.
In Venezuela, a good half of the establishments specialize in empanadas or local pancakes cachapa. The variety of fillings usually ends with cheese, meat, cheese and ham, chicken, cheese and... cheese. In addition, both there and in Brazil there is a special type of cheese bun – pan de queso/pao de quejo.
Bread is generally good and mostly white. Dark and whole-grain varieties were only found here and there, but we didn't specifically look for them.
Ice cream in South America ranges from terrible chemical to perfect. Argentina leads, no wonder its ice cream is considered one of the best in the world. Besides standard flavors, it's worth trying ice cream with local fruit flavors (especially in the Amazon!), corn, and Argentine mate-flavored ice cream. A healthy alternative to cold sweets was found at the Belém market. There you can buy a refreshing avocado puree or guarana de Amazonia – a puree-like mixture of guarana, avocado, peanuts, oatmeal, ice, and many other mysterious ingredients.
What to cook yourself
Among cereal crops and grains, the most common are corn, oatmeal, and rice. Pasta and instant noodles like 'beach packet' are everywhere. Soy, despite its importance in the local economy, is almost entirely exported and does not reach the shelves. Legumes are widely represented: several types of beans, green lentils, chickpeas. A typical Brazilian plate will always have fish (meat), beans, and rice. In Venezuela and Argentina, finding them is also not a problem.
South American meat is famous far beyond the region; it is abundant and of various types. The Amazon and the coast abound with fish and seafood, all exceptionally tasty and of excellent quality.
Cheese here is not so great (and where do they get it for the buns?). Decent ones are expensive, and cheap ones are not very good. The only exception is Belém's hard mozzarella.
Drinks
North of Brazil, it is quite difficult to drink decent tea. Venezuela offers only chamomile and linden blossom – and ubiquitous coffee. With coffee, things are interesting: Brazilians by default put a lot of sugar in it – it is hard to find plain black unsweetened coffee. But in Brazilian eateries, there are often thermoses with free coffee, and in case of extreme need you can drink it without buying anything.
Returning to the question of tea: already on the Amazon, it reappears in a wide variety, and on the approach to Argentina, people with calabashes in their hands drinking mate become ubiquitous. In Uruguay, it is impossible to imagine a person without a thermos. Mate is drunk everywhere: on the streets, at home, morning and evening, while waiting for a bus, and just like that. Argentina, however, is not far behind: near stores you can often find hot water dispensers.
Now about milk. In Venezuela there was none at all, although locals say it's a temporary crisis (at the same time they were almost completely lacking toilet paper and gas). In Brazil, from its northern limits to the southernmost, fields stretch to the horizon with herds of cows – it would seem that here dairy products should be abundant. But no, milk in stores is only 'long-life', there is almost no fermented milk. In northeastern Argentina the same story. One of the few exceptions is the Venezuelan drink chicha, which tastes like sweet yogurt and contains milk, rice and a lot of sugar.
The tropics are fruits, and fruits are juices. Due to low prices, Venezuela turned out to be a juice paradise. Where else can you start the morning with a glass of freshly squeezed juice for 10–15 rubles? Guava, passion fruit, melon and blackberry became our best friends. But in Brazil, alas, prices for them were not even remotely reminiscent of Venezuelan ones.
However, they also found an excellent substitute for juices on a hot day. The main treat here is chilled green coconut. Yes, exactly like in pictures of paradise beaches, with a straw stuck into it and clear refreshing liquid. But don't rush, like the locals, to throw away the 'drunk' coconut: ask to chop it in half and scrape out the jelly-like whitish pulp for dessert. The cost varies from 2 reais in the middle reaches of the Amazon to 6 in the touristy south of the country.
The second alternative to juices is frozen fruit pulp sold in stores. Its advantage is that it is cheaper than ready-made juice (about 1.5 reais per packet for a glass of water), and also that if desired, you can eat it simply as fruit ice. The assortment will satisfy the most demanding: from orange and lemon to passion fruit, avocado, umbu and soursop.
Water, of course, is also available. Moreover, in Brazil and Argentina when traveling you often don't have to worry about it: most buses and ships have either water boilers or individual cups. In some parks and public places there are drinking fountains, but whether to drink from them or not is a personal decision for everyone. An even more common drink than water is sweet soda, mostly cola. On the Amazon there is guarana soda.
Vegetables and fried bananas
In addition to the standard worldwide potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, peppers and zucchini, there are also native ones. First of all, manioc. And what do they not make from it here – side dishes, salads, traditional Brazilian farinha, which is both eaten as a separate dish and added to everything else, from ice cream to meat. On any Brazilian table, besides salt and pepper, there will be a jar of farinha.
Both in stores and in markets you can find jars of pickled hearts of one type of palm – palmito. They taste... Well, like pickled vegetables, salty with a sour note.
Perhaps some types of bananas are also considered vegetables here. In South America, six varieties are distinguished, and at least two of them are used only in cooked form. One variety of bananas when baked becomes slightly soft and has a taste and consistency familiar to us, the second is more like a potato or some root, hard and unsweet, which can be grated and fried like chips.
Potatoes, of course, are also available, both regular and sweet potato. Another potato-like root, yam, when boiled resembles soggy bread crumbs. It is usually served as an addition to a side dish in Venezuela.
Also included here are Amazonian non-sweet fruits pupunha and tucumã. The first is only eaten boiled and peeled and is an orange acorn-shaped fruit about 2-3 cm in size.
The second is green, larger, and with a little rosette on top. It needs to be peeled, then the orange firm pulp is grated into thin strips. At the market it is usually sold already cut.
Corn, of course, is found in all possible forms, from flour to pie filling. The Venezuelan Christmas dish hallacas is based on cornmeal and meat and is cooked in banana leaves, while its Brazilian counterpart pamonha is a sweet little packet of milk and corn, cooked in corn husks.
Fruits – exotic and not so exotic
A paradise for fruit lovers is the Amazon. But if you want to limit yourself in carbohydrates, don't go there! Because it's very hard to resist: with such diversity here, you look at mangoes as old friends.
Three sweet symbols of Amazonia – açaí, cupuaçu and guarana. Açaí is a berry-like fruit of a palm, dark purple. The liquid, resembling thick cocoa, is its juice. Drinking it without sugar is impossible (and even with sugar it's an acquired taste).
But cupuaçu pleases everyone without exception. A relative of cocoa, this fruit under a hard brown shell stores the most delicate white pulp. Inside lurk large seeds, but they are not eaten – most of the fruit's insides are useless for a gourmet.
Guarana is most often presented in powder form or already as part of some dishes, so it's difficult to say something directly about its taste, but the effect is known to everyone: it invigorates many times more powerfully than caffeine.
The ranks of Brazilian fruits are continued by soursop, umbu, jackfruit (breadfruit) and cashew. The breadfruit turned out to be an interesting fruit: a prickly brown container the size of a torpedo melon, when opened, revealed a yellow pulp with a very pleasant taste. The cashew fruit (the same one whose curvy appendages are the nuts) did not live up to expectations: bitterish.
There are also more traditional fruits. Several types of bananas, a couple of varieties of mangoes, avocado, oranges and limes, papaya (which in Brazil is called mamão), passion fruit (in Venezuela they call it parchita) and expensive apples. There are melons and watermelons, differing from ours only in size and shape. For example, in Manaus, most of these melons in appearance are more like oversized zucchini.
Nuts and dried fruits
Nuts are doing well here: you can easily find peanuts (not just salted), cashews, and Brazil nuts. With the latter, the main thing is not to miss and buy fresher ones. Almonds are not very common here, but in Argentina walnuts and pecans are sold. Prices everywhere are comparable to Moscow prices.
Among dried fruits, prunes are found in Venezuela; further south, raisins and dried apricots are added. On the approach to Argentina, dried vegetables also appear – onions and tomatoes.
Three important principles for choosing unfamiliar food
First – make sure that what you see is what you think. Fruit, not a vegetable; porridge, not flour; unsweetened, not sweet.
Second – if it is a raw product, find out if it needs to be cooked. If you don't know the right words, use gestures: eat, peel, cook.
Third – if possible, try a small piece before buying. In a supermarket, of course, that won't work, but at the market it's fine, and you'll be absolutely sure whether you need it or not.
Nadezhda GORCHAKOVA, Gazeta.Ru
Photo by Alexander GORCHAKOV.