Showing posts with label feijoada. Show all posts
Showing posts with label feijoada. Show all posts

Thursday, May 23, 2019

Silva's Fresh Eatery and Churrascaria, a More Affordable Brazilian BBQ in Orange County

As I'm sure many of you guys do, I like my all-you-can-eat Brazilian BBQ, but a lot of the places like Fogo are too expensive to go frequently. If you're in Orange County, though, you have a more affordable option: Silva's Fresh Eatery and Churrascaria in Santa Ana. Instead of the over $60 usual price tag, Silva charges $29.95 per person and $24.95 for weekday lunch. There's also a "Power Lunch" option that gets you one pass through the buffet line.

At Silva, they don't come around the tables with your meat, but instead it's buffet style and diners can come up to request the meat they want. They have picanha, garlic picanha, tri-tip, skirt steak, leg of lamb, etc. Pretty good selection of cuts for the price, if you ask me.
Silva Churrascaria
They also have salads as well as other cooked items available on the buffet line.
Silva Churrascaria

Monday, September 22, 2014

Brazilian Stews at Muqueca (Cambridge, MA)

Boston may not have as much diversity as Los Angeles, but when it comes to Brazilian food, Boston has more. Just three blocks away from my new place is Muqueca, a Brazilian restaurants specializing in the namesake seafood stew. Muqueca is a Brazilian style seafood stew from Espirito Santo or Bahia, cooked in clay pots.

The ones at Muqueca are typically the Espirito Santo style, made with cilantro, tomato, onion and served with rice and pirao. But they will also do the Bahian style which uses coconut milk.

We tried both styles in the Moqueca Completa (fish, shrimp, mussel. $25.95)

IMG_8030
The only other time I've had moqueca was at a similarly named restaurant in Oxnard, California: Moqueca. I still like the Oxnard one better, though that one contained lobster and was more expensive. These are still quite good, and I'm still happy to find a good rendition of this rare dish. They're pretty generous with the seafood and they're cooked properly with the fish soaking up the stew broth.

What I ended up loving at this place was actually the Dobradinha (tripe stew with white beans, bacon, sausage, $13.95)
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Sunday, November 22, 2009

Rio Brazil Cafe, an L.A. Gem. Feasting on Feijoada, Batidas, and More

Rio Brazil Cafe is perhaps a hole-in-the-wall many people, including myself, would miss if it weren't for the internet and blogger friends. Located in a strip mall in Palms, the overhead signage simply said "Brazilian Food".

Street Gourmet LA
set up a tasting dinner for me, Gastronomy, and Food She Thought to get the word out about this little 15 month-old gem run by a native Carioca, Luciene Peck.

If you can't go without alcohol during your meal, you'll be happy to know that Rio Brazil Cafe has a BYOB policy with no corkage. As an extra treat for that night, Street Gourmet LA brought us two bottles of artisanal cachaça: Isaura from the Minas Gerais state that he had brought back from Brazil (not available in the US), and Weber Haus from Rio Grande do Sul, available at BevMo.
If you bring your own ingredients and mixers, Luciene will also let you make your own cocktails. If you have never had a batida, though, I highly recommend you have her make you either the batida de coco (coconut) or the batida de maracuja (passionfruit). Or both.

The batidas are made with cachaça, condensed milk, and of course the fruits in question (either passionfruit or coconut cream+milk).
Sweet and creamy, these batidas are quite dangerous for a Monday night.


As starters we got a couple of little savories. The coxinha de galinha translates to "little chicken legs" and is a drumstick shaped savory filled with shredded chicken. While here they serve a smaller "party-size" portion, in Brazil they're typically closer to the size of a real chicken leg. The
risolis/risoles is the crescent-shaped savory you see below, filled with cheese, meat, chicken or shrimp.
An interesting note is that in Indonesia we also have a savory called risoles, though they're typically rectangular and filled with creamy chicken and vegetables. It's no mere coincidence since Indonesia was a Portuguese colony for a bit.

They were served with Luciene's own pimenta which held a lot of flavor.

Most things in Brazil are served family style with rice, so we did the same thing here. A set of entrees came with a plate of arroz (white rice), including:
1) abobora com carne seca (butternut squash with home made beef jerky)
2) Bobo de camarao (shrimp in a yucca cream), succulent shrimp in manioc meal, coconut milk, dendê oil(palm oil),
3) feijao-black beans cooked with pork meat, bay leaf, onions and garlic.
Everything was quite delicious, the fresh shrimp in yucca cream had an interesting thick texture you don't normally find in other cuisine. The abobora com carne seca is typically made with Brazilian pumpkin but since that's not available in the states, butternut squash was used instead. The beef jerky was meaty and smokey. Even the beans were very flavorful.

Moqueca de peixe (fish stew): cod with peppers and tomatoes, dendê oil, and coconut milk. This dish originates from the state of Bahia, but the Rio version is lighter since it's made with less dendê oil.
A wonderful dish, again with very bold flavors and is perfect eaten with the fragrant rice.

The climax of the meal was one I had been waiting for all along:
Feijoada completa(complete feijoada), the national dish of Brazil traditionally served on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

The feijoada is a black bean stew made with pe' de porco( pork trotters), rabo(tail),costela( ribs), carne de porco (pork meat), carne seca (beef jerky). Cooked for a long time with onions and garlic, we could smell this from the kitchen, whetting our appetite while waiting for the dish to come out.

The completa meal included couve (collard greens).
As with all other dishes, the feijoada is meant to be eaten with white rice. Sprinkle some farofa (manioc meal) on top to complete it.
A rich and flavorful stew is comfort food at its best. An immensely satisfying stew dominated by the flavors of the beans and pork. With so many different cuts of meat in this dish, there's something for everyone.

For dessert we shared three different types of sweets:
Coconut Cream with boysenberries, mousse de manga (mango mousse), pudim de leite (Brazilian style flan).
From the light and tart mango mousse to the rich and heavy Brazilian flan, we got our sweet tooth satisfied. My favorite is probably the coconut cream which wasn't too thick and had a distinct coconut flavor, and even chunks of the fruit itself. I could've gone for it all on my own.

Rio Brazil Cafe is a wonderful little place serving up some delicious and authentic Brazilian Carioca food. With a live music performance on Saturday nights and a BYOB policy (they're also going to start a Cachaça club where you can keep a bottle there), there's no reason this place should stay hidden. Do give it a try.


Oh and by the way, they are also on restaurant.com so you can get a gift certificate to make your meal even cheaper from this link:
Rio Brazil Cafe


Rio Brazil Cafe
3300 Overland Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90034
(310) 558-3338
Rio Brazil Cafe on Urbanspoon
Rio Brazil Cafe in Los Angeles

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