13.9.06

Ma Petite Lanchonete

For those of you who got the reference: No, this isn't a Brazilian-American version of the English cult film.

A lanchonete (pronounced Lan-Cho-'Netch-EE) is a simple, working class restuarant that serves traditional Brazilian food. Lanche, which sounds like lunch in English, means "snack." Typical Brazilian dishes taste very good, are good for you and are quite affordable. They consist usually of meat, rice and beans, and most lanchonetes give you a little salad of crudités, too. The lanchonete around the corner from my apartment is called Casa de Lanches Beselga, and I take many of my meals there. I don't know what Beselga means; this place is just the closest one to both school and my apartment. On a chalk-board out front you can find a list of the five or seven dishes available on any given day.

On Wednesdays and Saturdays almost all Brazilian restaurants serve feijoada, Brazil's national dish. It consists of rice, couve (steamed collared greens), farofa (dried manioc flour), and a pork chop; and on the side they serve a mixture of pork and different types of sausage in a crock filled with black beans. Why is feijoada served only on Wednesdays and Saturdays? Well, feijoada is made with beans (feijões), which are time consuming to cook from scratch, so I imagine this twice-weekly convention came into being to eliminate waste for restauranteurs and to space out a very heavy meal for restaurant-goers. Other days, you can find picadinha, a type of roast beef; carne assada, filé de frango, a filet of chicken, frango com molho, slow-cooked stewed chicken, and many other dishes. Beef is very popular, and often costs less than chicken.

All of these dishes cost between $R5,50 and $R8,00, which in US dollars at today's exchange rates is about $2.75 to $3.75. You even get a free coffee afterwards if you want it. Can't beat those prices, can you? I have come to love the food at my lanchonete. I walk in, say what I want, and within two minutes a healthy, filling, home-cooked meal is sitting in front of me.

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Casa de Lanches Beselga



Feijoada



Frango com molho

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