The infamous "Xis" sandwiches from Porto Alegre

Porto Alegre, capital city from the state of Rio Grande do Sul.

Home of great food and gigantic appetites.

Oh I so much respect a culture with food in it. But I digress.

Xis is the name given to plate-sized sandwiches. It is pronounced "chees" as in cheeseburguer. And they are basically oversized cheese burguers - except it adds lettuce and instead of a burger it uses a full thin slice of beef. You add whatever you want - bacon, eggs, chicken breast, pork... oh infinite possibilities.

There is a small chain of restaurants, local to Porto Alegre called Cavanhas.

The photo below is from their own version of the Xis (which they name "Da casa")

Is it the best Xis in Porto Alegre? I can find 10 out of 5 gaúchos that will say otherwise, yeah, for each gaúcho that says yeah, there will be at least two that say no. Gaúchos take exceptional pride in having a better option to give. So I like that one, and this is my personal taste. When they offer me a better option, I will gladly review.

(I am not done with Porto Alegre food, let me remind you)

Sorry, I have no URL for this... But that is on purpose! (Alfajor Capitan Del Espacio)

So,

I was given these as gift back on my previous employment, by a great friend of mine from Argentina.

As you can obviously read, these are called Capitan Del Espacio. The ones in the picture are the best ones, triple layered dulce de leche filled, chocolate covered alfajores. You can eat it as it is, or as my friend told me, you can leave them on the fridge for a couple hours and they become crunchy. (I prefer at normal temperature, because I like dulce de leche a little more liquid).

It is such a dulce de leche overload (actually, sugar overload), that it gives that buzz... as if you get a spoonful of Nutella and drop it in your mouth (I can't say I never did that). And as Nutella, that stuff is good. oh yeah

Now that I got your curiosity...  The problem is... it is not sold in Buenos Aires! It is basically not sold anywhere popular.

According to my friend, it is made in Quilmes, a city close to Buenos Aires capital city. They do not want to make it too popular, which obviously as you can guess gave it that Streisand effect.

You can find it on the small window markets in the blocks of Quilmes. At least that's where I found it when I was there. You won't find it on the Carrefour groceries, or even at the corner candy shops that exist literally every corner of Downtown Buenos Aires Capital City. You have to track it by asking locals, even then, only a few will ever understand what the heck you are talking about.

Yeah, getting fat is easy. Getting fat with some style is not. ;)

AH just before posting this I found an old 2009 blog post (sorry, in Portuguese) which mentions Capitan Del Espacio and other alfajores. Quite nice read.

Chopp Brahma Black

Take a look at that. You really should see the bubbles moving. Hypnotizing bubbles of creamy delight.

Unfortunately, this is very rare in Brazil. This is a special dark beer - it has this curious creamy foam, it looks a bit like a stout. But it is softly sweet, with a caramel taste and the foam almost feels milky.

Of course there is no milk in this beer. But it has an awesome and complex taste. I could drink liters of it.

You cannot find it outside of Curitiba (Paraná), at least, I never found it outside of Curitiba. You can find it in a lot of pubs and beer kiosks. Just ask for the Brahma Black.

(Brahma - if you ever want to pay for this review, I would take it all in Brahma Black vouchers)

Rib Barbecue - on the ground fire - Sítio Rio Pequeno, São José dos Pinhais, Paraná

Now, I was looking at my old old pictures and I found this marvelous shot of a barbecue fire.

This is from Sítio Rio Pequeno. I was there back in 2011! I am pretty sure it still has the same quality as it had 2 years ago.

If you have never eaten ribs like this. This is the way countryside Argentinian, Uruguayan and of course, Brazilians make their barbecue. In Portuguese this is called Costela no Chão. It has other names as well, Costelão Gaúcho is another name you may hear.

Besides the barbecue, there are some dishes, in a all-you-can-eat buffet fashion. Bear in mind the restaurant is more like a small farm-like "away-from-the-city" state than a restaurant by itself. Food is rustic. It is cooked with farm-like seasoning. You will not find it sophisticated. But oh boy, it will be good. This is the Full Belly blog. Fancy food is fancy. But to get your belly full... that takes some serious atitude.

Lá em Casa - Estação das Docas - Ver-o-Peso - Belém

Estação das Docas is the number 1 stop for all tourists in Belém. (In my opinion, this is the must visit stop in Belém.

You get a lot of restaurants, a local "pub" from Amazon Beer brewery (go try their beers), some small tourist souvenir shops and the Lá em Casa restaurant.

Now... Lá em Casa, my favorite eating place in Belém is not exactly cheap. It is a tourist restaurant in a tourist stop. But at lunch it's in a all-you-can-eat model and dinner is menu only. But oh boy what a menu (see their sample everything dish below).

Lunch is the best option. But leave space for dessert, they make sure you have brazilian popular desserts with a Amazonic twist (like caramel cupuaçú pudding - best pudding ever in my life). But back to food - make sure you try the Belém dishes - duck in tucupi and maniçoba, and the best fish in the region - Filhote. The maniçoba from Lá em Casa (you can try it at lunch) will be the lightest. The real maniçoba is as fat as a good feijoada and it is not for the faint of heart. Duck in Tucupi is a local creation, obviously taking inspiration from the classic Canard à l'orange.

I am really trying to avoid writing an essay on Amazonic gastronomie. Maniçoba takes days to be ready (I couldn't find a proper description to post - look at the pictures), tucupi itself can be used to make a gentler version of the indian soup called Tacacá (below).

Tucupi you can buy off any street cart where you see a crowd. It will be safe. 

Writing this post is perhaps the closest I can get from a gastronomical flashback. It is a flood of names, tastes, flavors, smells.

Coming next - Ver-o-Peso Market, Frutaria do Val.

Sorveteria Icebode - Belém

A very popular stop by the locals is the Icebode creamery. You can taste awesome ice creams created with Amazon fruits like the açaí berry, bacuri and many others.

My favorites are the açai berry variations with tapioca. You should also taste the bacuri and graviola flavors. [edit - I completely forgot Cupuaçú, I am ashamed, it is my second favorite after açaí + tapioca, getting the second place by a small dent from Bacuri]

Get ready for brain freeze!

Peixaria Amazonas - Belém

The gorgeous photos (early 2012) below are from Peixaria Amazonas, a restaurant in Belém do Pará, Brazil. These shrimps are huge, fresh and cooked in such a gentle seasoning that enhances its flavour. It peels absurdly easily and for the big ones (called pitú), you can suck a lot of juice of the head. The smaller ones are called "Camarão Rosa", and they are a bit more salty.

They have their own chilli sauce, made in the brazilian northeastern way (which is above brazilian threshold). You sprinkle it with lemon, put a drop of chilli and eat it with the fried yuca flour (the yellow thing in the picture).

 

If you like beer, you definitely should have one of the brews from the state - Amazon beer or Cerpa. They have many variants, I would have the most expensive Cerpa they have (Generally called Export or "Cerpinha") and for Amazon I would have the light ones if you don't mind it being very very light (less than 5% alcohol).

And so it begins! About this blog.

All right, this is a blog created for fun, and for the love of good food. I give no f*ck if it is fat food, fast food, slow food, veggie, kosher or whatever. If I ate and I liked (and I remembered to take a pic) I'll post it.

I will give addresses and even point to the restaurant's site if such exists. If you are a restaurant owner and you want me to visit your business for a review, let me remind you I want to post only about good food. If I gave you a visit and nothing happened, well, you already know it's a pass.

My opinions are mine and in this blog they will by default be completely unbiased. If someday I ever get paid to write a review, that post will be a sponsored post and it will be explicitly marked as that. If you are a restaurant owner and you want a post to be removed, I may choose to remove mentions that identify the restaurant and I may opt to simply "anonify" the post. Or I may choose to remove it altogether, be polite.

If you do not agree with my reviews or pictures, the Internet is a big place. Get your own blog up and running and do whatever you want.