Belem, Brazil

Belem, Brazil slideshow

Belem is the home of Acai, a purple berry which is squeezed into a thick juice. It is also home of regional foods like duck with tucupi (a spicy manioc juice and tongue-tingling jambu leaf sauce), and exotic fruits, similar to the ones we saw in Manaus, like acerola, cupuacu, graviola and many others, not to mention cashew fruit, guava, mangoes, pineapple and a large spectrum of tropical fruit.

The Acai is squeezed fresh and often times served plain in a bowl, without sugar. That is how the fish with Acai is served: Fried fish, manioc flour, and a bowl of fresh Acai. I did not really get how to mix only a little bit of manioc flour in a spoon and dip it in the bowl of Acai after taking a bite of the fish. But no matter how I mixed it, without sugar, the Acai did not taste very good. We could have added sugar, but as a matter of habit, we don't like adding sugar to anything, not even coffee. Fish with Acai is a famous dish in Belem, but the way I envisioned it before heading to the Mercado Ver-o-Peso to try it for lunch, was very different from the way it was served. In my mind, a nice grilled fish was supposed to be placed in a large round white plate, together with a couple of scoops of chilled Acai ice cream and a leaf of mint. I only knew Acai as ice cream before coming to Belem, which by the way, probably has tons of sugar in it turning it into a delicious snack. But the deep fried fish and sour bowl of Acai we had did not meet my expectation. As Peter pointed out, what we had was more like eating a regional style of fish and chips.

So much for the our first lunch experience in the land of Brazilian regional food. At dinner, we went to a nice buffet restaurant. We had duck with tucupi, manicoba, an Indigenous type of feijoada, made with sausage and the leaves of manioc leaves cooked for several days. The duck was good but nothing to write home about, and the manicoba was way too salty and heavy for us. It sat in my stomach like a piece of rock for the rest of the evening. The salads, meat, different types of rice and beans, and specialty pastas were much better. But speaking of local food in Belem, I loved the abundant river fish and calderada proved to be a light choice of meal. It is a stew of vegetables and fish served with pirao, a thick paste made of fish sauce mixed with manioc flour.

The Amazon river, also has many kinds of fish seen only in this region. I ate fish almost every day. My favorite were the enormous Pirarucu, Filhote, Dourado, and Tambaki. eaten with onions, tomatoes, rice, beans, manioc flour and tucupi, a permanent item at the table.

Belem is a very pleasant town. It is probably not fair to compare, but I liked it so much better than Manaus! For one thing, the weather is not as hot and humid, and the neighborhoods are pleasant, with a cosmopolitan feel to it. We stayed at the Nazare district, walking distance to everywhere in the city. There is no shortage of good restaurants and it was very pleasant to walk around. We went to the Emilio Goeldi Botanical Garden with a small Zoo, a few blocks from where we were staying and were suddenly in what felt the middle of the jungle with sky high trees and forest.

When we arrived in Belem from Alter do Chao, we stayed for a couple of days and then left for Ilha do Marajo for a week. When we returned to the city on October 28th, we stayed for two more days before heading east to Sao Luis in Maranhao on the 30th.