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Café Brazil plays the field Who hasn’t had Brazil on the brain recently? It’s been about as hot as Bahía--and then there was the little matter of the country’s World Cup win last week. Even if you weren’t a soccer fan, the 16 hours of celebratory car-honking was bound to have got your attention at some point. Maybe it’ll all add up to free promotion for Café Brazil, a teeny tiny eatery that opened earlier this summer, a few steps from the YMCA in Mile-End. The location and the timing both seem promising: it’s the perfect spot to go for a healthy drink after a workout or on a hot July afternoon. On the other hand, it’s basically a hole in the wall, albeit a resolutely cheerful one, which I hope doesn’t go the way of so many businesses on Parc that wound up with “A Louer” signs taped to their windows. Fruit shakes are the big draw here, made on the spot with fresh ingredients. They range from $3–3.75, and come in a multitude of combinations. Some intriguing blends include pineapple and mint, banana and peanut butter, or guava and milk. Another called Amelia mixes pineapple, apple, coconut milk, orange and banana. Still others are made with vegetables like spinach, beets, carrots and parsley. My friend and I were both eyeing the Tropical, a mix of passion fruit, pineapple and papaya, but the owner had a warning for us. “It’s only good if you want to go to sleep,” she said, “It is a sort of tranquilizer, the passion fruit.” It sounded an awful lot like Rohypnol, so we passed. Instead, we ordered two refreshing concoctions: the thick, almost creamy Delicia made with orange and mango, and the tart Baraca with lemon, apple, fresh ginger and sparkling water. Food
comes in the form of light snacks, sandwiches and salads. The copious
Café Brazil salad ($10) sounded delicious, except it wasn’t
available. Actually, only parts of it weren’t, since it’s
got a long list of ingredients: lettuce, quail eggs, hearts of palm,
xuxu, mango slices, green onions, shrimp, Brazil nuts and cashews. “I
shop at Latina and sometimes they have the quail eggs and sometimes
they don’t,” the owner explained. She didn’t have
any fresh xuxu either, a squash-like veggie also known as chayotte or
mirliton. So she created a salad for us with what she did have--spinach,
mango, nuts, peppers, strawberries, to name a few things--and it was
great. There’s also a potato salad ($5.50) with green beans, dill
and eggs that I’d like to sample next time. There
are lots of little snacks for around $2, like chicken balls, shrimp
cakes and kibe. This last is interesting because you may know it as
the distinctly Middle Eastern kebbeh, cracked wheat balls stuffed with
ground beef and pine nuts. The owner told us that Brazilian cookbooks
have adopted Arab, Asian and German recipes as the country’s own--in
keeping with its amazing melting pot of ethnicities. That alone should
guarantee this little café some success in Mile-End, which couldn’t
get any more mult-culti if it tried. : Feedback? restoagogo@hotmail.com |