Think of the great Brazilian exports. Samba, supermodels and footballers come readily to mind, but just try naming a Brazilian dish. Trickier, eh? Brazilians seem to make their mark abroad in other ways; you need to look hard to find Brazilian cooking. Like, for example, at the back of a convenience store at the ugly end of Oxford Street.

       Past the packets of crisps and canned drinks, the tables of Brazilian Touch café used to be packed with Brazilian students getting stuck into feijoada (black bean and pork stew) and pão de queijo (cheese buns). It was an inexpensive meeting place for young Brazilians to catch up in the West End over a good bica (espresso); they found it by word of mouth. Then a few weeks ago the shop containing Brazilian Touch suddenly closed, and remains boarded up.

       Days later, a man appeared over the road with a placard advertising 'Brazil by Kilo'. Follow the sign and a Brazilian flag up a flight of stairs above an Italian fast food joint, and you find the same buzzy Portuguese banter - it's the Brazilian Touch crowd again.
This time, the owners have much bigger premises, under a light-filled atrium roof, and are laying on a buffet. You load up your plate from a dozen hot dishes and cold salads, then your plate is weighed; you pay 99p per 100g. It's an uncomplicated payment system, with fewer strings than a dental-floss bikini; it's hard to spend more than a fiver on a full plate at Brazil by Kilo.

       The best Brazilian dishes are simple, home-style fare, such as frango ensopado, cuts of chicken sautéed with spices including annato, a powdered seed which stains the eventual ensopado stew a yellowish-orange colour. Or there's banana à la milanesa, battered and deep-fried banana eaten as a savoury snack. You might find these, feijoada, pernil assado (roast pork), and several other daily-changing dishes from the hot buffet section. The cold buffet is less inspiring - the usual salads. Desserts (kept in a cooler cabinet) include pudim caramel and other Portuguese-style baked puddings. It's all interesting, inexpensive and filling stuff.

       Don't miss the fruit juices. They might cost £2.50, but these are strange fruit. Indigenous Brazilian fruits don't travel well, so some enterprising soul has turned them into purées, then frozen and shipped them to the UK. You can try cupuaca, which has an aroma like a fermenting melon. Or there's cashew, a tree native to north-east Brazil. But this drink isn't made from cashew nuts, it's made from the 'apple' which grows above the nut; it tastes slightly astringent. Umbu also has a slightly sour/astringent taste, but an aroma which is like a mixture between under-ripe strawberry and lemon. Selfridges are currently selling the same juices as part of their Brazil promotion - but at Brazil by Kilo you get a much less packaged taste of Brazil.
Guy Dimond

Source: Time Out Issue 1768: July 7-14 , 2004

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