Sunday Night

At the risk of having my own citizenship revoked so soon after Gisela was let in to the US, or at the very least not being welcomed back by Mayor Mike, I have more traitorous news. The pizza in São Paulo really is good. I'm not going to be an idiot and say it's better than in New York - the wedding thing was for a good laugh (and curry Brazilian favor - I'm here for two more weeks), but taking sides in things truly religious, such as pizza, only ever ends in tears.

I do remember nearly choking when Gisela first told me she wished most of all she could find a pizza in New York as good as she missed from São Paulo. We hadn't known each other long, but she hadn't given any indication of being totally unhinged prior to that. I mean if she had been from Italy I might have understood. But who'd even ever heard of Brazilian pizza?

And when I asked, just to humor her, what made it better, she said "It's just different. And better." 2 and a half years later and on Sunday night, the night Paulistas, or at least the Gueiros', eat pizza, I was craving pizza. So, at the very least it's habit forming then. But I have to agree - again, not that it's better than New York's - but that it's just different. Totally different, in fact. It's still dough, cheese, tomato sauce. Round. But different. I went tonight with the forensic intentions, but I'm none the wiser as to what exactly is going on.



For one thing, the place they always take me, Camelo Pizzaria, is a classic. Kitschy classic - with a dropped ceiling, anti-mood lighting, and occassional tile murals depicting cartoonish Arab scenes. Half the allure of the pizza may in fact be Camelo. I think it's cool like Rao's is cool. But I've never been to Rao's, so it's cool like my idea of Rao's. Which is probably cooler than Rao's actually is. Camelo's is like that - one of those places where you imagine people who you think are cooler than they actually are, would hang out. Like Dean Martin. Frank Sinatra loved Brazil. And I'm imagining he would hang out at Camelo. So you get my point.

About the pizza, I can't get all chowhoundy. But in broadstrokes: the dough is thinner; the sauce is thinner, and rosy pink, so maybe it's raw; the toppings are applied in mountains. Our order: Calabresa (sausage & onions), Margherita, and Argentina (toasted garlic). The Argentina is genius - it's like a carpet of garlic. Everything brown in that second photo - garlic.



And I've yet to see corn on a brazilian pizza. Even though that's the preferred way to dismiss it among gringos. São Paulo has 800,000 Japanese people, so that's who the corn is for. Then there's the cheese. That's where all the mystery resides. Risking monotony - it's different. It's still mozzarella. But it's kind of sourer. And there's tons of it. Strictly fork and knife.

It's possible the best thing about brazilian pizza, or at least Camelo, doesn't have to do with pizza at all. It's Frango à Passarinho. Which translates roughly to Chicken Mini-Bird Style. I have no idea what that means either. But it's rough chunks of chicken fried with garlic. A lot of garlic. The Argentina is a light sprinkling of garlic compared to the Frango.



Like I said, I'm not taking sides in this one. Which might be as useless as not taking sides in the health care debate. But at present, my craving is satiated, my hangover is gone and I'm breathing fire...