chopp-chopp

Coming fast and furious now...

Last day of our trip, which I can't, in good conscience, call a vacation. Were that the case, I could reasonably expect to feel relaxed, refreshed, recharged... I don't. I'm exhausted. A lot of that is due to the usual, olympiad calendar of events for an expatriot returning home (my wife). There are always too many people to catch up with, parties to attend, and doctor's appointments to make in the time available, no matter how long the visit. It's been a grueling schedule for her and, other than the doctors of course (whom I have no interest in seeing, thanks), for me as well.

In the interest of journalistic integrity, full diaristic disclosure, and general protestant guilt, I have to admit there have been aggravating factors that have compounded this spent feeling I have. Namely, booze. Eastern europeans, the japanese, Winston Churchill... they've got nothing on Brazilians. As the world knows, they like a party. And they like a drink. Or 10. The best evidence of this is the national cocktail, the caipirinha. Which is mashed fruit (most traditionally, lime, but any tropical fruit will do), sugar, and the mind-numbing, lid-drooping Brazilian rum called cachaça. Cachaça makes tequila seem like a shot of wheatgrass. One caipirinha is bliss. Two narrows your field of vision radically. Three and your sleepwalking. Or running on incoherently to your future in-laws, as I did on my maiden trip to Brazil two years ago.

But other than the rainbow of flavors of the caipirinha, Brazil is still blessedly free from the cocktail fads of the US. (Though it's not for long - the Milk & Honey crew from NYC have opened up and outpost in São Paulo). Drinks are taken in fantastically old-fashioned looking bars called botequim (they all seemed to near-replicas of one original, very popular spot - sprouting like Original Ray's pizzerias all over the city). The most notable features to the undiscerning gringo seem to be lots of dark wood, ceramic tiles, sharply dressed waiters, and seemless division between indoors and outdoors. They all look very similar, and alluring, to me.

I'm still working on discerning the good from not so good, but some uniquely, Brazilian features: number one, the chopp (pronounced "showpy" - easy language, this portuguese). It's what we know as a draft beer. But one, were it poured this way in an english pub, would get the bartender beat down immediately I imagine. The two defining elements of the chopp are that it hovers just a hair above the temperature when alcohol would naturally turn to solid ice, and it has an enormous collar. Half the glass is foam. Intentionally. In fact, it was only on my most recent visit to Espirito Santo, that I observed that the foam is poured from it's very own tap. The glass is first filled with icey cold cerveja. And then topped off by the special foam tap. Rumor has it there are bars that serve an entire glass of foam. I don't understand it frankly, but the chopp goes down plenty quick, so I'm not complaining.

Another thing about bars like Espirito Santo, if you order one chopp, you're in for the long haul. Because you never, ever have to order another one. Waiters walk the tables with platters of chopps and before you've even finished half your current glass, you've suddenly got another. Each glass comes with it's own coaster, and at the end of the evening, they count the coasters, which you're usually in no shape to count yourself.

Another favor they do you in the botequims, is serve really good food, which at least helps your counting skills hang in for a little while longer. At Espirito Santo, the house special is the prego. A simple steak sandwich with melted cheese. I don't know if it's the bottomless chopps, but it's got to be one of the best steak sandwiches on the planet.

At São Cristovão, another looks-like-it's-been-there-100 years botequim that hews to a futebol theme, we had the acarajé, and afro-brazilian specialty from the northeast. This requires a little manual dexterity so best ordered before your stack of coasters gets to high. It starts with a fried ball of cornmeal that you split open and then pack with a series of various pastes, that I'm none the wiser as to what they were, and top with a whole dried shrimp.

After a couple of these constructions and quite a few more chopps, the next inevitablity is rounds of the classic brazilian bar game, palitinho (toothpick). It's deceptively simple, perfect for hustling drunk gringos. Everyone starts with 3 palitinhos and puts 1, 2, 3, or none inside a closed fist. Then it's a deductive game of strategy. Each player tries to guess how many palitinhos there are total within all the closed fists on the table. He (or she) who guesses correct gets rid of one of their palitinhos. And the next round begins. Whoever's the last one holding the very last palitinho is a gringo.