The Answer is – Yes!

Since living in Brazil there has been one question that gets asked of us over, and over, and over, and over again. “Have you had feijoada?” It could be a Brazilian friend, acquaintance or even a person back home with culinary interests.

My favorite answer for the past several months has been that I’ve had vegetarian feijoada. This always gave me a good laugh because it would usually result in a look of completely surprise by the person asking the question. Do they even make that? Well, yes they do, at the little vegetarian restaurant I’ve grown to love here. It’s full of soy-based meats which usually aren’t my cup of tea and not that good for you either, but in the end it is just black beans and rice and I like that.

To be honest, I was getting a little tired of the question. Personally, I feel that Brazil has so much more to offer regarding food than feijoada. I realize it is the national dish, and a visitor should experience it, but when it comes down to it you’re talking about black beans, pork and rice. As with most of the dishes, the farofa (toasted manioc flour with bacon) and the vinaigrette (tomatoes, onion, parsley and lime juice) really make the meal for me.

Well, my husband had wanted to try the real thing, and I figured I couldn’t keep making my claim that there were better foods than feijoada if I had never actually had the real thing so we set out to try it on Saturday.

There were a couple different options for Saturday feijoada and we headed to our first pick which, as it turns out, no longer offers it on the weekends. So our second pick was pretty much by default because it was along the walk back to our apartment. This place is actually a rodizio pizza joint during the week, but on Saturday it is traditional feijoada buffet.

The experience as a whole was quite pleasant. There were several people there and even a live band playing samba music. We really need to learn more about the different types of samba here. We know there are several and this was the kind we liked, but we couldn’t identify it. I had my heart set on a picture and maybe even a little filming, but as we finished up and I was ready, the band took a break to eat lunch!

Okay, so let’s talk about the food. I’ve mentioned that feijoada is a national, traditional dish which in most cultures translates to - it has a lot of random animal parts. In the case of feijoada this comes in the form of the pig.

I must also mention that almost every person we’ve met here has told us we should try feijoada. Then when I express concern about random pig parts they quickly tell me that they would never eat it out. They would only eat their grandma’s or moms. Well, okay, so you are suggesting I go out and eat, but telling me you never would. Hence, the reason we’ve been here two years and haven’t had it yet.

Most restaurants who offer special feijoada days are kind enough to separate out all the parts so you can choose beans, along with the meat you want, or no meat, as they just had black beans as well. This is why you see all the different crocks in the picture.

So depending what you enjoy you could have your beans with calabresa (a sausage), carne seca (dried meat), costela (rib), pé (pig foot) or orelha (pig ear). Hmmm…can you guess which one I went for? I stuck with calabresa, a tiny bit of carne seca and then just beans.

At one point when there were no people around, I did a little digging with the spoon in the pot of all the random parts. I was tempted to try the pig ear and then pulled up a nice flabby piece of flesh which practically initiated the gag reflex. The pot with the feet was full of pieces of bone. Then there was this one pot that we couldn’t identify – rabo. Considering that google is telling me that rabo translates to bum, posterior, stern or tail, by the looks of what was in that pot, I’m going have to go with tail.

The thing is if someone would offer me a tiny bite of say ear or a small piece of meat off the foot, I’d probably try it (sorry, no-go on the tail). However, I do not want a big piece of said part staring back at me from my plate. I just can’t stomach it.

So, the feijoada, minus certain parts, was very good, but I had no doubt it would be. However, I will say it made us feel like complete crap the rest of the day. We literally walked in the door and hit the bed for a nap. Even after the nap we could barely move. It wasn’t the typical bean bloating and all that, we just felt awful. Personally I think it is all the pork fat that my body simply isn’t used to. It was a good, cultural experience, but I doubt I’ll be dining on an afternoon of feijoada again anytime soon.

After the experience my prior opinion still stands, however. If you are in Brazil, try feijoada, but please don’t stop there. There are so many other foods that I would consider much better especially if on the coast. Moqueca (a stew made with peppers, onions, meat or seafood and coconut milk) and Camarão na Moranga (shrimp and cheese baked in a pumpkin) come to mind.

At lunch I asked my husband if you can truly say you’ve had feijoada if you didn’t have all the parts. I don’t know what others would say, but I think I’m going to go with yes. Finally I can stop talking with people about it because – Yes! I’ve had feijoada.