Street food in Rio.

If you’re a fan of red meat, then Brazil has got to be one of the greatest places on Earth for you. At almost every restaurant, the meat is of good quality, fresh, and cheap. But since I’m not big on carne, I’ve taken to liking other things (like the sweets! Omgoodness the sweets!) to more than make up for my lack of enthusiasm for feijoada.

In most cities, there is always a special type of food that’s reserved just for vendors on the streets.

You can find most of these foods anywhere, but the vendors usually come out around the late afternoon, when people are coming home from work and are craving a snack or sweet before dinner.

Here are a few I’ve found so far…

Pipoca: Popcorn! It’s sold here as salgado or doce (salty or sweet) or in some situations, you can ask for it “misto” (mixed). There’s usually a little bottle of lete condensada (condensed milk) lying around, and you can ask for some on top of the pipoca.

Tapioca: This one is a little hard to explain, because the tapioca is really only found in Brazil. The vendors make a sort of white pancake out of the tapioca flour, and you can have different toppings put on it—cheese, doce de goiaba, doce de lete, lete condensada, chocolate… I’ve found that lete condensada and queijo (cheese) makes the best mix of sweet and salt, but you may disagree

Hot Dogs (Cachorro de Quente): I have yet to try these, mainly because I never really crave hot dogs, but a lot of the carts are self service, and you can have a variety of toppings put on them. Cariocas really like their hot dogs; I’ve found them in so many lanchonetes as well.

Churros: I wish I had never tried these, because they can very easily become a very dangerous habit. Unlike churros anywhere else around the world, they STUFF their churros here with all sorts of goodness: chocolate, doce de lete, doce de banana, doce de goiaba. It’s really, really good, but very sweet—be forewarned, one of these can really make you feel full for a while.

(updated with photos 1.2.11)