The Boston Phoenix
November 25 - December 2, 1999

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Café Belo

Brazil comes to you, for $3.85 a pound

by Stephen Heuser

DINING OUT
Café Belo
81 Brighton Avenue (Osco Plaza), Allston
(617) 783-4858
Open Mon-Sat, 7 a.m.-10 p.m., and Sun, 11 a.m.-9 p.m.
No liquor.
MC, Visa
No smoking
Sidewalk-level access

Okay, okay, sure, some of the chicken was a little dry, and maybe some of the greens tasted a little plain, and perhaps -- perhaps -- the Grapette grape soda was not the absolute model of a carbonated beverage. But readers, please hear me. I have supped to satiation on the foods of Brazil. I have eaten the stews of Brazil, and the tubers of Brazil, and the spit-roasted garlic sausage of Brazil, and I have sipped the pear nectar of Brazil and nibbled the exceedingly sweet desserts of Brazil and browsed the CDs and phone cards of Brazil, and four of my friends have done all these things too, and the bill -- the total bill, for five hungry people -- was $40.84.

My current theory is that all the food at Café Belo fell off a truck, because there is no rational economic model that explains how this place can charge $3.85 a pound for food and stay in business. The food could be awful and this would make no sense. Clearly they are saving some money on décor and on rent, because the walls are totally bare and the location is Osco Plaza. But still.

Café Belo is a big spare room that used to be a Thai restaurant (relic of previous occupant: little glass chandeliers in the ceiling). The pace of eating is relaxed, languid, happy. One corner of the room is dedicated to furious Brazilian commerce: there are CDs, phone cards, and apparently more, too, because the sign outside says NOTARY PUBLIC, PORTUGUESE TRANSLATION, MONEY TRANSFER, CHECKS CASHED, AIRLINE TICKETS, PHONE CARDS. If the food prices are anything to judge by, you can fly from Café Belo to São Paulo for 30 bucks.

Not everyone speaks great English here, but this is the sort of restaurant where if you enter looking even slightly lost, someone darts out from behind the counter to give you a tour of the place and show you how it works. The system is like a college dining hall plus a scale: you take a plate, you graze the buffet, the plate gets weighed, you eat.

Repeat. Pay at the end. Gloat.

Obviously cafeteria food is not going to be the most sophisticated cooking ever executed, but it's better here than you might expect. This is probably because Brazilians have some practice at it; the by-the-kilo buffet is popular in Brazil, and the cuisine is pretty well suited to this approach. Brazilian food tends to be a lot of meat and potatoes, or meat and rice, or meat and yuca. Beans play a significant role. Stews are popular, and stews tend to get better the longer they simmer. If Brazilian food is unfamiliar, the cool thing about Belo (we're on a nickname basis now, Belo and I) is that if you're not sure how much you like any of this stuff -- hey, it's a buffet. You can try things in tiny amounts: a little of the chopped greens, a little salade russe, a scoop of rice, a little of the refried beans with yuca flower -- ooh, maybe a little more of those refried beans with yuca flower.

The total spread is three steam tables' worth of food, and it changes from night to night. A few dishes seem consistent: black beans in liquid, refried beans, a big tray of rice, excellent sweet plantains. There's usually some kind of potato or pasta salad, or both; and there are boiled collard-type greens sliced into ribbons. One night there was a nice light cabbage slaw; another night hard-boiled eggs bobbing in Russian dressing. One night there was spare-rib stew with chopped okra forming a slurpy sauce; another night there was rotini with linguiça, curiously translated as "rotini with kielbasa." A neat dish was a stew of toasted manioc flour (manioc flour is pulverized yuca root; it has a texture like fine couscous) tossed with chunks of salty pork and green olives. Another night there was a full tray of boiled cornmeal mush, much like polenta. The trick is to line your plate with a couple of blander bases -- the rice, the cornmeal -- and then layer on the flavorful beans and stews.

The other trick is to save room for the meat. The best part of Belo is almost hidden at the end of the steam tables: a whole churrascaria set-up. A hardwood-charcoal fire crackles in a big ventilated steel fireplace, over which several spits of meat are turned by a guy who, if you don't speak Portuguese, can pretty much tell you which meat is which, and after that it's all pointing. As soon as you show up with your plate, he'll pull a spit off the fire and shave off as much as you want with a foot-long carving knife.

Churrascaria is colloquially called Brazilian barbecue, but it's not like American barbecue: the meat is roasted, not smoked, and it's not covered with goopy, tomato-y sauce. (A nice topping is at the buffet: go back for the salsa of chopped onions and pepper and vinegar.) The meat is basted with brine, and the result is a wonderful, moist, fire-roasted saltiness. There's some risk that the meat can dry out a bit, but the grillmaster seems pretty happy to carve whichever bit of meat you want: the rare part of the beef, the crispy burnt edge of the pork. Have two chicken hearts. Hey, have a dozen.

Drinks here are self-serve, out of a fridge. There's water and soda and, most intriguingly, a selection of canned Brazilian nectars: pina (pineapple), pêra (pear), fresa (strawberry), guanabana (er, guanabana). Then, of course, there's Grapette, with the slightly optimistic slogan Quem bebe Grapette repete ("Whoever drinks Grapette repeats it.")

For all its underdecoratedness, Belo is not without soul; there are big round tables for groups, and white-tablecloth tables for smaller groups, and you eat in a little room-within-a-room bordered by a waist-high wall of blond wood. A Brazilian soap opera plays on TV. Everyone smiles and indulges your total misunderstanding of whatever you're trying to do; the idea here is mostly to kick back and have fun eating. The crowd is a mix of Brazilians of all ages, and young non-Brazilians from Allston who know a sweet deal when they see it, even if they can't pronounce "churrascaria."

The sweetest deals here, in the literal sense, are the desserts, most of which look like treats someone's grandmother made for a bake sale. A big glass casserole dish holds flan with caramel sauce; another holds a layered custard-ladyfinger cake topped with ground peanuts. There are plastic containers of rice pudding. In four buckets from a bakery in Chelsea are four colors of macaroon; just to live on the edge, I ate the most lurid one (orange, deadly sweet, tasted like butterscotch). Nothing was bad. Last Saturday night the least sugary dessert was a pie of coconut and grated manioc; it was about as sweet as a birthday cake. I had coconut in my teeth for hours afterward, but believe me, I didn't care.

Stephen Heuser can be reached at sheuser[a]phx.com.


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