The Making of Good Memories

One of the great things about Brazil is the food – something that I am sure can be easily gleaned from my blog – and some of the best meals that I have ever eaten have been since I moved here nine months ago. Back in December, I made reference to the restaurant Banana da Terra in Parati, where I ordered, and was thoroughly enchanted by, the cheese and banana-stuffed calamari in a coconut and tomato sauce. Just thinking about it makes my mouth water and gets me thinking as to whether or not I will ever be back in Parati and able to order the dish again.

Banana da Terra is part of a network of restaurants here in Brazil called the Associação de Restaurantes da Boa Lembrança – or the Association of Restaurants of Good Memories. Each Boa Lembrança restaurant [there are approximately seventy throughout the country] has a signature dish which, if you order it, comes with a painted ceramic plate which commemorates the dish. The signature dishes change on an annual basis and many people manage to make quite a hobby of frequenting the member restaurants and collecting the plates.



Now, in the past few months, I have been to several Boa Lembrança restaurants in different parts of the country and have remarked that, indeed, the food is always excellent and well worth the visit. However, I have also noticed that the Boa Lembrança signature dish is not always the better of the dishes ordered. In Parati, this was clearly the case as the banana-stuffed squid was far superior to the second [signature] dish that we ordered. Back in São Paulo, I went to the Empório Ravoli, another Association member, and although I ordered the signature dish of partridge-stuffed ravioli with a cassis sauce [which sounds quite good on paper], my colleague's tomato and cod-based pasta was far superior. After this second meal, I was beginning to get the impression that while it was worth visiting the member restaurants, it wasn't necessarily the case for the signature dish itself.

Here in Recife, there are several member restaurants in town, and I am keen to continue the experiment in order to see whether or not my hypothesis is true. Therefore, yesterday afternoon, in the name of science, we headed out to the Oficina do Sabor – the Flavour Workshop – in Olinda [a historical town, 7km north of Recife] to test out the wares. Now, off the bat, I have to say that the Oficina do Sabor is a absolutely charming restaurant located in a historical colonial house. Its main seating area is a covered terrace which overlooks Olinda and in the distance, Recife and in its annual survey of Recife's gastronomy, Brazil's Veja magazine named Oficina's chef Recife's chef of the year.

Right away my eye was drawn to the signature dish – shrimp in a mango and passion fruit sauce cooked with coconut milk and accompanied by a rice side dish. Was there any way that this could not be the best dish in the house? Well, after perusing the menu we came to our multi-fold dilemma. First, the rest of the dishes looked amazing as well. Second, we also wanted to try one of the shrimp-cooked-in-a-pumpkin dishes for which the Oficina is famous; and third, all the other dishes except for three pasta dishes, which clearly are not the specialty of the house, are designed for two to three people, making ordering a bit challenging when the signature dish is only intended for one and we were not quite hungry enough to eat for three. In the end, we decided to go with the shrimp with passion fruit sauce cooked in a pumpkin accompanied by a calamari risotto [pictured above]. And what a dish it was! Not quite as stunning as the calamari and banana dish [clearly I am smitten], but a true winner nonetheless. Of course the scientific experiment is still incomplete and this must be corrected. So I am sure that in the next little while, we will head back to Olinda to try out the shrimp with the passion fruit and mango sauce, no pumpkin. Seeing that there are a few more member restaurants in town, it would probably also be wise to enlarge the test-case circle. You know, for scientific accuracy and all. Stay tuned for the results of this important survey.