Monday, January 09, 2006

Cafe Brazil

It is very early in the morning and I can't remember if it is Cafe Brasil or Cafe Brazil...whichever one it is, it's a bustling place.

The cafe started as a tiny place at the corner of Manchester and McKnight and within a year or so expanded into the next building to become a much larger place and at least when I was there, they seemed to have no trouble packing the space with happy diners.

I had visited a couple of times when it was housed in it's tiny storefront. I liked the food at the time and remember that there were a fair amount of healthy items that I enjoyed eating...like some kind of wonderful greens dish and a corn something or other.

Like many new places I visit, I go a couple of times then forget about it. That's what happened here.

Well, last Saturday night, I went into the expanded Cafe Bra(s/z)il and found a warm, busy room fairly bursting with diners and lots of efficient service and heady aromas wafting about.

I tasted several vegetarian dishes that were really delicious. The greens are still on the menu and still good but could use less salt for my taste. Beans were yummy and I had a taste of some kind of a fish soup that was wonderful.

The wine chosen was a silky black magic... just delicious. I apologize that I don't remember the name but it was a red wine of about 28 bucks a bottle and it was from Portugal. It was amazingly drinkable and went down well with all the strong, interesting flavors of the food. Later, the owner brought a few samples of some of his organic wines, which I was so glad to see him carrying, and they were good but somewhat wasted on me, being already pretty wine-soaked. Too much of a good thing, in fact. Two glasses are really too much for me. I was walking, though, so no driving issues here.

Any vegetarian or health-conscious person will be well fed at this place. It so much feels like a neighborhood place, too. It just has that warm, friendly and "real" feeling of a group of real people who are serving real food and really care about what they serve and how they serve it.

I enjoyed myself immensely.

4 Comments:

At 11:14 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sweet Lo, a food blog is perfect for you and it's nice to hear the tastey things you have to say. Love, Polly

 
At 11:16 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

oops, leave it to me to misspell tasy. he he

 
At 11:17 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

tasty!!!!

 
At 8:34 PM , Blogger Eric said...

Hey Steve, it's definitely worth it - one of the things I used to love about it in the old days was how variable and interesting some of the specials were, and that aspect seems more or less to have survived. Plus, as I've heard, with the massive expansions (large dining room, outdoor patio), they just introduced Brazilian rodizio barbecue to the menu, something which Yemanja lacked on my last visit. And don't forget to get one of the Guarana Antarctica sodas that they import, they're tasty stuff!

 

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