In 1979, Alfredo Pedro—who was born in Portugal and moved to Flushing, Queens, as a teen-ager—quit his job as an engineer at IBM and bought a restaurant: Brazilian Coffee, on West Forty-sixth Street. Opened seven years prior, it was the harbinger of Manhattan’s Little Brazil, attracting all manner of Brazilian and Portuguese entrepreneurs to set up shop nearby. In 1988, Pedro changed the name to Ipanema, for the famous stretch of beach in Rio de Janeiro, and through the decades he upsized several times, without leaving the street. The menu, drawing generations of regulars, was a constant: coxinhas (shredded-chicken croquettes), bitoque (Portuguese-style strip steak with a fried egg and rice and beans), moqueca (coconut-milk-based seafood stew from Bahia).
By 2020, pre-pandemic, the place that had started it all was one of Little Brazil’s last standing establishments. When Ipanema reopened after the first lockdown, it had been transplanted to South Norwalk, Connecticut, near the home of Pedro’s son Victor, who, with his brother Carlos, had largely taken over the business. But in 2021 Victor and Carlos—who grew up, they told me, as “those restaurant kids that would sleep on chairs pushed together under a table, and be at the bar just, like, mixing random stuff”—took out a new lease on West Thirty-sixth Street. In May, Ipanema hung its shingle in Manhattan again, down the block from Keens Steakhouse, which opened in 1885 and is the last survivor of the Herald Square theatre district.
Where Ipanema’s original iterations tended toward kitsch, the latest interior is pure glamour, a controlled riot of luxe materials: curving wood, gleaming marble, jungle-green tiles, cascades of tropical foliage, performance velvet, romantic lighting, Getz and Gilberto on the stereo. The food, too, from a Brazilian-born chef named Giancarlo Junyent, who cooked at Tom Colicchio’s Temple Court, veers fancy, in a slightly outmoded way. On a recent night, a perfectly round mold of foie-gras mousseline was capped with a translucent layer of passion-fruit gelée, and bacalhau, or salt cod, came elegantly molded, too, one layer in a tower that also included shredded potato, egg yolk, and olive tapenade.
Entrées were homier. An excellent feijoada, an inherently rustic Brazilian black-bean stew, thick with kielbasa and pork loin, was served in a ceramic cauldron alongside miniature clay pots of white rice and steamed collard greens and a dish of farofa, or toasted cassava. More satisfying still was lunch a week later, at the daytime-only café within the restaurant called Bica, which is shorthand for the Portuguese equivalent of an espresso (and an acronym, some say, for “beba isto com açúcar,” meaning “drink it with sugar”). Here are the coxinhas, the pastéis de nata (Portuguese egg tarts), the pão de queijo, gently blistered, chewy cassava-flour-and-cheese rolls ubiquitous in Brazil.
It’s easy to roll your eyes at an açai bowl, but what’s become a manic health-food craze in America, smacking of snake oil, originated as a normal, delicious beachy breakfast in Brazil, where açai berries grow. The thick, tart, sweet frozen slurry, topped with sliced banana and strawberry, might not hit the same, as the kids say, on the sun-baked sidewalks of midtown as it does on the famous mosaic pavement of Copacabana, but it’s undeniably refreshing. If Bica’s variety of bowls could technically be described as fast-casual, there would be nothing sad about having any of them for lunch at your desk. For the Lagos, tiny, garlicky shrimp, roasted fingerling potato, and a zingy chickpea salad are piled onto red quinoa. For the Amazon, a bed of baby spinach and kale is decked with candied cashews, dried fig, purple sweet potato, pink chicory, and green apple, as colorful and as cheerful as confetti. (Ipanema dishes $15-$48. Bica dishes $8-$18.) ♦
In 1979, Alfredo Pedro—who was born in Portugal and moved to Flushing, Queens, as a teen-ager—quit his job as an engineer at IBM and bought a restaurant: Brazilian Coffee, on West Forty-sixth Street. Opened seven years prior, it was the harbinger of Manhattan’s Little Brazil, attracting all manner of Brazilian and Portuguese entrepreneurs to set up shop nearby. In 1988, Pedro changed the name to Ipanema, for the famous stretch of beach in Rio de Janeiro, and through the decades he upsized several times, without leaving the street. The menu, drawing generations of regulars, was a constant: coxinhas (shredded-chicken croquettes), bitoque (Portuguese-style strip steak with a fried egg and rice and beans), moqueca (coconut-milk-based seafood stew from Bahia).
By 2020, pre-pandemic, the place that had started it all was one of Little Brazil’s last standing establishments. When Ipanema reopened after the first lockdown, it had been transplanted to South Norwalk, Connecticut, near the home of Pedro’s son Victor, who, with his brother Carlos, had largely taken over the business. But in 2021 Victor and Carlos—who grew up, they told me, as “those restaurant kids that would sleep on chairs pushed together under a table, and be at the bar just, like, mixing random stuff”—took out a new lease on West Thirty-sixth Street. In May, Ipanema hung its shingle in Manhattan again, down the block from Keens Steakhouse, which opened in 1885 and is the last survivor of the Herald Square theatre district.
Where Ipanema’s original iterations tended toward kitsch, the latest interior is pure glamour, a controlled riot of luxe materials: curving wood, gleaming marble, jungle-green tiles, cascades of tropical foliage, performance velvet, romantic lighting, Getz and Gilberto on the stereo. The food, too, from a Brazilian-born chef named Giancarlo Junyent, who cooked at Tom Colicchio’s Temple Court, veers fancy, in a slightly outmoded way. On a recent night, a perfectly round mold of foie-gras mousseline was capped with a translucent layer of passion-fruit gelée, and bacalhau, or salt cod, came elegantly molded, too, one layer in a tower that also included shredded potato, egg yolk, and olive tapenade.
Entrées were homier. An excellent feijoada, an inherently rustic Brazilian black-bean stew, thick with kielbasa and pork loin, was served in a ceramic cauldron alongside miniature clay pots of white rice and steamed collard greens and a dish of farofa, or toasted cassava. More satisfying still was lunch a week later, at the daytime-only café within the restaurant called Bica, which is shorthand for the Portuguese equivalent of an espresso (and an acronym, some say, for “beba isto com açúcar,” meaning “drink it with sugar”). Here are the coxinhas, the pastéis de nata (Portuguese egg tarts), the pão de queijo, gently blistered, chewy cassava-flour-and-cheese rolls ubiquitous in Brazil.
It’s easy to roll your eyes at an açai bowl, but what’s become a manic health-food craze in America, smacking of snake oil, originated as a normal, delicious beachy breakfast in Brazil, where açai berries grow. The thick, tart, sweet frozen slurry, topped with sliced banana and strawberry, might not hit the same, as the kids say, on the sun-baked sidewalks of midtown as it does on the famous mosaic pavement of Copacabana, but it’s undeniably refreshing. If Bica’s variety of bowls could technically be described as fast-casual, there would be nothing sad about having any of them for lunch at your desk. For the Lagos, tiny, garlicky shrimp, roasted fingerling potato, and a zingy chickpea salad are piled onto red quinoa. For the Amazon, a bed of baby spinach and kale is decked with candied cashews, dried fig, purple sweet potato, pink chicory, and green apple, as colorful and as cheerful as confetti. (Ipanema dishes $15-$48. Bica dishes $8-$18.) ♦