Quick Telecast
Expect News First

Little Brazil’s Ipanema Returns to Manhattan

0 54


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).

Ipanema’s pork chop with feijão tropeiro—Brazilian black beans with sausage and kale—and a cocoa-based mole sauce.

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.

Bica, a casual daytime café within the restaurant, offers pastries including Portuguese egg tarts.

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.

A trio of sorbets by Ipanema’s pastry chef, Alejandra Nicolon, who worked at Per Se and Eleven Madison Park.

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).

Ipanema’s pork chop with feijão tropeiro—Brazilian black beans with sausage and kale—and a cocoa-based mole sauce.

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.

Bica, a casual daytime café within the restaurant, offers pastries including Portuguese egg tarts.

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.

A trio of sorbets by Ipanema’s pastry chef, Alejandra Nicolon, who worked at Per Se and Eleven Madison Park.

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.) ♦

FOLLOW US ON GOOGLE NEWS

Read original article here

Denial of responsibility! Quick Telecast is an automatic aggregator of the all world’s media. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, all materials to their authors. If you are the owner of the content and do not want us to publish your materials, please contact us by email – [email protected]. The content will be deleted within 24 hours.

Leave a comment
Ads Blocker Image Powered by Code Help Pro

Ads Blocker Detected!!!

We have detected that you are using extensions to block ads. Please support us by disabling these ads blocker.

buy kamagra buy kamagra online