Le Pré Catelan (Rio de Janeiro)

Until a recent trip to Rio de Janeiro I thought Alex Atala at D.O.M. in São Paulo was the only chef diving head first into Amazonian ingredients in Brazil. I was wrong. Another chef, Roland Villard, at Rio’s Le Pré Catelan inside the Hotel Sofitel on Copacabana Beach, is just as intimate with these exotic ingredients. If not, more so. The French chef, serves an 11 Course Amazonian Tasting Menu that ranks among the best meals I have ever had the pleasure of eating.

Villard is not usually mentioned in the same breath as Alex Atala and Claude Troigros outside of Brazil because he is in fact, technically at least, a corporate chef for Sofitel. In Brazil, however, the Guia Quatro Rodas has ranked him an equivalent of three Michelin stars (and even chef of the year) and he is one of the most highly regarded chefs in the country. He is the only chef in the country that belongs to the Academy of French Culinary Arts. Le Pré Catelan is also considered one of the ten best hotel restaurants in the world by Hotel World Magazine.
The restaurant serves a contemporary French-international menu, but it’s their Amazon menu that caught my attention. Three years of research went in to the design of the menu and finding the suppliers of the traditionally hard to source Amazonian ingredients. From the first course I was swept up in the magic of the experience. The Brandade – a Provençal preparation of salted cod – was transformed with tucunaré fish and coconut milk. It was served in a hand carved bowl from the Marajó indigenous group and, instead of a spoon, the scale of a pirarucu fish (paiche in Spanish) was provided. Sharing the same plate were Tapioca biju crêpes filled with flat lobster and fresh hearts of palm. A brilliantly flavored pepper jelly adjoined it. While later courses might challenge, this in my mind is the one Amazonian plate being served anywhere on the continent to beat.
Next came a pastry shell filled with Siri crab meat, tapioca and sagu pearls, and topped with bacuri (a yellowish orang fruit with a slightly sweet, slight acidic flavor) sauce. This was followed by Pirarucu fish in a cashew crust with a tucupi and jambu consommé. Jambu is a curious herb,it looks like watercress, but has mouth numbing effects and is used widely in Belém. The sensation was minimal here, however.
After a Murici sorbet to clean my palate, came the Moqueca style blinis and grilled shrimp with a savory Brazil nut cream. One of my new favorite Amazonian plates is the use of Tambaqui ribs. Tambaqui is a meter long freshwater fish that sort of resembles a giant piranha. It sometimes is called Pacu too. It has huge, meaty ribs that can be grilled and served like a lamb rib. I had it a few days before while lunching at the Fasano hotel’s Al Mare restaurant. Villard served it with smoked baroa potato purée and an herb sauce. A cashew sorbet followed, then came a breaded manioc confit of beef ribs, with the deep cherry like flavored jabuticaba sauce and terra banana marmalade with bacon.
There wasn’t any room for dessert, but I made room. Villard’s pastry chef was equally as impressive. Incorporating molecular gastronomy into the Amazon is seems to make sense. At least it did here. Out came what they called a “chocolate surprise.” It looks exactly like a Hostess Snowball in size and texture, but was filled with a rich coconut cream. Açaí, cupuaçu and taperebá sorbets ended the dinner.
During my meal, the flavor or plating of dish was not affected one bit by working with these ingredients. I would even say they were enhanced. The menu is one of the most impressive feats of a Frenchman in South America since Papillon. This is a meal I would, and probably will, order again and again. Word has it that Villard is working on a tasting menu with every dish using rice and beans. Count me in.
Le Pré Catelan
Av. Atlântica 4240
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
011-55-21-2525-1232

Puerto Rico’s Ruta del Café (Coffee Route)

Moving deeper into the mountains from Ponce, sticking to the famed Ruta Panorámica, Puerto Rico’s landscape takes a drastic turn. Buick size ferns grow out into the road and patches of green bamboo form a canopy over it. Avocados and oranges fall from trees and rot on the pavement, filling the air with a beautifully pungent aroma. The chirps of the coqui are constant. I have flashbacks of Dominica and Costa Rica.

In Jayuya, I get lost looking for my parador. I stop four times and each time I’m told something different. Jayuya isn’t big, but five different highways meet here and twist in a maze of one ways. A kid at the gas station draws me a map with loops and no’s and x’s where the road would end. I lose the trail but pick up the familiar Parador road markers.

Hacienda Gripiñas is a 150-year-old Spanish farmhouse that has been the social center of Jayuya, a coffee plantation, and the home of the founder of the village. The building maintains the history in clapboard walls, red tile roof, balconies overlooking coffee fields & trees. Wooden shutters are all open so the citrus scented air blows throughout the creaky old building. My room on the second level has a rocking chair, beamed ceilings, and a rose bush molded on the drywall. In the dining room the walls are filled with the linear notes of criollo folk songs. As they make my dinner the women, who are dressed in plantation style uniforms and aprons, sing from the kitchen.

“Al-go par-a to-mar,” my waiter asks in a tranquillo, cordillera twang. “Qu-er-ies ar-roz con hab-i-chue-las o pla-ta-nos ma-dur-os?” He says “Buen pro-ve-cho,” as my Asopao is served. The entire time he has this wise smile on his face like he knows some secret to living.

The route through the cordillera is pure coffee land. Puerto Rico was once a coffee powerhouse and its shade grown beans competed with Hawaii’s Kona and Jamaica’s Blue Mountain. On becoming a commonwealth they lost their touch, but appear to be back on the rise. After a quick stop at some Taino petroglyphs I go to Hacienda San Pedro, a coffee plant, just outside of Jayuya. The bodega wasn’t open yet, but the guys at the plant didn’t mind if I wanted to look around. It was more industrial than I expected, so I headed west to Hacienda Patricia, a century old artisanal plant that hand picks and sun dries their beans. A younger man peaks his head out a window when I pull up.

“Can I buy coffee here?” I ask.

He waves me in. I enter a concrete room with a table where there was just a sealed plastic bin and a scale. He opens the bin and the scent of the Arabica wafts through the air. Why don’t they serve this in the hotels? I could taste it without tasting it. At $12 a pound, it wasn’t cheap. He weighed it out, ground it right there, and sealed and stickered the bag. Walking out he asks if I want to take a look around. We go to a room with newly picked green and red beans and then a darker room with drying racks. We step out on a walkway, which sticks out of the side of a hill with a full panoramic view of the lush green mountains, where they place the racks to dry. If quality were related to the beauty of the place it is grown and processed, this would win awards.

I pull over at Maricao’s central plaza to ask a wrinkled old woman in a floral dress for directions. Even before I could ask her directions for Hacienda Juanita, she asked “De donde eres, Papi?” When I tell her she laughs. Then she points me up over the hill.
Hacienda Juanita is a working 24-acre coffee plantation. Like Hacienda Gripiñas, the cooler climate here brings weekend travelers who come to escape the heat of the cities and hike in the nearby Maricao State Forest or kick back in their pool or tennis courts. Their dining room, another of the Mesones, serves criollo dishes, using mostly the fruit and vegetables found on their property, that follows the original 18^th century plantation recipes. For the second night in a row I order asopao. The dish is Puerto Rico’s version of chicken soup that mixes rice with sofrito and a list of optional additions like pigeon peas, olives, capers, bay leaves, achiote, and oregano. For the second night in a row it is different.

At check-in they gave me a hand drawn map to a nearby waterfall, Salto de Curet. I have to follow a twisting unpaved mountain road through coffee plantations and then park my car in a dirt lot. The map says to follow an unmarked trail and cross a small stream three times and then turn and walk up the stream until reaching the waterfall. After about twenty sweaty minutes I find a clearing and a breathtaking 50-foot cascade and emerald pool below it. Looking in my bag I realize my bathing suit is still in my room. That pool looked refreshing though. I take a look around and no one is anywhere in sight. The hills are impassable on every side except the way I came. Being a Wednesday morning, no one is coming anyway. When else would I have a chance to do this? I strip down and dive in. It’s bone chillingly cold, but undeniably cleansing.

At dinner, I ask my waitress Rosa if there is a story behind the Pastelón de Guineos Juanita I’m eating. I hadn’t seen anything quite like it before. It’s a sort of corned beef with peas and corn with a bottom and top layer of soft guineos maduros. It looks like a slice of pie.

“A story?” She thinks for a moment. “Well, this is the only place you will find that dish in Puerto Rico. Everyone else uses platano, but we’ve used the guineos ever since the restaurant began. They’re sweeter.”

So there is a story.

IF YOU GO:
Hacienda Juanita
Style: The grandeur of an original Nineteenth century plantation. Location: A 24-acre fruit and coffee plantation in the western highlands. Accommodation: 21 typically decorated rooms with poster beds. Rates: From $107 per night. Amenities: Pool, bar, tennis courts, access to hiking trails, and their own Meson Gastronomico. Contact: 787-836-2550; www.haciendajuanita.com.

Archipiélago (Ponce, Puerto Rico)

 

Tired of the banking industry, native Ponceño Alejandro Vélez Blasini set off for the New England Culinary Institute in Vermont. After a successful run with a tapas bar, in mid-2009 he opened Archipeilago, a restaurant on the sixth and seventh floors of a building overlooking Ponce’s Parque de Bombas and Catedral de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe on Ponce’s Spanish style plaza. The rooftop view is stunning, one of the best of any restaurants I’ve ever seen. The town square below glows at night.

Inside, there’s a high fashion crowd that rivals any scene in San Juan – even the hostesses and waiters could be on Top Model. It’s as chic and modern as anything I have seen in San Juan, or Miami for that matter. Everyone is beautifully dressed and the scene of everyone dining on plates like Fried Cheese stuffed with guava and wrapped in prosciutto and Sancochado de Viandas gives the feel of some sort of Nuevo Latino photo shoot or telenovela.

Brasil a Gosto (São Paulo)

Brasil a Gosto, on a quiet tree lined street in São Paulo’s Jardins neighborhood, is one of those restaurants that teaches you as much as it feeds you. The restaurant was in fact founded after the chef Ana Luiza Trajano searched 47 different Brazilian cities across the country to complete an inventory of regional ingredients and recipes and then wrote a book, the same name as the restaurant, about it. Trajano takes many of those recipes, many of them usually found in dirt rooms shacks and market stalls, and presents modern interpretations in a contemporary dining room with high quality ingredients.
When I first sat down I was surprised that the chef came out to greet me even the restaurant was rather busy. Each day Trajano offers a different three-course executive lunch specials, as well as a local hot dish that originates in a particular region such as Minas Gerias or Espíritu Santo. I went with the executive menu of the day.
First came out a basket of mixed tuber chips (various bananas, yams, yucca) and fresh breads out of the oven that I’ll just assume are all traditional Brazilian recipes. Little dishes of Baru nut spread and a creamy cheese sauce flavored with parsley were sent out too. Next came skewers of grilled cheese curd (queijo coalho na chapa) drizzled in sugarcane syrup and a small dish of parsley pesto for dipping. So simple but it comes out looking so elegant. The main course consisted of slices of pork tenderloin with a deep red, smoky jaboticaba cherry sauce sided with a grilled banana and yam puree. Dessert was called a cocada, though it was unlike any cocada I have ever had. The baked, shredded coconut was served in a small bowl and a creamy custard like texture and and crunchy top like a crème brûlée. A more traditional crunchy cocada topped with lemon sorbet was served on the side. Every aspect of the meal was brilliant and tasted great.
I’m sad I didn’t have to dine here again on my latest trip to São Paulo. Trajano does amazing things with Brazilian ingredients. She makes a crust out of Baru nuts for Tilapia, the river fish Pirarucu is accented with lemongrass and ginger, and even goat appears with a creamy manioc sauce. The dégustation menu will have to wait. For now.
Brasil a Gosto feels like the rainforest with lots of natural light finding its way through the many plants that sit within (there’s several inner gardens including a vertical one) and surrounding the restaurant. Blown up images from the book of farmers, fishermen, and plants and woodcarvings add to this effect. It’s very much the tropical bistro I’ve always wanted to know.

Cebiche Causa de Divorico

Their patio tables sit in the parking lot right up against the cars, but that doesn’t mean Juez y Parte (Judge & Jury) cannot put out a mean cebiche. Here the specials are called the chef’s sentence. My verdict: Cebiche Causa de Divorcio (Ceviche that is the cause of Divorce). Octopus and Seabass are the defendents. Delicious.
*Side note: their Arroz con Mariscos is also one of the best in town.