Blog of the Morning Calm: Manaus

All you foodporn lovers are going to be very happy this month because we've got quite a few food posts coming your way! Not surprising really, since we were on holiday for three weeks and you surely know by now how much we eat!

This post is about the food we tried in Manaus and during our four day tour in the Amazon. The main culinary attractions of Amazônia are the fish and the fruit. I'm going to tell you about the fish, but I am planning a special post dedicated entirely to the weird and wonderful fruits we have been enjoying in Brazil, so you'll have to wait a bit for that.

The first restaurant we went to was Tambaqui de Banda, which has two branches in the city. We got a starter of bolinho de pirarucu. Pirarucu is an Amazonian fish and one of the largest fresh water fish in the world - they can grow up to 4.5 metres long! The flavour was a bit too fishy for me. I think it's because bolinho are made from dried fish, so even the traditional cod ones have a very strong flavour. But Dave enjoyed the bolinho, and in the jungle we tried fresh pirarucu which was much milder and tastier.

The starter was just us being greedy and impatient (as usual) because what we had really gone to the restaurant for was the tambaqui. This is another Amazonian fish, which looks a bit like a piranha and can grow up to one metre in length. I had read a lot of reviews and suggestions about eating tambaqui "ribs" in Manaus, but wasn't really sure what to expect. Because we chose a smaller sized fish, the "ribs" weren't as big as some photos I had seen but it didn't matter because it was delicious! The meat was white and creamy, mild in flavour and beautifully cooked. Grilled simply with some garlic, this was the best seafood dish I have had in Brazil, and Dave thinks it is one of the tastiest fish he has ever eaten.

Next up is traditional soup from the northern states of Brazil, called tacacá. There are several components to this dish which, in all honesty, wasn't that great and Dave didn't manage to finish. First there is the tucupi; a broth, made from cassava juice and seasoned with salt and garlic. Into the broth a gloopy blob of tapioca starch is added, which just sits at the bottom of the bowl like a lump of wallpaper paste. Dried prawns give the soup a fishy hint and add nutritional value, but by far the most interesting element is the jambu. These leaves look a bit like spinach and have a bitter flavour, but more importantly than that, when we chewed it our mouths and tongues became completely numb! It acts as a sort of anaesthetic.

Here you can see how gloopy the gluey tapioca starch is. Apparently people often ask to leave this part out of their soup. We the soup from a stall in the square by the theatre, called Tacacá de Gisela and had really good reviews online so I think it was probably an accurate example of the dish.

The broth was bright yellow and looked quite appetising. Unfortunately the flavours were just too bitter and the tapioca blob was quite off-putting. Dried prawns aren't Dave's favourite so it was generally a bit disappointing. It was served in a hemisphere made from a gourd of some kind, which was places in a collar made from palm leaves (for balance). To eat it, Dave was just given a stick, which was not that helpful!

On our last night in Manaus, we went to Banzeiro, the top rated restaurant on tripadvisor. Check us out being all fancy schmancy! This was our penultimate chance to try Amazonian delicacies (we still had a lunch to eat the next day) so we wanted to make it count. As always, we over-ordered but luckily we were with Thomas and Laure, our two friends from the jungle.

We were given a little cup of caldo de pirarucu (fish soup) while we were agonising over the menu, and it was really tasty. I really enjoyed the use of coriander in the north, and the food in general was a bit more flavoursome than in Rio. This soup wasn't too fishy, and was a great start to the meal. Of course we still wanted to get some starters, so we ordered some tapioca cubes. These were crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside, not a lot of flavour but the cupuaçu jam it was served with was weirdly addictive. Cupuaçu is another fruit I will be explaining about soon.

The soup and tapoica were brilliant introductions to the Amazonian restaurant, but the creme-dela-creepy of our starters is pictured below. A smooth and sour puree of the ubiquitous mandioca/cassava topped with two rather sizable ants! I have to say I think this was more of a novelty than a particularly outstanding dish, as the ants kind of got lost in all the foamy puree but I definitely felt a bit of a crunch!

For mains...well it was the classic Brazilian experience. The menu gave no indication as to how many people each dish served, so we thought sharing two between the four of us would be fine. And maybe it would have been, if all the side dishes hadn't been so monstrous but as it was we were faced with far too much food. Anyway, the photo below shows everything we got and I will go around and explain it all.

At the top is is an Amazonian fish called matrinxã, which was stuffed with a gritty, couscous-esque thing called uarini flour (I think it's made from cassava but not 100% sure). This was the weaker of the two fish we got, with a more oily, fishy flavour. Below it, to the left is the tambaqui, which stole the show. Meaty, creamy and mild, it is well worth travelling into the jungle for! Below the tambaqui are some fried bananas - slightly caramelised and soft. Dave likes these, but I gave them a miss. Next to the bananas are two types of farofa, one was pretty plain and one had eggs. Same old same old really, but we do always enjoy it with eggs. The final two sides were a bit more interesting. The black rice was chewy, nutty and moist. Next to it is baião de dois, a traditional north-eastern rice dish with beans, vegetables and coriander. This was really tasty and we had it a few times during our trip.

The final restaurant we want to tell you about was one we went to right before leaving Manaus. It's called O Lenhador and has a fixed price of R$90 for their lunch buffet of Amazonian dishes. This is what we tried:

Battered stingray - This was tasty, with a texture like fish but flavour like prawn.
Rice with duck and jambu - I didn't like the flavour or the numbing jambu effect.
Dourado - I think it was over-cooked because it was a bit hard, and the flavour was too fishy for me. Dave though it had a similar texture to swordfish.
Pirarucu - It was dried again, so I didn't try it. It was rolled up in bacon and smothered in a cheese sauce. Definitely an odd way to serve fish and Dave wasn't too keen.
Fried bananas - They were quite sweet so Dave left them until last.
"Regional stew" - A yellow, fish, prawn and vegetable stew. It was pretty much just fishy, without much else going for it.
Jacaré - This is the Portuguese word for alligator. It was like the crocodile we tried in the Philippines, not that great really, a kind of cross between fish and pork.
Turtle - The turtle was served in several ways. It was shredded and mixed with farofa, pureed, which was weird, minced with some veggies, and stewed. Below you can see the picture of the stew. The skin was on and bones were in, reminiscent of the bullfrog Dave had in China. The flavour of the meat really reminded us of lamb but a little more moist. Strange but true.

Here is a picture of one of Dave's plate-fulls from the buffet. All in all the food was very disappointing - over-cooked, soggy, flavourless or just not nice. We got to try some things we hadn't had before which was good I suppose. The desserts were a let-down too! Below you can see a collage of what was on offer - just loads of overly sweet fruit purees, jellies, puddings and mouse. A slightly naff way to end our time in Manaus but scroll down to see something yummy lurking below the desserts...

The piranhas we caught in the river! Grilled, with a sprinkling of lime juice, they were tasty but not worth the effort it took to dig between the tiny bones. Still, an interesting experience and a tasty bit of revenge!

I finished work on Friday, met Katie and we took a late flight to Manaus, which is in the state of Amazonas. It was the first stop on a three week holiday around the north and north-east of Brazil and it didn’t dawn on me until the plane, quite how great this was going to be! Manaus is the capital city of Amazonas; it hosted games during the 2014 World Cup and is home to many large businesses due to its very low corporation tax. It is also surrounded by the world’s most famous rainforest. The plan was simple – spend a day in Manaus, then travel into the Amazon for a four day/3 night stay, and then have another evening and morning in Manaus before moving on. We were both full of excitement and some trepidation at the idea of sleeping in the Amazon. As a wise man (Karl Pilkington) once said, holidays aren't that appealing "anywhere you have to get a vaccination to visit". You need a yellow fever vaccination and malaria meds for the Amazon. It's the thousand other unknown tropical diseases that perhaps are more frightening... Anyway before we speak about the Amazon, we want to share our thoughts on Manaus…

The history and success of Manaus all centres on rubber. The rubber boom occurred between 1879 and 1912, during which time up to 80k tonnes of rubber was made each year. It was the influx of wealth and the building of the beautiful theatre that earned Manaus the name “Paris of the tropics”. There was a lot of wealth in the area due to the hard work of the slaves and the new money was flaunted around back in the day. It’s easy to forget that a lot of Brazil was built by slaves when you live in Rio.

We spent the first day walking around the city, taking in the sights. We saw churches, palaces, parks, the aforementioned theatre and the main plaza. The city was a lot bigger than we expected (over 2 million people). I mean, the place is built in the middle of the rainforest! The indigenous culture is still on display, especially in the market that was happening close to the port. There was some cool tat for sale and we couldn’t help but indulge. Manaus is well worth spending a day or two visiting as there is a lot to see and do.

MUSA is a museum with a treetop tower overlooking the jungle. There are three levels – 28 metres, 35 metres and 42 metres. We went to the MUSA with some new friends from the Amazon and it was definitely worth it as you get to see the forest from a different perspective. We also walked around the museum and saw some interesting (and scary) spiders and snakes.

Us with our friends from the Amazon at the top of the tower

We had two evenings in Manaus and we spent one of them in the plaza by our hostel. It was very pleasant; there were some nice restaurants and a violinist to add some ambiance and atmosphere. We liked how they had lit up the church and the dome of the theatre. After enjoying some time people watching in the plaza, we went into the theatre to watch an Amazonian dance show that was a little bizarre…but free.

It felt like an end of year performance of a university dance group. They were all very good dancers, and there was definitely a theme or two running throughout the show but it really wasn't clear. They ticked the necessary boxes of having a multimedia element and a variety of music and dance styles but unless you had read the research and dissertation proposal, the actual meaning was as clear as the Amazon river itself! I think some of the weird and honestly wonderful movements were to represent various animals but who knows which. And the random inclusion of topless women was just bizarre. Although it probably pushed them from a 2:1 to a solid first. Needless to say it was entertaining and well danced but weird and quite detached from whatever meaning there was meant to be.

Our final night in Manaus was spent at Ponta Negra, a newly built and fairly affluent part of the city. It has a beach (on the river), a nice bridge and a great place to watch the sunset (the fourth in a row for us after the jungle expedition). The area was well worth going to for a gander and a cheeky beer by the beach. It was a little bizarre having come back from sleeping in the jungle to find this place (not too far away) full of tall condominiums and a lovely boardwalk.

I think you need a full day in Manaus to get a decent enough feel for the place. An early morning start in the MUSA, followed by a carefully selected local lunch (stay tuned folks!), then a trip to the market and an evening spent in the old plaza – that would be a great way to spend a day in the city. The Ponta Negra area is worth it if you have a bit more tine and fancy a little trip to the beach.

That's about that for Manuas. Scroll down to see more photos that we thought were worth sharing.

Costs & Prices

Note: 1 GBP was around 4.9 BRL or 1.55 USD.

Rio to Manaus Flight = £83 pp

Local Hostel Double Room = £27 per night

3D, 4N stay in the Amazon at Juma Lodge = r$720 pp Cash only (£147 pp)
3D, 4N stay in the Amazon at Juma Lodge = r$600 pp for dorm