This huge country has a rich regionalized cuisine, which is almost impossible generalizing it because of so great differences in just one territory. The food of one region seems exotic to the other region of the same country. Many times, the same native fruit known in one area are unknown in the other. For example, a city baby could have a kiwi juice every day of his life without even have tasted a tapioca mingau with açaí, or even getting to see a fruit called araça, or cumbucá or sapoti or even jenipapo.
Our pioneers of colonization hadn't found here a developed cuisine but the impact of the environment, and of the new ingredients were of great importance to them especially when they meet the native Indians, that's when they got to a cuisine vortex. The cassavas, the fruit, the pepper, the hunting and the fishing are getting mixed together with the olive oil, with the dry codfish, with the all kinds of soup, to the sweeties.

The Portuguese starts to bring the African slaves to Salvador, capital of Bahia, to the plantations of sugar cane. That's when we incorporate immediately the oil called dendé , the coconut, the dry shrimp and other ingredients, getting together to form the trio : Aborigine, Portuguese and African, later on characterizing our cuisine.

Each region has, of course, its own characteristics coming from the past and from the geography that determines its typical food for the festive time like in Bahia with its saints, June parties, Reis parties, fasts and everything else there. Typical food for its especial festivities or in the restaurants specialized into this typical food.

Each region has its festive food, but the feijoada , from Rio de Janeiro, is considered by many the most typical Brazilian dish and even a source of inspiration for the poems like “Feijoada a minha moda”, by Vinícius de Morais. It is often served to visitors that are enchanted because of the big casserole of black beans with a thick juice cooked together with much salty fresh and smoked meat. Most of the time, they serve the meat separately, in one different bowl from the black beans. There are other food to have together that could be a type of cabbage chopped very tiny with a bit of garlic and oil, manioc meal or farofa – a type of flour with butter - and slices of fresh oranges. Every one likes to arrange his/her own plate in a certain way, but no one leaves behind the famous caipirinha , the national drink, made of alcohol called cachaça, lemon and sugar.

Nevertheless, going across North to South Brazil there is what is a river, figuratively, a flow: the everyday food, the basic food for lunch time and dinner time that varies not much with slightly differences from one place to another.

Resource: Embratur
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