SAO PAULO
Sao Paulo is boring. I don't mean this as a negative. With a population nearing twenty-two million, Sao Paulo, believe-it-or-not, is the world's fourth largest city - sitting only behind Tokyo, Delhi, and Shanghai, and above Mexico City, Cairo, and Mumbai. That's some rare company and on that list, sure it'd be nice to be like Tokyo, and maybe Shanghai, but conversely you could be Delhi or Mexico City, two cities that wish they were boring. For a city of twenty-two million, Sao Paulo is way too organized, way too clean, and way to quiet. Never, at any point, with the Liberdade/Japantown neighborhood aside, did Sao Paulo ever feel too crowded or pushy. There were times were the silence and lack of a crowd felt strange - where were all the people? For all the descriptions and things Sao Paulo could be but isn't, it's better it's not the things it could be and isn't. It's a Ying, to Rio's Yang. A city to show another side of Brazil if not a destination outright itself. A good introduction to Brazil, if not it's best foot forward. I liked Sao Paulo. I didn't love it. I'm glad it was my first stop. I wouldn't return other than as a springboard to visit other Brazilian areas.
I was not aware that the date I arrived, November 15, was Brazil’s Republic Day, the country’s equivalent to America’s 4th of July (although in hindsight the crazy long line at immigration where there was literally no staff dedicated to non-Brazilians should have been a tell that something was happening today). Not aware until I walked to Avenue Paulista, the city’s primary thoroughfare and activity hub, and the road was shut down and residents were partying in the street. Typically the Avenue shut down occurs on Sundays, however, the date was swapped with the Friday holiday. Glad I didn’t arrive on Saturday as the street was not closed down on Sunday and would have missed this excitement - which is, in my opinion, São Paulo’s best attraction.
There’s music and dancing. There’re people everywhere yet with the lack of cars it doesn’t feel crowded.
I walked down to the Modern Museum of Art - the main attraction is the building itself. I spent a confused thirty minutes inside walking through a series of political cartoons (I think) before perusing the museum’s permanent collection - which has a few interesting pieces and a creative layout.
From here it was a walk through a jungle-like park.
Then back to the street bustle and pastel tasting. Coxhina, which is chicken leg in English because of its appearance, and a pizza “pastel”.
A quick coffee at Por um Punhado de Dólares - I discuss Sao Paulo's coffee scene in more detail below and will only note here that many of the city's coffee shops aren't like American coffee shops where you sit down, enjoy your coffee, and contemplate the world. This coffee shop, and a few others I visited, had brutalist type designs, were loud, and despite serving amazing coffee, seemed just as much focus on food.
Then a nice stroll to A Casa do Porco - one of the top fifteen restaurants in the world. A heavy, pig centric restaurant - everything on the menu has some element of pig in it. I took one look at the tasting menu, saw no pig breaks, and order two of the restaurant’s signature items - pork jowl sushi and san ze pork. The sushi was interesting. A bit heavy on the soy glaze. The san ze pork, which is a six-hour open roast, was phenomenal. All the flavor and crunchy skin of a Filipino pig roast with none of the grease.
The only time scheduled “attraction” I planned for São Paulo was a guided tour of the city’s historical center, with churches at three points, the area is also called the Triangulo. The tour began at the Italian Building and ended in Liberdade, São Paulo’s Japantown.

The Copan Building. Built with no stairs to accommodate handicap people - the elevators (which would also accommodate handicap people) are located in the middle of a floor, then the floor slopes up and down.
Galeria Metropole. Gathering place. Record exchange was taking place when we visited.
Rua Nova Barao. Mall area with mostly record stores.
​Theatro Municipal de São Paulo. 
Centro building, another former Theater. To the right is Sao Paulo's City Hall.
​Paróquia São Francisco de Assis - Jesuit Church, built with mud, dating back to 1647.
Sao Paulo's coffee exchange and Wall Street - it's been Brazil's economic capital for centuries.
Jesuit site where Sao Paulo was "founded".
Catedral Metropolitana da Sé de São Paulo - completed in 1954.
Additional photos of Sao Paulo's historical center.
The historical center tour was bookended by two sandwich stops. Breakfast was at Bar do Mane in São Paulo’s historical marketplace. The walk from the subway to the marketplace was interesting in and of itself - the chaos, commotion, and foot traffic were reminiscent of India. This was the only time it felt like São Paulo was a twenty million resident city.
The mortadella is Bar do Manes signature sandwich - it’s a tower of salty pork on a bun that’s half the appropriate size. A true breakfast of champions and there were only a few open tables at nine in the morning. The walk to/from the subway, the sandwich, and the marketplace itself kick started a marathon day in São Paulo.
Insane, and I mean insane, crowds in Liberdade had me skipping a planned lunch in this neighborhood. Long lines out the door just for coffee. The scene felt like being transported to Harajuku in Tokyo.
I took the metro a few stops down to Ponte Chic, a Brazilian diner of sorts and ordered their Barru sandwich, a more manageable beef based sandwich to Bar do Manes mortadella although suffering from the same dainty bread syndrome. A chopp to wash it down and the adventures continued.
All cities have their cool, hipster neighborhoods Vila Magdalena / Pinheiros is São Paulo’s entry on the list. Vila Magdalena’s hub is centered around Beco de Batman, a graffiti covered alley, which is closer in experience to Miami’s Wynwood district than Buenos Aires La Boca area - more Instagram, less grit. The alleys bars and restaurants provided great people watching, if watching people pose for photos counts.
I made my way over to Coffee Lab in Pinheiros. About 20,000 steps under the sun, coffee wasn’t top of mind but after a cool down I was ready to try what is arguably Brazil’s best coffee roaster. Brazil is the top coffee producer in the world. Unfortunately for Brazilians all the good beans are exported. Coffee Lab tries to address to imbalance. The “Lab” is a serious endeavor as the baristas mechanic attire suggests they need to do an oil change after the espresso. The Americano, or Brazilian, was so good I ordered a second.
Pinheiros met the cool, hipster expectations. The area along Rua Aspicuelta has a hive of activity. I wasn’t quite ready to make the coffee to beer transition so my only neighborhood stops were at Futura Refeitorio for slight snack and Frida and Mina for gelato.
The long walk around town concluded around the Oscar Freire area - the city’s Walnut Street equivalent. Unfortunately missing a Rittenhouse Square. Decent area. I popped into a book store, all Portuguese, and a toy store with all American toys that brought back memories of Toys-R-Us. A ton of space dedicated to Barbie.
Brazils coffee roasting scene has been slow to develop, however, it’s years ahead of the microbrewery scene. With a day drinking culture, I understand that a watered-down Brahma goes down much easier than a heavier IPA, but aren’t Brazilians yearning for a bit more taste with their beer every once in a while. Whenever they do, East Zone Brewing is there to fill the need.
I crushed day one. Day two in São Paulo was reserved for exploring beyond the tourist zone. On a Sunday morning, with the city seemingly still asleep, the exploration yielded few hits. Sure I wanted safety but this off the beaten track route turned out to be rather boring.

A nice stroll through the Jardim Paulista neighborhood lead to Parque Ibirapuera. The Monumento às Bandeiras sits at the north end of the park.
The park was full of runners and walkers.
I left the park and slightly backtracked to Skye, a rooftop restaurant at Hotel Unique, which as the name clearly indicates, is a unique hotel. The strange, and strange is impolite but I’m struggling with how else to call this, thing with São Paulo is how stretched and spread out it feels. Here’s a hotel, a fancy, high-end hotel, that in any other city would be surrounded by other commercial activity, yet in São Paulo it sits alone. The city has a block with bars and restaurants, then nothing for three blocks, then a few more bars and restaurants, then nothing for another five blocks. Good or bad, the city feels massive but empty.
All that said, a Sunday morning walk through Villa Olimpia did not do the neighborhood justice. Neither did my next stop in Morumbi.
One of my off the beaten path cheat codes is to head to where the Apple Store is located. São Paulo’s Apple Store is in a mall near the Morumbi metro station. Impressive modern office buildings aside, this was nothing more than a western style mall - Brazil has Brazil style malls where a nondescript street front entrance leads to all the shops - these are worth checking out. The Western style mall, not so much.
I pulled the plug on the explorations and head to A Figueira Rubaiyat, a steakhouse off Oscar Freire. The steakhouse’s defining feature is the 100+ year old tree growing in its center. The picanha was perfect. I did another pass along Avenue Paulista - the streets were not closed making the sidewalks crowded.
For dinner I went to Boteco Boa Praça for which I’ll make three points.
  • First São Paulo has a quirky, here I’m being polite instead of saying crazy infuriating, dining system where patrons are given a numbered key card which tracks there orders and is the basis to close out you tab. The only practical purpose, is in a country that blends bar and restaurant better than anywhere else in the world, is that it would make it easy and efficient to split a check at the end of the night. There’s also a strange “control” where a “bouncer” collects the card after you’ve paid as some sort of check against the wait staff. I think? I don’t know.
  • Second, menus are few and far between in Brazil as most restaurants use a QR code to launch a menu from their website - now you can’t order from the link and you can’t translate to English from the link so I don’t quite get the purpose. I thought I could get by in Brazil without a data plan. I got a data plan after the first meal. I may have starved to death otherwise.
  • Third, Boteco Boa Praca is a chain and I’m a firm believer in that chains are the best and easiest way to quickly understand a culture's cuisine. Say what you want about the Applebee's and Chili's but they make great American cuisine introductions. Although Boteco Boa Praca is a thousand times better than those two.
​Only regret is that I should have used Uber and picked off a few other neighborhoods instead of the long walks.

SAO PAULO VIDEO CLIPS