Since B for British was boring and not “ethnic,” we went for Brazillian food this week. There is a Brazillian guy in my program, a semester ahead of me, so I asked him for his favorite place.
He suggested this cafe near Carnaby Street, which is apparently famous, but seeing how I still know nothing about London, I was unaware.
So, after work on Thursday, I met Amy (a friend from Shanghai) and Whitney (a friend of a friend from Shanghai) there for dinner. The cafe is really small, with one communal table upstairs, and a few more tables downstairs, but the atmosphere is nice and comfortable.
Unfortunately, they were out of the cheesy Brazillian bread balls my CISV camp friends had turned me onto, so we had a “mini Brazillian snack board” and some Brahma beer to start. The snacks were good, probably because they were all fried. The cod one was our favorite, closely followed by some sort of fried cheese balls.
The cafe has Brazillian and Portugese food, so I made sure to order something Brazillian. There options were Feijoada, or Bobo de Galihna. I had had feijoada at a festival a few weeks ago, so I went for the other one, which according to the waiter, is from the North part of the country and not nearly as common a feijoada, the national dish.
It was really creamy and delicious, and I liked all the olives in it. It was also served with some crunchy potato things on top that were good. And the salad dressing was delicious. Oh! Also the hot sauce, Pirata, was really, really good, and sort of tasted like green Tabasco.
Amy had some sort of Portugese cod stew that was also really creamy and good. Whitney had a salad and some cassava fries. I don’t think I’ve ever had cassava, but it seemed pretty flavorless.
When my classmate made the recommendation, he said we must get the chocolate mud cake, so we did. And it was a very, very, good decision, as you can probably tell from the picture. It was more like a pie, with a thin crust filled with oozy, dense chocolate and covered in powdered sugar and chocolate syrup. They also had the biggest brigadeiro I had ever seen. But, since those are the easiest things to make in the whole world, and since I had a pretty traumatic experience making hundreds of them with messy Brazillian 11 years old at camp, I didn’t order it.
All in all, much better than our first attempt that this alphabet thing…but I’m not sure I would rush back unless I’m in the mood for a hearty, warm stew or that chocolate cake. There are too many other places to try for now.
In other big news, I went to Top Shop for the first time ever after dinner.
Pictures below.
Details:
1 Newburgh Street, Soho W1F 7RB, closest tube station: Oxford Circus.
Tel: 020 7494 9980, Meals served 9.30am-10.30pm Mon-Wed; 9.30am-11.30pm Thur, Fri; 10.30am-11.30pm Sat; noon-8pm Sun.
EATabetical: an alphabetical dining adventure through London's ethnic restaurants. 
What’s the Top Shop?
a store. like H&M etc… but British.