Rio Street Food No-nos

Last week, I explained about my favorite street foods in Rio. However, there are some street foods I stay far away from. That's not to say they're not good or safe to eat, I just happen to think they're gross:

• Hamburgers - You'll find guys selling hamburgers out of little trucks and mini vans, and the whole concept kind of makes the food unappealing. They come in the same styles as the juice bar hamburgers, with cheese, lettuce and tomato, bacon, and other toppings.
• Churrasquinho - Though harder to come by, you will find guys with actual barbecues in the middle of the city, grilling up mystery meat or chicken on a stick. Shudder.
• Assorted desserts - All over town, you'll find the mobile dessert people. They walk around with a cart full of homemade desserts, like cake, cuscuz, and other baked things. They always look incredibly delicious, but for some reason I have never been able to bring myself to buy a slice and eat it from a napkin.
• Corn - This particular trend really perplexes me, because unlike Americans, Brazilians aren't very big corn eaters. Yet for some reason, boiled corn is a hugely popular snack food, and you'll find corn stands all over the city. The vendors sell boiled corn (the taste doesn't quite resemble American corn on the cob), as well as pamonha, mashed corn wrapped in a corn husk, and what appears to be liquid corn in plastic containers.
• Hot dogs - Oh, the infamous hot dogs. I've discussed them twice before (see here and here), and all you have to do is read below and understand why I steer clear of them.

Here is a hot dog Eliseu ate recently. It contains nothing less than peas, corn, green peppers, tomatoes, onions, mashed potatoes, a hard boiled egg, mayonnaise, ketchup, grated cheese, and of course, the actual hot dog:

Comments

[cyn]

bloiled corn is classic in the beach..
in my city, belo horizonte, you dont find these sellers..
i have to admit that the corns here tastes muuuuuuuuch better than the ones that i ate in usa and europe!

[Corinne]

Yes, you don´t find the corn in BH, but I always saw it on the beach. I disagree, the corn in Brazil does not hold a candle to US sweet corn. It is too hard. Corn is one of the things I gorge on when in the States.

[Carin]

Eli's dog: Most. Disgusting. Food. Item. Ever.

[Emily]

I've never liked hotdogs anyway. But the way they serve them up here really scare me! At an event we were recently at, they even topped them tomato sauce and fried potato straws along with everything pictured above. Eewww! And I swear the buns are the size of an entire loaf of bread (to hold all the toppings, I guess.) I hate to think how many calories and mg of sodium are contained in one of these babies!

And about the corn here: my hubby, who comes from Iowa (sweet corn country, for sure!), took one bite and was like, "Um, this is field corn. This is what we feed hogs, not people!" Nothing beats sweet corn as far as I'm concerned . . . especially not milho verde! (Which I see quite frequently in Belo Horzionte at the feiras: Afonso Pena, etc.)

[Emily]

Oh, and raisins. How could I forget the raisins on the hotdogs too!

[Steve]

Personally I like the boiled street corn. Delicious, practical...what's not to like?

My all-time favorite Rio street food is churros filled w/ dulce de leite.

As for hotdogs, I remember buying one inside Maracana Statdium once and it was served to me totally raw and chilled. Anyone else experienced this?

[cyn]

thats all a matter of taste...

i had sweet corns..
the first time i had it, it was by mistake..
missing brazil deeply i saw in the supermarket to sell in colorado
i cooked it happily.. when i had my first bite: its sweet!! whats the matter with it?

for me corn has to be salty.. and if only animals eat it in iowa, i am sorry, but i do think the animals there are better fed than the people!

[Alexandra]

I MUCH prefer the north american corn on the cob... having said that, I never visit Brazil without eating a pamonha or two. Always a savoury one, of course.

[Max]

Eli's hot dog reminds me of one of the more interesting burgers I've seen in Brazil, o super x burger: burger, ham, cheese, cubed bacon, pulled chicken, fried egg, tomato, lettuce, corn, peas, ketchup and mayo.

[stella]

em recife é costume comer o milho assado na brasa. é muito bom! milho cozido só nas festas de são joão...
que tal você conhecer o nordeste em junho, Gringa? você ia ver um lado novo do brasil... as festas juninas são maravilhosas!

[Tracy]

That looks like something you throw up, not something you put IN your mouth. o_O So incredibly disgusting!!

[Tim Stackhouse]

That hot dog reminds me of a Chilean completo... except much weirder and less appetizing.

[polyana]

omg, i eat all of the above and some. i couldn't live without a street "dog-ão" after leaving a club!

overall though (referring mostly to the corn argument, haha), i think it's all a matter of taste and what's grown where better. i.e. - if you've ever eaten a banana in brazil, you'd gag on any bite of a banana in the U.S., or if you eat beef in argentina - you're spoiled for life... or after a weekend on a farm in minas eating homemade cheese & doce de banana, and drinking coffee grown right there with milk from the cow... you dread going back to the city! God, I can't wait to go to Minas in a few weeks!

and i agree with stella - FESTA JUNINAS are prob. one of the best things EVERRR

[Cheryl]

I heart pomonha :)

[Andre, MA]

Esse tipo de cachorro quente e o que no rio agente chama de famoso "podrao"

[Priscilla]

That hot dog looks disgusting! *laughs* That is definitely not a typical Rio hot dog (mashed potatoes are a São Paulo specialty, I believe). Have you ever eaten at a "prensadão"? It's basically a place where they make sausage/beef/hot dog/salami/whatever sandwiches, you pick which ingredients you want, and they put the bread in a kind of grill to heat it up; then they turn it, and again, and again, until the end result looks sort of like an unnaturally rectangular and insanely disgusting sandwich. I fail at explaining it, but it can be brilliant when done right!

I've eaten some very good churrasquinhos in the city, but I wouldn't advise anyone to eat it off any vendor—I'd recommend befriending the guy first and finding out just what meat he's using, how he stores it, etc.

Mmm, corn. Corn is so awesome.

[Jen]

I'm going to have to defend the churrasquinho/churrasco grego. I was hesitant at first, but after the end of each Portuguese class at FAAP, my fellow foreigners and I would head to a bar across the street for a few hours of drinking. I was the only woman and the only American. The rest were German, Norwegian, Swiss and Chinese guys. Every night, the Norwegian would get meat on a stick from a guy selling it from his little BBQ cart. He eventually converted everyone until I was the last hold out, and I got tired of the "bawk bawk chicken," so I gave it a try. Maybe it was the beer that killed the bacteria on the meat, maybe it was because it was cheap and I can convince myself that anything that is a bargain is good, maybe it was because I didn't think too much about where the meat came from, but it wasn't bad at all. And I ended up eating it after each class. I figure it can't be that much worse than a dirty water dog in NYC.

I didn't get the corn thing either, and it became a joke with several of my friends. On the way to the beach, we'd stop to get corn juice. At the beach, we'd eat corn. At home, we'd watch TV and eat corn ice cream. And I just could not get behind corn on hot dogs, although I'd force myself to finish off a hot dog at Black Dog every once in a while. I'm guessing Black Dog is strictly a São Paulo thing, but it's where you go after a night of drinking or, like in my case, you have a friend obsessed with it at all hours. I'd get the Max Black Dog, which is topped with, if I remember correctly, corn, chili sauce, mashed potatoes, potato sticks, curry powder, cheddar cheese and requeijão.

When I went to the beach with a friend's family, his father went out for a burger run and asked me if I wanted onions on mine. Sure, I said. He came back with a burger that did, indeed, have onions on it but also mashed potatoes. And I wanted to ask him (but didn't): "You thought it necessary to ask if I want ONIONS on my HAMBURGER, which is TOTALLY NORMAL, but you didn't think to ask if I'd want friggin' MASHED POTATOES?" Ah, São Paulo.

[PatriciaUk]

trash trash trash and i love it!!! xx

[Anathalia]

Ew! I hate those street hot dogs... But I love the hot dogs that are served on children birthday parties. With tomato sauce and potato sticks on top! Yummy! Your post made me run to the supermarket to buy hot dogs, buns and tomato sauce! My brazilian hot dog was sooo delicious!

[mallory elise]

holy crap that is quite the hot dog!

[Gabriel]

Take it easy! There's many types of hot dogs... That hot dog is called a "cachorro quente completo(full hot dog)"...
I'm brazilian (of Rio) and I don't like them, but you can also buy with just the hot dog... actually is more common you make with hot dog, tomato sauce and potatos chips, and also katchup, . Those ones with all those stuffs are just are called of "podrão(rotten)"... The name says it all... hahaha

There's something interesting that there is a type of hot dog called "cachorro quente de forno (baked hot dog)" that is a kind of bread stuffed with the hot dog and the potato chips. A brazilian hot dog always have potato and the sausage. Yummy! ;)