Two and a half weeks of steaks every day. For most Americans, that sounds like heaven, the culinary equivalent of a week of hot-tub makeout sessions with Jessica Alba. For us, it was getting a little bit old. Don't get me wrong; Brazilian gaucho-style steak dinners (and lunches, and one very memorable breakfast) are amazing. The waiters bring perfectly done flanks, tenderloins, beef riblets and sirloins to your table and slice 'em off the skewer they were cooked on. You eat for an hour for under $10.
But, even that gets old. We were on our third day in Lencois, a small town five hours by night bus from Salvador, the capital of the northeastern state of Bahia. Lencois was a mountain oasis from the lowland heat, a smattering of small buildings, smack in the middle of a range of Arizona-class buttes.
We weren't planning on being there for more than a day. Terry is obsessive-compulsive about many things, but on the subject of breakfast he's an absolute nutjob. Our Lonely Planet for Brazil declared that Lencois was the best place in Brazil for a good breakfast, and that the hotels in town competed with each other for the honor of serving the best. When he
read that and I saw that the place was in the mountains, it was a foregone conclusion that we'd stop by.
Every morning, we'd get up and pack our bags with the intention of having breakfast, going out for the day, then catching a night bus back to Salvador. And every morning we'd have breakfast, look out at the river flowing over the rocks, and go to the owner of the Pousada Canto des Aguas and ask to stay just one more night. She'd laugh, we'd get our bags from storage,
and we'd be there for another day and one more steak dinner outside on the town square.
Our fourth night in town would be our last; the hotel owner had kept our bags in storage for the day, and we'd showered in the little room next to the pool instead of our own spot. Our flight out was in two days, and we wanted to spend one more night in the city before taking the flight back to Chicago.
We walked out into the main plaza, a cobblestoned square on the other side of the river from our hotel. The place was pleasantly crowded; everyone in town hung out there before dinner time, and the foreign and Brazilian tourists wandering round gave the place a cosmopolitan vibe.
"I'm not feeling it here," I said. "Let's walk around a bit."
"Cool," said Terry.
The side streets didn't present much in the way of distraction; each one wound away from the main square for about a hundred yards, then either dead-ended into the hillside or just petered out into the fields. We walked up and down three, past little pousadas and cafes dotted with people, all serving variants on the steak and potatoes we'd been living on since coming to the country.
A small lane led off one of the streets; it was missing the cobblestones that characterized most of the town. Muddy ruts led up either side of the alley. On the right side, a sign was visible in the faint light cast from the house across the way.
Tacos y Burritos
No way. Terry and I looked at each other, then at the sign, then back at each other, like in a movie, but for real.
"Dude," I said. "We have to go in."
Terry nodded.
We walked into a small hallway. Doors led to what looked like bedrooms, and a cramped stairway was at the end. A door on the right led outside, where a small kitchen overlooked a quiet patio, where a couple was munching on what looked like chips and salsa by candlelight.
"Buenos tardes," said a smiling woman with an apron as we walked in. "Please, sit."
I grinned. We sat. She handed us menus. Tacos, burritos, guacamole, tostadas...everything you'd expect from a back-home taqueria.
The woman brought us bowls of homemade chips and fiery red salsa as we looked at our menus. We both bought burritos; carnitas and pollo asado, respectively.
Bliss. Tortillas, black beans, fresh guac, juicy pico de gallo...it was all there. The burritos weren't particularly big or wrapped in aluminum foil, and the cheese was more cheddar than the traditional Monterey Jack, but it didn't matter to us.
"Good," I said.
"Mmphh," said Terry.
"You like it?" said the man half of the couple sitting on the other side of the patio.
"Hell, yes," I said. "We've been eating nothing but Brazilian for weeks. This is heaven."
He smiled, turning up the ends of his mustache.
"Yeah." His accent was San Diego by way of Cardiff. "We've been coming to Lencois for five years, and we always eat here. It's the only real Mexican food in Bahia. The owner is from small town in Baja; she always tells us that the food isn't quite like you can get at home. "
"Yeah," said Terry. "The avocados aren't quite right."
The man shrugged. "They aren't really native to here, so she grows her own. We're lucky to get any at all."
"Cheers to that," I said, raising my icy mug of chopp.
I've had better burritos in my life, I suppose; burritos that were more filling, with bigger, tastier avocados and plumper beans. Who cares? I'd spent that day floating in an underground lake miles from anywhere, and I spent that evening having one of the best burrito experiences this burritophile has had anywhere.
