What We Eat
A Visual Guide to the Traditional Cuisine of Minas Gerais
i. Food as Culture
Authenticity is at the core of everything we experience on our trips, and nowhere is that more evident than at the table.
From simple breakfasts in village kitchens to long, wood-fired dinners — and even the trail snacks in between — you’ll find yourself immersed in the culinary realities of both Brazil and the Serra do Espinhaço. The meals we eat aren’t staged for travelers; they’re what folks here actually eat, and have eaten for centuries. We just make sure the portion sizes are generous enough, and served at the right times, to keep us moving through big days.
If you’ve come this far, we think you’ll love what’s on your plate.
If you’d like to see how all of this fits into a real journey,
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Even in a country — and state — renowned for bohemian culture, Diamantina manages to shine as an outpost of pub, grub, and pub grub. Here, porções of meat- and cheese-filled pastéis and savory canapés make for ideal bites alongside an ice-cold lager brewed on site.
It doesn’t get much more Espinhaço than a cast-iron pot of tropeiro — beans, toasted manioc flour, garlic, onion, eggs, bacon, collard greens, and pork cracklings — cooked by a real-life mule driver in a wilderness refuge historically used by tropeiros. It may not look like much, but if Minas had a state dish, this would be a strong contender.
Pão de Queijo. Conselheiro Mata
iI. Comida Mineira
If you’re unfamiliar with comida mineira, rest assured that you will be by the end of the trip, and Brazilians everywhere will be jealous. While still relatively unknown abroad, you’d be hard-pressed to find a regional cuisine more beloved within the country, where it is celebrated for both its timeless preparation methods (traditionally employing wood-fired stoves and clay & cast-iron cookware) and fresh, minimally processed ingredients, including locally-sourced fruits & vegetables, high-quality dairy products, and farm- (and often home-)raised pork & chicken—with beef & seafood being notably less common in Minas than in neighboring states.
We break bread together dozens of times on each trip, and most of those meals happen in local homes and family-run restaurants and pousadas. In practical terms, that means lots of genuine, homemade, unsophisticated comida mineira — good news, because the cuisine of Minas Gerais is diverse, hearty, and beloved.
If you’re unfamiliar with comida mineira, you won’t be by the end of the trip, and Brazilians everywhere will be jealous. While still relatively unknown abroad, it’s one of the most cherished regional cuisines in Brazil, celebrated for both its timeless preparation methods (wood-fired stoves, clay and cast-iron cookware), and its fresh, minimally processed ingredients: locally grown fruits and vegetables, high-quality dairy, and farm- (often home-) raised pork and chicken, with beef and seafood playing smaller roles here than in many neighboring states.
Minas has long been famous for its coffee and copper pot–distilled cachaça, but no ingredient is more woven into daily life than queijo (cheese). Pão de queijo is the state’s most iconic offering, and artisanal cheeses from Minas Gerais — including many of the ones eaten daily in the Espinhaço — have recently been recognized by UNESCO as part of the world’s intangible cultural heritage.
Examining the fogão a lenha at Sr. Zé’s house in the remote quilombola community of Covão. Still a fixture of many traditional rural homes in the Espinhaço, wood-fired stoves provide not only a practical way to cook but also heat in winter and hot water for showers year-round.
Small farmsteads have been producing high-quality cheese in Minas Gerais for centuries, but until recently very few people outside Brazil had tasted them. In 2022, queijo Canastra — a creamy raw-milk cheese from southwestern Minas — briefly stole the spotlight, but queijo de Serro, requeijão de Barra, and even the humble house-made mussarela (pictured here) all have long, storied traditions in the state.
Feijão & Cast iron. Couto de Magalhães
III. Cuisine of the Serra do Espinhaço
In the Serra do Espinhaço itself, dairy plays an outsized role in both the economy and the kitchen. Regional cheeses have earned national and even international attention in recent years, and you’ll understand why by about day three.
At the breakfast table, simple cakes, breads, and small pastries — quitandas and pão de queijo among them — often appear alongside local fruits, yogurt, and, in some houses, house-made jams and butters.
Lunches and dinners tend to revolve around:
· one or more starches (potatoes, yams, pasta, farofa, and angu, a polenta-like corn dish),
· stewed and sautéed vegetables (collard greens are common, but you’ll also see okra, taioba, zucchini, carrots, pumpkin, samambaia, mustard greens, and the much-celebrated ora-pro-nóbis),
· torresmo (pork cracklings), and
· a home-raised protein (usually chicken or pork, occasionally stewed or salted beef)
— all in the company of the ever-present arroz e feijão.
The food here carries the marks of the Espinhaço’s geography: steep mountains, patchy and often acidic soils, and long distances between towns. People have had to grow what will take root, and cook in ways that make food travel well and stretch far.
It’s simple food, cooked with time and care, and it tends to taste best after a long day outside.
Dona Maria tidying up her kitchen and dining area after supper in the tiny quilombola community of Bica d’Água. Despite living at the end of a brutal (if beautiful) dirt road some 50 mountain kilometers from Diamantina, her cooking is famous in the region. There are few meals we look forward to more.
Frango com quiabo (home-raised stewed chicken and okra), rice, beans, fried potatoes, leafy salad, and ice-cold beer round out a feast fit for weary travelers in the quilombola community of Quartéis do Indaiá.
Queijo caseiro. Covão
Supper at Sinara’s house in Quartéis do Indaiá is always a treat. On this night, it was generous plates of beef-and-potato stew, rice, beans, farofa, angu, and collard greens (not pictured). After 31 kilometers of hard-fought trekking, we left feeling exactly as we hoped to: wrecked and very happy.
An unexpected dessert of fresh maracujá (passionfruit) pudding at Sinara’s table in Quartéis. A quiet, perfect ending to a long day and a very long meal.
Janta! Couto de Magalhães
IV. Homecooked & Home-style meals
When it comes to home-cooked meals, we rarely make special requests. We want our hosts to serve the food they feel comfortable preparing — the food they’d be eating even if we weren’t at the table.
We do, however, occasionally ask for extra quantities (we tend to arrive hungry). That said, we can’t emphasize enough how naturally generous portions usually are in the homes and restaurants where we dine, and travelers frequently cite meals as some of the most fulfilling highlights of their trip.
Many of the people cooking for us do so with great humility and care. With the arguable exception of Diamantina, the Espinhaço is not a wealthy region, and the range receives very little international tourism. For many of our hosts, cooking for a group of famished foreigners is both a rare treat and an occasion to be taken seriously. We consider it a privilege to break bread with them.
Most dietary needs can be accommodated with advance notice, but this is still rural Brazil: very restrictive diets are possible in some contexts and harder in others. We’ll be honest with you about what’s realistic on a given route.
Júlio (left) and Paul helping themselves to a wood-fired feast at Noêmia’s house in the quilombola community of Capivarí. Self-service buffets are the norm in Minas Gerais — even at home.
Portions tend to be generous — there were just four of us at this table — and heavy on carbohydrates, vegetables, and protein. Which is ideal, because we usually show up hungry.
Cafe da Manha. São Gonçalo do rio das Pedras
IV. Café da Manha
Breakfast (café da manhã) is an important meal across Brazil, though the table looks different depending on where you are and who’s cooking.
Country-wide, a typical breakfast might include fruits, breads, simple cakes, dairy, juice, and coffee, with eggs and meat appearing less often than in many North American or European breakfasts.
In the Serra do Espinhaço, you’ll see that same backbone with a Minas twist: quitandas, pão de queijo, local cheeses, and strong coffee alongside fresh fruit and homemade yogurt or curd.
During trips, breakfasts run the gamut — from lavish, table-length spreads to humble plates of crackers and home-roasted coffee, and everything in between.
Café da Manha. Curimataí
Café da Manha. Quarteis
Café da Manha. Sempre Vivas
Café da Manha. Diamantina
Café da Manha. Santa Maria
Café da Manha. Santa Bárbara
An award-winning take on Carne de Lata (Canned Meat). Diamantina
V. Other Meals
Home-cooked comida mineira makes up most of our meals, but the Espinhaço does have a few other tricks up its sleeve.
In Diamantina, where tiny butecos (neighborhood bars) rub shoulders with crowded brewpubs and trendy burger joints, we often — though not always — bookend trips with more polished meals. One night you might be eating tropeiro and torresmo off a chipped plate while a TV blares in the corner; the next you’re sipping craft brews and sharing dishes that wouldn’t look out of place in São Paulo, if São Paulo had cobblestones and a baroque skyline.
In the agrarian lowland areas west of the range, we sometimes lean into higher-end accommodations, where lavish buffets, gourmet burgers, and Brazilian-style pizzas suddenly become part of the vocabulary. In other communities, we deliberately choose simple, locally owned hotels that reflect the working-class rhythm of those places — the kind of spot a Brazilian family might book on a road trip. Breakfasts there tend to be nourishing, no-frills affairs: strong coffee, bread, something salty, something sweet, and the day gets on with itself.
At established campgrounds and more accessible wilderness campsites, we may decide the timing is right for a proper churrasco. Meat over fire, cold beer, boots off. No notes.
On certain crossings — like the vast, remote Sempre-Vivas highlands — the menu shifts into mule-driver mode: hearty portions of tropeiro (beans, manioc flour, eggs, bacon, torresmo) and salted meats cooked over an open campfire. It’s food designed to travel, to satisfy, and to be eaten under open sky.
deserts. Santa Bárbara
Meat curing in a rock shelter used by local flower pickers. We didn’t eat this particular batch — we were just stopping by to see who was camped in the cave — but carne de sol and its lesser-known sibling, carne serenata, are both regional staples with deep roots.
We might be in the Serra do Espinhaço, but a plate like this could be almost anywhere in Brazil: a kaleidoscope of farm-fresh vegetables and lightly seasoned proteins framing a generous portion of rice, beans, and farofa. Bom apetite!
Churrcaso. Rio Preto
VII. Alcohol & beverages
By and large, mineiros enjoy a good drink or two — especially in good company, and especially if the drink in question is an ice-cold beer or a locally distilled cachaça.
Minas Gerais is renowned for its cachaça; the state is the epicenter of Brazil’s alembic (artisanal, copper pot–stilled) production, and Diamantina sits a stone’s throw from the heartland of that tradition in the north of the state. Beer and cachaça remain far and away the most popular tipples, but Brazil’s wine culture — long the domain of the southern states — is growing, and the sandy soils and mild climate of the Espinhaço have begun to attract a small wave of experimental winemakers. That said, wine is still uncommon in the day-to-day life of the range and much of rural Brazil.
On most evenings of our trips, ice-cold (and we do mean ice-cold) beer and/or local cachaça will be available on site or in town, and wine can often be arranged on request. Having “a drink” in Minas is usually a social, slow-burn affair, and the phrase vamo tomar uma (“let’s drink one”) is understood by all involved to mean “let’s drink more than one.”
If that sounds like fun, it can be a wonderful way to get to know people. If you don’t drink alcohol, you won’t be out of place — there’s always coffee, juice, and good company. We don’t necessarily recommend painting the town red every night of a multi-hundred-kilometre trek… but we don’t not recommend it either.
Saúde! Santa Maria
If you’d like to see the places behind these meals,
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