What We Eat
A Visual Guide to the Food & Drink on our trips
i. Food as Culture
Authenticity is at the core of everything we experience during our trips, and this nowhere is this philosophy more evident than at the dinner table. From the meals that we share each morning & evening to the smallest of snacks on the trail, you’ll constantly find yourself immersed in the diverse culinary realities of both Brazil and the Serra do Espinhaço, while always receiving enough sustenance to continue your journey. While we always aim for the food to be yummy, it’s more important that it contributes to our appreciation of the world around us, and to our understanding of the Story that we’re all here to experience.
If you’ve come this far, we think you’ll love the food we eat.
Even In a country—and State—renown for Bohemian culture, Diamantina Manages to shine as an outpost of pub, Grub, and pub grub. Here, porções (small plates) of meat & cheese-filled pasteis and savory canapés make for delicious bites alongside an ice-cold lager brewed on the premises.
It doesn’t get more authentic—or rustic—than a cast-iron pot of tropeiro (a hearty mixture of beans, toasted manioc flour, garlic, onion, eggs, bacon, collared greens, and pork cracklings) cooked by a real-life tropeiro (mule-driver) in a wilderness refuge historically frequented by tropeiros. It may not look the part, but if minas had a state dish, tropeiro would be it.
Pão de Queijo. Conselheiro Mata
iI. Comida Mineira
We break bread together dozens of times during the course of each trip, with the lion’s share of those meals occurring in local homes and family-run restaurants & pousadas. In practical terms, this means you can expect to eat lots of genuine, homemade, unsophisticated comida mineira—and, good news: the cuisine of Minas Gerais is diverse, hearty, and delicious.
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.
Examining the Fogão ao Lenha at Sr. Ze’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 cooking Apparatus, they also heat homes in the winter & water for Showers year-round.
Small Farmsteads have been producing high-quality Cheese in Minas Gerais For centuries, but few Folks outside of Brazil had the pleasure of tasting them. In 2022, Queijo da Canastra (a Creamy raw milk cheese produced in southwestern Minas) Brought the State’s dairy scene to a global audience by being Named the world’s best Cheese By a popular international Foodie zine, but queijo de Serro, requeijão de Barra, and even Mussarella (pictured above) 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, specifically, dairy plays an outsized role in the economy & kitchen, with regional cheeses having attained significant national & even international acclaim in recent years. At the breakfast table, simple cakes, breads, and pastries like quitandas and pão de queijo (ubiquitous across Brazil, but decidedly more famous in Minas) often make appearances alongside local fruits & yogurt, while lunches & dinners tend to feature any number of starches (potatoes, yams, pasta, farofa, and angu—similar to polenta), stewed and/or sautéed vegetables (collared greens are particularly common, but also okra, zucchini, taioba, carrots, pumpkin, samambaia, mustard greens, and the much-celebrated ora-pro-nóbis), torresmo (pork cracklings), and a home-raised protein (usually chicken or pork, but sometimes stewed or salted beef), along with the ever-present arroz e feijão.
Dona Maria Tidying up Her Kitchen/Dining area after a group supper in the tiny quilombola community of Bica D’Agua. Despite residing at the end of a Brutal (albeit scenic) dirt road 50 mountain kilometers from Diamantina, Dona Maria’s cooking Manages to be famous. There are few meals we look forward to more.
Frango com Quiabo (Homeraised stewed chicken & okra), rice, beans, fried potatoes, Leafy salad, and Ice-cold beer round out a feast fit for a weary traveler in the Quilombola community of Quarteis do Indaia.
Fresh Cheese. Covão
Supper at Sinara’s Lovely house in quarteis do Indaia is always a treat. During this particular visit, Our treat included Hearty portions of savory Beef & potato stew, rice, beans, Farofa, angu, and collared greens (not pictured). After 31 km of hard-fought trekking… let’s just say we left feeling incredible.
An unexpected desert of Maracuja pudding at Sinara’s House in Quarteis. Mmmm…
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 us the food that they feel comfortable preparing, and that they would eat were our group not at the table to join them—but we do occasionally ask for beefed up quantities (no pun intended; we usually arrive famished). That said, we cannot emphasize enough how hearty the portions naturally tend to be at the homes & restaurants where we dine, and travelers frequently site meals as being among the most fulfilling highlights of their trip.
As a final note about home cooking & restaurants: many of the folks preparing our meals do so with great humility & gratitude. With the arguable exception of Diamantina, the Espinhaço is not a wealthy region, nor does it receive much in the way of international tourism. For many of our hosts & hostesses, cooking for a group of famished foreigners is both a rare treat and an event to be taken seriously. We consider it a privilege to break bread with them.
Júlio (left) & Paul Gleefully Helping themselves to a hearty wood-fired feast at Noêmia’s house in the quilombola community of capivarí. “Self-service” Buffets are the norm in Minas gerais, even in homes.
Portions tend to be Generous (there were just 4 of us present on this evening) and Heavy on carbohydrates, vegetables, and proteins… Which is great, because we usually show up pretty famished.
Cafe da Manha. São Gonçalo do rio das Pedras
IV. Café da Manha
Generally speaking, breakfast (café da manha) is an important meal in Brazil, although varying socio-economic conditions produce vastly different breakfast tables. Typical offerings country-wide include fruits, breads, simple cakes, dairy products, juice, and coffee, with american staples such as eggs & (especially) meats being decidedly less common. In the Serra do Espinhaço, specifically, quitandas (tiny hand-woven pastries) and pão de queijo (ubiquitous across Brazil, but decidedly more famous in Minas) often make appearances alongside fresh fruits & homemade yogurt.
You’ll find that breakfasts during our trips run the complete gammut, from lavish, table-long spreads to spartan offerings of crackers & home-roasted coffee, and everything in between.
Café da Manha. Gilma’s House
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
While homecooked comida mineira typically comprises the bulk of our meals, we also enjoy a variety of food in other settings. In Diamantina, where butecos (tiny dive bars ubiquitous across Minas) rub shoulders with brewpubs, and trendy burger joints outnumber comida mineira diners by a significant margin, we often (but not always) bookend our trips with a pair of more sophisticated offerings. In the agrarian lowland areas east & west of Diamantina (locally referred to as the Sertão), we often opt for higher-end accommodations, where lavish buffets, gourmet burgers, and Brazilian-style pizzas become possibilities. In other communities, we sometimes prefer to stay in simple, locally-owned hotels that reflect the working-class ethos of those places, and in order to provide travelers with a genuine reference for where a Brazilian family might stay during trips. In these establishments, breakfasts tend to be nourishing, no-frills affairs.
At established campgrounds and more accessible wilderness campsites, we may decide the timing is right for a proper churrasco. Finally—and notably—should your trip include a crossing of vast, remote Sempre Vivas National Park (where just a handful of residents occupy an area the size of Greater Los Angeles), our menu while crossing often consists of rustic, mule driver-style camp grub: hearty portions of tropeiro (beans, farinha, eggs, bacon, and torresmo) and salted meats cooked over an open campfire (the true star of the meal).
deserts. Santa Bárbara
Meat left to cure in a rock shelter by local flower-pickers. We didn’t partake in this particular meal (we were just stopping by to see if anyone we knew was camped out in the shelter), but carne de sol and its lesser known sibling, carne serenata, are both regional staples steeped in tradition.
We might be in the serra do espinhaço, but the Colorful meal you see above could well be anywhere in Brazil. A kaleidoscope of farm-fresh Vegetables & fatty, lightly seasoned proteins frame a generous portion of rice, beans, and farofa. Bom apetit!
Churrcaso. Rio Preto
VII. Alcohol & beverages
By & large, Mineiros enjoy partaking in a good drink or two—especially if in good company, and if the drink in question is an ice-cold cerveja or a locally distilled cachaça. Minas Gerais is renown for its outstanding cachaça; the state is the epicenter of Brazil’s alembic (artisanal, copper pot-stilled; as opposed to industrial, stainless steel-stilled) production, and Diamantina is a stone’s throw from the state’s cachaça heartland in Norte de Minas.
While those two beverages remain far & away the most popular tipples nationwide, Brazil’s wine culture—long the domain of the southern states—is growing, and the sandy soil & mild year-round climate of the Espinhaço has begun attracting a growing number of smallscale winemakers. That said, wine as a beverage remains uncommon in the Espinhaço and much of rural Brazil as a whole.
During most evenings of our trips, ice-cold (and we mean ice-cold) beer and/or local cachaça will be available either on the premises or on in town, and wine can often be arranged for upon request. We should point out that having “a drink” in Minas is often a social, hours-long affair, and the phrase vamo tomar uma (literally, “let’s drink one”) is code for “let’s drink many more than one”.
If that sounds like fun, we think it can be a great way to get to know the locals. We don’t necessarily recommend painting the town red each night of a multi-hundred-kilometer trek… but we don’t not recommend it either.
