Bahian Cuisine

Salvador has its own cuisine. You’ll see baianas de acarajé (ah-kara-JEH) everywhere, often dressed in white (the color of Iansã, female deity of wind and storms), tables spread with a spicy and exotic assortment of Bahia’s own version of fast-food.

An acarajé is basically a deep-fried “bread” made from mashed beans from which the skins have been removed (reputedly feijão fradinho — black-eyed peas — but in reality almost always the less expensive brown beans so ubiquitous in Bahia). In West Africa these are called akara; “acarajé” in Yoruba is “to eat akara”.



Cira, famous acarajés in Itapoan

The other ubiquitous food here is moqueca (moo-KEH-ka; seen in the image at the top of this page), a stew usually both cooked and served in a large clay bowl and consisting principally of some kind of seafood (or combination thereof), dendé and coconut milk (along with a panoply of other ingredients in accordance with regional styles and the cook’s personal preferences. Bobó (bo-BO) is moqueca thickened with aipim (manioc). Sometimes the dendé is left out of these dishes in order to spare delicate stomachs, but to me that’s like eating garlic bread without the garlic.

Manoel dos Santos Pereira was a guy who liked to cook for friends and family. He had a simple summer house on the island of Itaparica, with a big veranda which on weekends he liked to set up with tables for extensive gatherings of kith and kin. The house was close to the beach in the village of Conçeicão, which in turn is next to Itaparica’s Club Med.

Manoel doesn’t have a lot of time for the beach anymore.

So one fine day a Frenchman decided to leave the self-contained confines of the Club Med for a look around at the local life. His wanderings brought him to what appeared to be a lively restaurant packed with customers and with a wonderful aroma of seafood emanating from the kitchen. The monsieur stepped up, found himself a table, sat down, and ordered the dish of the day (moqueca de aratú — red crab). The man was welcomed and happily served.

When the check was asked for Manoel explained as best he could that this was in fact was a private domicile, that the meal was a gift, and that the man should consider himself among friends. To this day Manoel is not sure whether he succeeded in making his point clear.

Whatever the gentleman’s understanding, the following the weekend he was back, this time accompanied by friends, and this time determined to pay. Thus was born Axego (derived from aconchegado, something like cozy).

Some years later Axego moved across the bay to the mainland, first onto Rua dos Adobes in the neighborhood of Santo Antônio, and then into a space with a wonderful view overlooking the water, across from the Convento do Carmo. Manoel himself went out daily and purchased the ingredients for his dishes. He himself prepared the foods. And it was he who waited on his customers (aided by his wife Lia (Maria do Carmo Santos Pereira), and his son Fabrício). The restaurant’s reputation grew by dint of word-of-mouth, and it prospered.

Prospered to such a degree (within its modest bounds) that when the lease was up the landlady figured she’d throw Manoel out and open up her own restaurant in the space. The result for this woman was, as one might imagine, a well-deserved disaster.

After a couple of not entirely satisfactory locations Manoel is now on Rua J. Castro Rabelo, near the intersection of that street with Rua João de Deus.

Manoel & Lia’s Axego
O Cravinho, on the Terreiro de Jesus

O Cravinho is Julival’s excellent place, devoted to infusões (cachaça mixed with spices, fruits, roots, barks, and other flavoring agents; cravinho is made with cravo, or cloves — it was invented here), but serving beer and other drinks and with great, inexpensive food in the restaurant (located in the rear behind the bar). Very popular with the locals, atmospheric, with the infusões in wooden barrels set on shelves up high in the bar, and the restaurant’s tables and stools cut from tree trunks.

Alaíde do Feijão: from the humblest origins to dedication to being called upon by presidents, actors, musicians…

Alaíde was born Alaíde da Conceição but became Alaíde do Feijão (Alaíde of the Bean). As a young girl back in the ’40s she began helping her mother at her mother’s table of quitutes (Bahian sweets and snacks) in Praça Cayru across from the bottom of the Elevador Lacerda…taking over the table herself in the 1970s. In 1992 she opened a restaurant  —  something like what would be called a “soul food” restaurant in the United States — moving several years ago from her original location to where she is located now on Rua das Laranjeiras.

Her specialty is feijoada, Brazil’s national dish, invented by slaves who would add whatever meat trimmings were not wanted in the plantation owner’s “Big House” to beans and their own sense of seasoning.

More to come here! I’m in the process of moving and re-doing from the old site!