that’s whacked

food at fisl

Monday, Apr 24. 2006  –  Category: OpenSolaris

while this is fisl related, it’s really all about the food. so ignore this if you don’t care about my food experiences in brasil

alright. so obviously a big part of Brasil is the food. i glossed over the details in my earlier blog, but only because i couldn’t do them justice on thursday morning at 3am. food is a topic deserving of its own blog. on wednesday night, we went to a churrasco. waiters walk around with giant spears of meat. you’re given a little card that is basically a big red STOP on one side, and a bright green GO on the other. depending on what side you have showing, the aforementioned meat will arrive next to your head along with a friendly waiter asking if you want a slice. mine remained on GO much of the night… the restaurant was filled with an amazing myriad of smells. everything was kind of permeated with this smell of amazingly salt-marinated meat. i can’t even begin to do justice to how great it smelled. (unless you’re vegetarian, in which case… i’m sorry – but don’t visit Brasil). there was chicken, chicken hearts, pork, javali (the Brasilian name for the warthog, which also happens to be the name of a big Java event that is hosted at FISL), and of course various cuts of beef. during the meal, Fernanda told us that one of the Brasilian laws is that customers have to be allowed to go into the kitchen to inspect things. i couldn’t pass up the opportunity, so we went into the kitchen where we could see the rock sea salt marinade “bath” the meats go through before being put onto this enormous cluster of rotiseries. i knew i wouldn’t know how to explain it, so i took a photo instead. it’s… well.. it’s like a giant rack-mount cluster of meat.

the second day, our group kind of splintered with Simon & Tim going to have dinner with the GPL3 guys including Richard Stallman. the rest of the Sun gang ended up going to an Italian place. i ventured off to join the Ubuntu-BR guys for pizza. i intended to hang with them at this FISL party later in the evening, and they suggested pizza for dinner. i wasn’t totally hot on it, since..well.. it’s pizza. but whatever. i mentioned earlier that there were tons of Italian restaurants and pizzerias in Brasil, which i was told was due to the Italian heritage that a lot of Brasilians have. anyway, i was extremely pleasantly surprised at the pizzeria we went to. it was like the churasco… but with pizza. waiters walked around with big pizzas offering individual slices (yes, it was all you can eat, woot!). i had beef stroganoff pizza, tuna casserol pizza, and other crazy and interesting new flavours. of course, i also had the good old standbys of pepperoni, ham/pineapple, etc. anyway, overall, a really fun dinner and a great experience. the even cooler thing was how alive everything was. we had dinner from about 11:30 to 12:45am. that’s right. dinner at midnight. and the streets were hoppin’ with people. traffic was jammed with people drinking, eating, and just having a good time. we got to the club/bar for the party and it didn’t even start filling up until around 1:30am.

on the third day, and my last evening there… we had Uruguayan food. i’d met a few Uruguayans at FISL, and a common question i got from them was “have you been to Uruguay?” to which i could reply “i know nothing about Uruguay except ‘Diego Forlan!’”. “ahhh!!! Diego Forlan!!! football!” was the inevitable response. anyway, this was a great opportunity to try some of the food and experience something to add to my in-depth knowledge of Uruguay. the food was great… another bbq kind of place, but with a really interesting bean/red wine sauce; and an amazing Uruguayan caramel pie.