Sao Paulo is massive. By population living in the main city area, it is the largest city in the Americas, at around 12m people. Now, I don't know how well drawn the lines are for what is "in the city" - compare to say New York which has stablized around 8.5m in the five boroughs, but the five boroughs are at least super black and white. Anyway, this is a long way of saying the Sao Paulo is massive. It's also well built in most areas, with some really upscale neighborhoods that I would traverse over the course of the day. Similarly there are some super urban spots that are fairly staid and charmless. I stand by what I said yesterday, that Sao Paulo would probably be a great place to live, but really feel like my one day here of tourism (and crucially, two dinners) is about right.
The first stop in the morning was to walk down Avenida Paulista, their main thoroughfare that cuts through the financial heart of the city. Honestly, I was hoping for something more glamorous - if I can really fault Sao Paulo somewhere, it is their lack of cool, modern architecture. It's just a series of fairly nice but unmemorable buildings. Anyway, I then took the first of many ubers, and dealt with Sao Paulo traffic for the first of many times, over to lunch at Banzeiro.
Banzeiro serves amazonic cuisine, and is noted for doing it brilliantly, being in the Michelin guide for the last few years. The setting is really nice - well adorned and furnished with cool touches like palm being used to set silverware, and large kayak like figures as columns. It is very, very much Amazonic. For my main, I went with a tucupi based soup with mushroom and shrimp, which was excellent, if a bit more sour (probably more authentic) than a similar soup with squid I had at Aprazivel on my first full day. For my main, I got the belly of the piraracu fish (a more meaty version of piranha) - what's notable about the fish is the almost pork like taste & texture, which in this case worked really well, probably way healthier I imagine as well.
Lunch was graet, but I needed to walk it off, so what better way, I guess, than two museums. First was at the Museum do Ipiranga, which serves as a bit of a Brazilian history museum. It's housed in a beautiful yellow, ornate neo-roman style building in a large park in the Western part of Sao Paulo. Sadly, two of the floors were closed as some major damange during the pandemic to the roof is being tended to. Either way, the museum was really nice, if a bit too focused on the Portuguese conquests to now, with little actual talk about pre-colonization history. That said, they did not whitewash colonization, not that you would expect them to. The centerpiece of the museum is a large hall with four giant paintaings about their Independence they gained in the 1820s. I always forget how soon after the US Independence did Brazil get theirs - though in a simialr way where the ruling class was a lot of people heavy with Portuguese blood.
This museum was nice, and also had a great underground exhibit around deforestation across Brazil. It is amazing how much the environmental concerns are played up in these museums. I guess that's what happens when you have a country that smartly threw out the guy who was trying to turn the rainforest into a cash cow and replace him with a left-wing reasonable man. The underground part also allowed me enough time for the skies to fully open into a hellacious rainstorm that lasted about an hour. Most of it I spent in an uber back towards near my AirBNB, to the Sao Paulo Museum of Art (MASP).
The MASP had three floors that are rotating exhibits and one mainstay floor at the top which I saved for last. I guess at times the other three can be multiple exhibits or just a single exhibit. This time they were all around LGBTQ rights, told through art. Again, three floors in the main city's main art museum - you love to see it. What was nice to was that about half of it was just great art, some just stunning paintings where I didn't really see any LGBTQ connection, but enjoyed the art nonetheless.
The top floor needs it own paragraph, as it was a pretty novel way of showcasing the permanent collection. It was a giant room - think of it as a warehouse almost, with just rows and rows of paintings. The paintins were framed but then held aloft within clear glass panes with space between each one. On the reverse side was the notecard on the paintaing (this was my only complaint - would've been a lot better to put it in front). There was maybe 15 rows, each with about 10-12 things. It was about 60% Brazilian art, but then that last 40% got is some Monet's, some great Van Gogh's, a couple Degas's, some Pizarro's, some Manet's and even some really haunting paintings from teh 1200s and 1300s from Portugal. It was a novel way to showcase art and elevated an already good selection.
The last bit of tourism was going to Croma Beer Co. a craft brewery tucked within one of the more upscale neighborhoods of Sao Paulo, one with tons of tree lined streets and bistro type restaurants, coffee shops, and in this case a lovely brewery thrown in. They had excellent beer, also had a dozen or so various IPAs to go (of which I grabbed a couple...), and a nice menu of which I got the house fries which had bits of bacon cut up on top. On the whole, a nice way to end a fairly quiet day of tourism in Sao Paulo, one spent for too long in ubers giving Sao Paulo's size, but more notably awful traffic.
Dinner was at D.O.M., which is probably best known to American's as Alex Atala's restaurant featured on chef's table. It holds true to just showcasing the various elements of Brazilian cuisine found in the wilderness. It also had a blackout where they quickly had a generator turn on, but made it the second time in 9 months wehre I've been at a tasting menu spot and had a blackout happen - granted this one way more explainable as there was a fairly violent thunderstorm outside. The food itself was pristine and excellent - though to me probably a bit less zany and fun as A Casa do Porco, and slightly more traditional than out there than a Lasai - but still just an excellent meal with some of the best desserts I've had at a tasting menu spot.
With a 7am flight tomorrow to Iguazu Falls, I wasn't left with much time to play with in terms of hitting the town, so I went back to an old classic - grabbing a couple cocktails at Fel before calling it a night. Again, Fel is much like Sao Paulo as a whole - incredibly competent, composed and professional, but maybe lacking the uniqueness of Rio or many other cities - a perfect place to make your ongoing cocktail spot, to take a date, etc,, but maybe not to be wowed.
