Everything is sweet in Rio

When I travel to a place that is as displacing as Brazil I seek out the food market. It is always a local place, always the place where you’ll find the freshest and most exceptional food. They’re almost never exclusively for anyone. They are for the rich, the poor, the musically talented and the not so musically talented because, and I know it’s a cliché, but it’s also a truth: we all need to eat. In Brazil it was no different. The market travels to the different praca’s (squares) in Zona Sul every day. I found the one closest to me in Ipanema on my first Tuesday in Rio de Janeiro. This market was filled with so many smells (some I recognised and some I wish I didn’t), sounds (none of which I recognized) and fruit that all my European friends exclaimed over and even more fruit that I exclaimed over. The sight gave me the sense of adventure I had been lacking since my arrival. I found more fruit than you’d find on Carmen Miranda’s headdress and every bit looked as though it belonged there. Like all of Rio it was a caramel swirl of the different class of inhabitants: horribly rich and disgustingly poor. Unlike Zona Sul the lines weren’t as clearly defined as they are in the city; by the rise of the land, by the policemen at the entrance of the favelas. And unlike on the beaches, we all mingled: tourist and local, favela rat and ‘doctor’. I was pleasantly overwhelmed by the markets beautiful chaos, the sellers hawking their wares in a monstrously intimidating language and the lettuce all over the ground. I first tried a strawberry waved in my face by a plump vender who told me he loved me. The strawberry, quite a pre-possessing sort of fruit all by itself, was covered in sugar syrup. I could hardly believe it and was thoroughly undone when I found the custard apple came the same way. I did, however, buy the bag of sweetened strawberries. It was most expensive strawberries I had ever bought. I think that says something for their technique and possibly Brazils’.