Food makes it intimate connection possible. Get to know my friends, and a little bit about the world, through these New York City restaurants.
By Emmanuel Ikenna Ohiri
I first learned how to make bolognese in a small apartment kitchen in Spain.
Her name was Lulan. She was an Italian national working and studying abroad in Valencia, Spain, around the same time I was. I did not have much cooking experience then (I still don’t), so as simple as the bolognese recipe is, I had no idea how to prepare it.
We lived together in a shared apartment, and we all frequently dined together. For one of our group dinners, I made meat pies dusted with paprika and spaghetti alla bolognese.
Meat pies are empanada-like pastries stuffed with meat. I grew up with them, as they are typical in Nigerian culture. They are served at any kind of event: weddings, birthdays, graduations, or even diasporic association meetings. I made sure to call my mom when I was making them so as to get the meat-to-pastry ratio just right.
But for the bolognese, Lulan guided me in my cooking, telling me what ingredients to add and when. We chatted and bonded, singing songs aloud and laughing about my ineptness in the kitchen. One song that still sticks with me is the heartfelt farewell of “Time to Say Goodbye,” an Italian classic sung by the Italian operatic tenor Andrea Bocelli. Lulan also sang this song beautifully.
Through this experience and many others like it, I fell in love with food. I fell in love with people.
Food and drink have been inseparable elements of the most powerful moments in my life, and I know that the same is true for most everyone else. This very real magic stems for me from food’s prominence in world cultures and from how deeply we fashion our identities around our cultural existence.
As such, food is the perfect by-way to understand people and identity. Through food and communal eating, we gain access to the living realities of other countries and their cultures, adding to the environment within which, and the people with whom, we psychologically identify and relate.
As a friend once told me, “Food reflects, very well, a country’s culture. You learn a lot about a place by eating its food.”
To me, this means to taste is to know.
This story is a knowledge expedition of people and their cultures through food. Here, I document two culinary vignettes on Brazil and Mexico through my tasty, albeit limited, experiences with some typical dishes of these places I have yet to visit.
Over the past month, I invited two friends to dine with me as we ate staples of their national cuisine. They were my gastro-guides. From Brazil to Mexico, I traveled through my taste buds, being taught a little bit more about the world around me and a great deal more about my companions.
First stop: Brazil.
A big part of Brazilian history and contemporary life is its racial identity. Like many other countries in the Americas, Brazilian society was greatly influenced by European colonial powers and their transatlantic slave trade. Throughout the colonial era, Brazilian racial demography became mixed, slavery was institutionalized, and a socioeconomic caste system based on race that still carries pervasive effects was solidified.
Of course, it would be improper to reduce Brazil to its oppressive history. In fact, it is through its demographic diversity that we can experience its cultural influence and exports like the illustrious Carnival festival and the churrasco-themed restaurant, Fogo de Chão.
Churrasco is the Portuguese equivalent of grilled meats and barbeque. Churrasco gets its image in popular culture from an assortment of meats cooked and served on long skewers. Many Brazilian restaurants, like Fogo de Chão, offer a “churrasco experience” with an all-you-can-eat service of juicy cuts of meat bursting with flavor.
I have eaten at Fogo de Chão thrice and enjoyed it each time. Unless you are vegetarian or vegan, what is there not to like about it?
But to broaden my knowledge of Brazilian cuisine beyond what I could gather from Fogo de Chão and churrasco, I reached out to my friend Felipe Morales.
Felipe is a 22-year-old law student at Columbia University in the City of New York. He is from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and is on a four-month exchange program here to finish his law degree.
I met Felipe about a week before the start of our fall semester. We bumped into each other while taking self-guided tours of Columbia’s campus, and we became instant friends through stories of travel and food.
When I told Felipe about my food travelogue idea, he was all on board.
We decided to check out Via Brasil, an atmosphere-authentic joint near Times Square.
“It looks like a traditional steakhouse you would see in Rio,” Felipe said as the restaurant host guided us to our table.
The restaurant’s interior was very colorful, painted in the green, yellow, and blue of the Brazilian flag. The tables were wooden and draped in white cloth. Felipe remarked that even the menu was designed to resemble the Calçadão de Copacabana, the wave-like beach boardwalk in the Copacabana neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro.
“Being here reminds me of home,” said Felipe.
While Felipe has been enjoying his time and studies in New York, he misses his family and their shared meals.
Felipe’s mom is a chef, and his dad always cooked Felipe’s favorite meals growing up. His dad also has a flair for occasions. Every year, on his own birthday, Felipe’s dad throws a party with extended family and lots of food. So, food is very close to the idea of family for Felipe; family is what makes food special.
“You can recreate the food but not the people,” said Felipe.
Felipe has recreated the food. He enjoys cooking because it allows him to feel close to home, and he has cooked traditional Brazilian dishes for his friends here in New York to replicate the food bonding he desires. Cooking and sharing his culture through food has eased Felipe’s adjustment to New York, but it is no complete replacement for his family. Felipe is excited to return home and dine again with his loved ones.
As the restaurant staff began to bring out our food, I was excited to taste new flavors. I also wanted to meet Felipe in communion and break bread with him in ways that reminded him of his family.
We ate pão de quejio and feijoada, washing them down with guaraná and caipirinha.
Pão de queijo (cheese bread) is a small, round bread roll or bun made from tapioca flour, milk, eggs, oil, and cheese. Pão de queijo is a popular food that can be eaten during breakfast, lunch, or dinner as a standalone snack or a side dish. Felipe and I had it as an appetizer.
Feijoada is Brazil’s national dish. The name is derived from “feijão,” meaning “bean.” The dish is a stew with beans, pork, and other mix-ins, often served with white rice, farofa (toasted flour), couve (collared greens), and laranja (oranges). Feijoada is the perfect everything stew because it is essentially made with leftover ingredients, and its recipe allows for regional variation.
This “leftover” identity of feijoada has its roots in Brazilian slavery and socioeconomic struggle. According to popular belief, the dish originated with enslaved people preparing their leftover scraps into a stew. There is academic contestation to this belief, some claiming feijoada has European origin. Regardless, today, feijoada is unequivocally associated with Brazilian culture.
A national favorite, guaraná is a refreshing soft drink made from a small red berry of the same name. The berry contains twice the concentration of caffeine found in coffee beans, making it a popular choice for induced energy, whether in manufactured energy drinks or natural consumption, as has been typical by indigenous populations for centuries. For the drink, the berry and its seed are processed into a sweet syrup and mixed with the standard ingredients you would expect to read on the nutrition label of a high-sugar-content soda.
Our guaranás were served chilled with orange slices. I would recommend it with the orange, but if you want the Brazilian opinion, Felipe prefers without it.
Caipirinha is Brazil’s national cocktail and comes from the city of São Paulo. It is made with cachaça, a distilled spirit of fermented sugarcane juice, and mixed with lime and more sugar.
Our waiter, Carlos, was very accommodating. He talked about each item he brought out, explaining how to eat and drink them and what to expect in taste.
Carlos is from the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, which is just north of the state of Rio de Janeiro (distinct from the city of the same name). Felipe and Carlos quickly became acquainted, conversing in Portuguese.
Felipe told me Minas and Rio are quite close and that he knows people who live in Minas. Despite their proximity, Felipe also highlighted that Minas and Rio have different pronunciations of words, much like regional accents in the US.
“Naturally, your accent can vary depending on which part of Brazil you live. Rio is famous for saying our ‘s’ like an ‘x.’ In Minas, it’s just the regular ‘s’ sound,” said Felipe.
Felipe and Carlos joked about this difference, mimicking each other’s pronunciation.
Both Felipe and Carlos were eager to know how I liked everything — I loved everything. The food was rich, and the conversation was fulfilling. Felipe was a harsher critic than I, naturally comparing it to what he is used to back home.
“It’s about a seven out of 10 for me,” said Felipe. He compared the feijoada in particular; it is one of his favorite foods and his dad’s specialty in the kitchen. Nothing can beat a home-cooked meal, especially one with sentimental value.
To continue showing me aspects of Brazilian food culture, Felipe suggested we go to Rio Market, a Brazilian grocery store in the heart of Queens.
Queens, nicknamed “The World’s Borough,” is very multicultural, with some citing it as “the most ethnically diverse urban area in the world.” With so many international identities in one place, Queens is host to many delicious eateries and ethnic stores, including Rio Market.
At the market, Felipe showed me the different ingredients that went into the food we had eaten at Via Brasil. To make pão de queijo, you typically use specific cheeses from Minas, as the food originates from the state, but any sharp cheese will suffice in a recipe. For the white rice, the popular brand used is “Tio João,” which translates to “Uncle John.” The farofa was made using farinha, a flour made from the cassava plant, and an integral ingredient and side dish in the Brazilian diet.
Learning about farofa and farinha was serendipitous. I know farinha as “farina,” made from the same flour, the same cassava, but used to make the Nigerian foods fufu and garri.
Fufu is a dough-like pounded meal of flour served as a side dish for stews and soups. Garri is a versatile, grainy flour that can be made into Eba (a fufu-like dough also served with stews), cookies, or sweet cereal (served cold or hot).
As a child, I was lukewarm to the tastes of farina-based foods, but I was glad to make this cross-cultural and transnational connection with Felipe. Such a connection between Nigeria and Brazil speaks to the African influence on Brazilian culture and the importance of diversity in creating foods.
Before we left the market, I bought some frozen pão de queijo and canned guaraná to savor at home. Before parting ways, Felipe and I embraced each other, and he extended an open invitation to visit him in Brazil. I will surely take him up on this offer to learn more about his country and taste his dad’s feijoada.
Second stop: Mexico.
Mexican history and culture have been influenced by indigenous, African, Arab, Asian, and even European peoples. But, as with Brazil, a distinctly Mexican identity has emerged, along with peoples who, in turn, influence other cultures.
Notable is the contrast between Mexico and New Mexico, as well as other southwestern and western US states that used to be within the sovereign territory of Mexico.
As its name suggests, New Mexico is greatly influenced by Mexican culture. Many Hispanics and Latinos live in New Mexico and the larger Southwest region, and with them, heritage, language, traditions, social customs, and cuisine become diffused into new places.
Mexican and New Mexican cuisines perfectly exemplify this great influence yet subtly diffused uniqueness. Many New Mexican dishes are simply variations or fusions of Mexican ones. You may recognize two such dishes as the same food, but any Mexican or New Mexican will tell you there is a hard-to-describe difference.
As a New Mexican myself, the best way I can describe it is a difference in aesthetics and influence. New Mexican foods are often prepared and presented differently than their Mexican counterparts. For example, New Mexican enchiladas are layered and baked, resulting in a casserole-type dish, whereas Mexican enchiladas are rolled and fried, producing a look similar to taquitos or flautas. Another New Mexican variation on enchiladas is the “stacked” enchilada, 
New Mexican foods also feature influence from Anglo, Native American, and Spanish cultures. This influence has created some unique foods, drinks, and ingredients that, while some widespread, are typically associated with New Mexico. To name a few: Navajo tacos, tacos made with frybread rather than tortillas and can be eaten with honey or jam; Spanish-derived sopapillas, airy fried dough that can be soft or flakey and also sweet (dusted with sugar and served with honey) or savory (salted and stuffed with meats, vegetables, and cheeses); “New Mexico chiles,” a cultivar group of the common chile pepper first grown by Pueblo Native and Hispano communities; piñon nuts, specific pine nuts native to New Mexico and brought into cuisine through indigenous consumption; and piñon coffee, arabica bean coffee flavored with piñon.
Still, Mexican and New Mexican food share many similarities, especially in overall taste.
Craving the savory and seasoned flavors of the US’s southern neighbor for my own taste-of-home experience, I asked my friend Ana Sofía Salas to take me to her favorite Mexican restaurant in New York City.
Ana is a 26-year-old Mexican national living in New York. She is from Mexico City but moved to New York three years ago to work in the Mexican consulate. Currently, Ana is enrolled at Columbia University, pursuing a master’s degree.
Ana and I first interacted through our shared academic spaces, but we have primarily related over conversations about Mexican and New Mexican culture, the Spanish language, and, of course, food.
For Ana, food is very much tied to her Mexican identity.
“Mexican food reminds me of home and family,” said Ana. She continued to say that food is a love language for her. Through food, she builds loving connection with others and community.
Before our restaurant outing, Ana invited me to a Dia de los Muertos celebration hosted by Columbia’s Mexican Student Association (Mexsa). “Dia de los Muertos” (Day of the Dead) is a two-day Mexican cultural holiday during which people honor the dead and connect with their community. Traditionally, the two days of the holiday observe different sets of dead family members; the first day is for children, and the second is for adults.
Typically, an “ofrenda” (altar) is put up for people to place pictures and items in remembrance of deceased loved ones. Sweet treats are also common findings on ofrendas as offerings to the dead, but they are also there for the living to partake in, as I did with some candies at the Mexsa event.
Such treats can include cookies, lollipops, mazapán (marzipan), calaveras de azúcar (processed sugar in the shape of a skull), and variations of brioche-type sweet bread known as “conchas,” “pan dulce,” or “pan de muerto.”
While not offered on the physical ofrenda, hot chocolate is another common treat. Ana suggested dipping my pan de muerto in hot chocolate, and I can attest that it makes for a warm and tasty pairing on a brisk fall day. In addition to all the confections, many host banquets to receive the spirits of loved ones who are believed to visit during this holiday.
According to Ana, the setting up of an ofrenda is just as important as the altar itself.
“It’s like Christmas,” Ana said, “it is a family moment when you put up all the decorations and lights.”
Although separated from her family this year, Ana honored her late dad by setting up a personal ofrenda in her home. His name was Arturo, aged 55. He was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia five days after Ana first moved to New York. At the end of a five-month battle, Arturo beat his cancer but died later in recovery due to medical malpractice.
Through Dia de los Muertos, we can see how food and social bonding are key stitches in the cultivation of Mexican culture. It is a time to come together and share dear moments, easing the grief of loss through food-filled connection.
Two days after the Dia de los Muertos celebration, I met Ana at La Contenta Oeste, a Mexican eatery located in Greenwich Village.
As I entered the restaurant, I found Ana chatting with the head chef, Luis, who is from the Mexican state of Sinaloa. Over her three years in the city, Ana has formed a close relationship with the staff at La Contenta Oeste.
“They are like a second family to me,” said Ana. Food has facilitated interaction with other Mexicans living in New York, allowing Ana to find community and comfort in her new environment.
As we were waiting to eat, Ana explained to me the cultural significance of particular interior decorations in the restaurant. Hanging across the ceiling was “papel picado,” a fresco-esque, traditional Mexican decorative craft made out of colored tissue paper that depicts stylized shapes, objects, figures, or cultural scenes.
Coming from New Mexico, papel picado was not new to me. Growing up, I would see these decorations throughout many celebrations. In both Mexico and New Mexico, papel picado is used in arts-and-crafts lessons to teach kids about culture and tradition.
A public ofrenda was also on display for restaurant patrons to interact with and learn about Dia de los Muertos.
The house nachos, listed on the menu as “La Contenta Nachos,” were made in Sinaloan style with elements from Oaxaca, another Mexican state. These nachos were “loaded,” as we would say in the US. By default, the nachos consist of tortilla chips, black beans, pico de gallo, avocado sauce, sour cream, and a blend of pepper jack, cheddar, and Oaxacan cheese, but Ana and I asked to add in some shredded meat to make it more hearty.
Like the nachos, the entire restaurant had a regional touch. Sinaloa is much to the north of Mexico City, and Ana has never physically gone there, but through La Contenta Oeste – its staff and food – Ana has been able to “visit” and taste the state’s particularities.
“I want to go back to Mexico and explore the places I have never been to,” Ana said, as we talked about engaging with foods as a means to explore and get to know other places.
Next, we ate carne asada (grilled meat) and pescado (fish) tacos. Each taco was served on two corn tortillas with fresh diced vegetables, salsas, and a side of rice. The carne asada tacos had well-grilled steak, guacamole, pico de gallo, and tomatillo salsa. The pescado tacos had tempura-fried fish, avocado sauce, cole slaw, chipotle aioli, and sour cream.
For dessert, we had chocoflan topped with vanilla ice cream. Chocoflan is the combination of a rich chocolate cake layered with creamy flan. Our waiter gave us tequila shots on the house because they were supposed to pair well with chocoflan.
“Take a bite of the chocoflan, then a sip of tequila,” he said. “Riquísimo,” our waiter continued, expressing how he believed it to be “very delicious.” For my palette, it was not; the tequila was overpoweringly strong.
I also took home some calaveras de azúcar for more dessert. Ana told me that while they can be eaten, she usually does not, and I should have taken that as advice not to eat them. In flavor, they are extremely sweet and processed, very similar to the taste of toothpaste.
Aside from the harsh chocoflan-tequila paring and the toothpaste candy skull, the food was classic. The tastes were on point, and the portions left you feeling stuffed and well-fed. The nachos and tacos reminded me of many restaurants back in New Mexico. I can see why this is Ana’s favorite spot.
Before Ana and I left after our meal, she made sure to say hi to some friends who had come in for lunch. Ana knew them from her work at the consulate, and they also knew Chef Luis and the staff at La Contente Oeste — a testament to the network of family and community Ana has built for herself here in New York.
As we said our goodbyes, Ana offered to host me in Mexico City should I ever happen to visit once she returned; another destination to know, a friend to see, and cuisine to enjoy.
