Campinas Restaurants

A french Bistro, with a limited but allways updated and superb menu. The young chef Mariana Turchetti is absolutelly fantastic. The ambiance is cozy and service is impecable. At the front part of the premisses you find an excelent wine store. Youcan order wines by the glass or walk to the store and pick your pesonal choice. The owners, Maria Vitoria and Renato, are perfectly suited to the business, she is a wine expert and he is a very succesfull restaurant owner. Both will welcome you in a very friendly.

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I could have mentioned this tip just as well in the categories "nightlife", "what to do" or "off the beaten path" but it's still more of a restaurant then a café, pub or anything else.....

This Cervejeria Nacional ( National Beer outlet ? Beer House ? something like this...) is situated right at the FLORES entrance of Shopping Dom Pedro I. ( see my shopping tip there ). It looks like a pub, a café and a restaurant at the same time, if you want you just sip your beer or you can order a full blast dinner.... it's up to you... the food is mostly brazilian evergreens, very good and fast... ( at least when I was there on an early weekday afternoon, when the place was practically empty...).

There's also some pseudo german food like sausages ( brown or white ) with sauerkraut and potatoe salad.... Unfortunately, Brazilians don't have any mustard culture ( just like the US of A ).
They consider a yellowish liquid without any grace that looks like a babys diarrhea as mustard...... Well, I'm used to that by now....

Besides that nothing really bad, the place is cozy and transmits what it is supposed to be.....

Favorite Dish: When I dropped in here I was so hungry that I actually didn't care much about what I was going to eat...... I ended up ordering a file mignon ( which is the noblest of all bovine cuts ) with a german potatoe salad and it was delicious. A small milk pudding and an espresso to close the stomach for a while finished that meal off... I can't remember much of the menu but if you like a steak and potato meal or similar, this is a good option if you're at Dom Pedro I. shopping....

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Not really a steakhouse but a churrascaria, a traditional and very good one at it.....I have described so many times in my São Paulo restaurant tips what exactly a "churrascaria" is, so if you have doubts, please read there.... Located at the posh Iguatemi Shopping its success was guaranteed from the beginning but Montana Grills are anyway very popular in Brasil because Chitãozinho and Chororo ( or something like this ), two hugely popular country singers who have built a musical and business empire ( the two kids of one and separately one of their cousins are also top hit makers in the brazilian charts) are the front celebrities posing as owners of the chain ( in very much the same manner as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis did for Planet Hollywood ). But maybe Chitãozinho and Chororo are really the owners of this churrascaria chain, but probably have no time to take care of it......
Worth a visit when shopping untill dropping is done and the stomach is grumbling......

Favorite Dish: Everything is fine quality here, starting with the oppulent salad bar, the sizzling red meat and the many other kinds of meat and garnishes, potatoes, rice varieties, pasta, veggies, also sea food and as in photo 4: lambchops.... these lambchops are absolutely delicious, especially with the mint jelly or mint sauce that you can grab from the salad bar.

As I said, there is no favorite dish there for me because I love everything.....

Please observe that since the U$ has lost like at least 40 % of its value in the past 18 months or so compared to the R$ (= braz, Real ), that the per person prices are sensitively much higher now than described in my São Paulo tip pages.......

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It's a tiny little shop in a tiny little street in the centre, but it is, like I said, where pies go when they die and go to heaven. Service is great, and the pies... oooooooooh!

They also have a small but good selection of fruit marmelade for sale on a shelf near the cashier.

Favorite Dish: Definitely the Fondue de Chocolate with Strawberries pie. Picture a crust with a bit of vanilla cream (just a bit), a lot of strawberry produced in the region (it's a great region for strawberry and non-wine grapes) covered with a mass of chocolate fondant. Now that you pictured it, you'll have to visit Campinas just for this pie... :P

The food is not good, but what is really awful is the service. The maitre was very rude and the owner, who was at the restaurant, refused to come to my table to hear the complaints about the horrible service.
I and my wife were very unrespectfully treated there, by the "maitre".
It is a "all you can eat" restaurant, but the quality is very cheap.
I will never return there. For the same price (or less) you can get better food and a good service at many others Japanese restaurants in the same neighbourhood.

Salgados are some really good snacks. They usually are made of frango (chiken), meat or presunto e queijo (ham and cheese).
It's a good option if you want sth fast to eat, they are as big as a hamburger, much cheaper (less than 2 euros) and probably healthier.
I became an adicted!! ;-P