Out of the handful of times I had a chance to eat at a restaurant in Sao Paulo, one of the most memorable was a great value lunch time was at Restaurant Momotaro. It’s a newer restaurant and they do a tasting menu at lunch which was significantly more food than I was prepared for. Very well executed, tasty and filling.
The restaurant is located in quite a nice neighbourhood. I have a feeling it is one of the more affluent neighbourhoods based on the cars and the types of people. Given there was very little public transportation options, I took a taxi both here and back from the hotel I was staying at.
The interior is done up very nicely. Warm, modern yet touches of Japanese elements still dotted around.
There is quite a gap between this post and when I ate here, so the commentary will be pretty light. Here’s a nice salad with a ginger dressing complete with a light miso soup.
This cocktail was supposed to be a yuzu (e.g citrus) drink but ended up like a Japanese style Bloody Mary, spicy but tasty. They didn’t charge me for this drink strangely enough and when I pointed it out, the waiter sort of shrugged it off. Maybe it was because I was taking a lot of pictures.
Delicious tempura. I remember this was light, crispy and plenty of it. Accompanied by the classic tempura dipping sauce.
Crumbed vegetable cutlet.
The order of food came out rather rapidly and randomly. Maybe because it was so many courses for a lunch menu, the next came out even before I had finished the one before it. Here’s the sushi platter and in the foreground you can still see I had plenty of tempura and the vegetable cutlet yet to finish. Fortunately the sushi was not really going to go cold. The sampling of fish was superb though – a wide variety and even that dish alone would have been sufficient for a light lunch.
I think this yakitori chicken was probably the weakest dish. There was certainly plenty of it in this tiny bowl, but I found the brown sauce was a little dull and there was just simply too much that it almost felt like it was swimming in it.
I thought I was done with the mains but after that came yet another dish complete with some grilled fish, another cutlet dish and a teriyaki chicken was that superb – moisty, salty and just right.
Dessert came with in the form of ice cream and a syrup of some sort. Perfect as a way to finish off the meal although probably not very Japanese.
An amazingly affordable lunch time menu that came to the equivalent of about £20 (which is even more amazing for Brazil which isn’t as cheap as you expect).
Name: Restaurant Momotaro
Address: Av. Lins de Vasconcelos, 2747 São Paulo, 04112-011, Brazil
Website: http://www.restaurantemomotaro.com.br/