Description
Feijoada, South America’s cassoulet, is the improbable national dish of Brazil — a bowl of black beans and various gelatin-rich animal parts. Almost every Brazilian restaurant in Los Angeles serves feijoada; some of it is genuinely good. But Taste of Brazil may be the only restaurant in town that actually specializes in the stuff. Should a feijoada not be quite enough for you — an order easily serves two — the crusty, chewy fried chunks of yuca are splendid, like French fries that bite back, and the slices of spicy grilled “calabrese” sausage are first-rate. Other dishes include peixe Baiana, a filet topped with sauteed peppers, onions and palm oil; floppy grilled skirt steak; and beef stroganoff in a sweet-sour cream sauce that is the exact pink of Thousand Island dressing. No Brazilian restaurant could exist without its version of churrasco, and the grilled picanha, or beef rump, here is delicious, served encrusted in salt and sizzling on a superheated iron salver. The flan is best of breed, utterly soft and drizzled with a bitter caramel sauce. But still — that feijoada.
