Raizes

On turning up at Raizes, we were faced with the ultimate Brazilian experience. It was the local capoeira club's annual dinner and there were 20-plus lissom hardbodies gathered around a table with their handsome teacher from São Paulo, all focusing on a huge flatscreen TV showing expert movers from the home country. I suspect the martial artists don't eat at Raizes very often. While our starters of mandioca frita (fried cassava chips) and cozinha (breaded chicken faggot) were fair as far as beer food goes, they were pretty heavy-going. As well as being rather fatty, the food was dry and not particularly flavoursome. Another dish we ordered - torresmo (shredded pork belly with lime) - was substituted by smoked pork sausages without any consultation, and it was tediously untasty. Three starters were a bit much, so we shared these with a friendly Brazilian woman and asked for a feijoada as a single main course between two - the promise of black beans, pork stew and, according to the menu 'greens' gave some hope. But it was not to be. The feijoada was more of a mush, and the meat didn't come through - again I saw those suspicious sausage discs inside the stew. The greens were a few shreds of lettuce and were browned off by the bean juice. The desserts came - the choices were 'condensed milk pudding covered with caramel' and 'chocolate condensed with double cream'. Yes, they were quite stodgy and at the end of it I could no more have lifted my leg capoeira-style than I could have scored a Pelé-style goal. By sticking so faithfully to the roots, Raizes offers little in the way of variety, taste or tradition.