Everything You Need to Know About Breakfast Before the 2016 Olympics
Everything You Need to Know About Breakfast Before the 2016 Olympics
Tapioca Caboquinho in Manaus
Breakfast was included at my hotel in Manaus in the Brazilian state of Amazonas, but it didn’t matter. I knew where I’d be starting my day come Sunday morning.
I was there to follow the Olympic torch relay as it reached the rainforest city on its way to Rio de Janeiro for the 2016 Games.
And with temperatures pushing 90 degrees Fahrenheit, I knew it was going to be a long, sweaty day of criss-crossing Manaus in the heavy Amazonian heat with torchbearers running past the city’s landmarks.
So while the streets were still calm and cool, I headed out to the Eduardo Ribeiro Sunday market for breakfast. At 7am, the market was still setting up. Traders wheeled their wares down the roads while others unloaded. The weekly fair takes places in the shadows of one of the most famous attractions in Manaus, the opulent Teatro Amazonas, or Manaus Opera House.
Behind its salmon-pink walls, market stalls snake down the streets for several blocks, selling handmade soaps scented with Amazonian fruits and arts and crafts, mainly to tourists.
But for me, one of the best draws of the region is its food, and in particular its “café regional,” or local breakfast.
Several canteen-style stalls pitch up at the start of the market and invite you to take a coffee, a juice, and a tapioca with them. While tapioca—the flour made from manioc root—is readily available all over Brazil and normally served in the form of a crepe, the fillings in the Amazon make it distinctive.
A tapioca caboquinho comes with grilled cheese, grilled banana, and shavings of tucumã, the fruit of a native palm that is full of vitamin C. The ingredients are thrown together on a hot plate and put inside the powdery white tapioca pancake.
The combination of a buttery tapioca crepe, salty cheese, sweet banana, and the squash-like crunch of slightly bitter tucumã ticks all the boxes for me and is equally as good on a sandwich, or the famous X-Caboquinho. I paired it with a typically sweet, milky coffee and an Amazonian juice. I chose tangy, orange taperebá, which is also known as cajá and is brilliantly refreshing, but just as good is cupuaçu, another local fruit that is both creamy and sharp at the same time.
Café regional might be best taken at one of the many restaurants on the outskirts at the city, where the tapiocas are huge and come with Brazil nuts, and there’s also the Amazonian superfruit açaí, manioc cake, and pamonha, a kind of steamed corn dumpling.
But sitting at a plastic table with a wipedown cover as the city warmed up and the market started to bustle was good enough for me. The first time was a luxury but now, this breakfast is a comforting reminder of the gems to be found in the Amazon.