Oct 2013: They eat better in Sao Paulo

I have visited the future, and it is called Sao Paulo.

This city is overwhelming. In good and bad ways. Bad for its congestion, traffic, poor transportation, smog, sprawl, lack of greenery, lack of scenery. It resembles the backdrop for a film set in a Blade Runner-esque dystopia.

And yet, the Western hemisphere’s largest city — and the world’s sixth-largest metropolis — manages to save space for incredible restaurants and nightlife. If, like me, you’re not really into restaurants or nightlife, then Sao Paulo is a futuristic hell on earth.

Still, when visiting the future, might as well check out the local offerings…

I was assisted in this endeavor by Tanara, a friend of my Brazilian running buddy Gus from New York City. Tanara may be the world’s worst driver but she’s also one of the friendliest Paulistanas.

Like many people who live here, Tanara firmly believes that her city has the world’s best pizza (although perhaps also the most expensive). So of course I had to try one of the city’s best pizzerias, Primo Basilico in the upscale neighborhood of Jardins.

The pizza was good: thin crust, minimal sauce, fresh cheese and greens. The price was also steep, at about $60 for a large pizza.

Tanara later had me try the city’s famed sushi at Nagayama Itaim, which we visited with Gus’s running pal Marcelo and wife.

Excellent, but again, pricey at about $150 just for Tanara and I. (Marcelo and his wife, it turned out, don’t eat raw fish. They settled for beef at the sushi restaurant.)

Tanara also gave me a taste of Vila Madalena, a trendy neighborhood full of jazz cafes and upscale restaurants and art galleries.

We went to a hilltop bookstore that doubles as a bar. At least 200 people must have been crammed inside the bar and overflowing onto the street, eating the bar’s deliciously oily empanadas and sharing tall bottles of ice-cold Antarctica beer. It was such an un-American scene: open containers of booze in the street, people completely blocking a road, and the police looking on without concern. A gang of motorized skateboard riders was also there, revving their mini-motors like Harley Davidsons.

I also got my first taste of acarajé, which is a black-eyed pea ball fried in palm oil and stuffed with shrimp and vinaigrette. It’s like a super falafel. The food made a list of 24 quintessentially Brazilian food items on the website BuzzFeed.

For museums, I visited the renowned São Paulo Museum of Art, the fun Museu do Futebol, and the niche Museum of the Japanese Immigration. Some 665,000 people of Japanese descent live in Sao Paulo, making it the largest Japanese population outside Japan, and mainly in the neighborhood of Liberdade.

The museum told about the World War-era Japanese migration to Brazil, and also revealed how to catch an armadillo. This may come in handy after the looming apocalypse.

The next day, Gus set me up for a Brazilian kickboxing lesson with his brother, Eddie. I nearly got beat up.

We went downtown to Gibi Thai Fight Club. Inside the gym, the matted-floor was surrounded by mirrored walls and decorated with posters of Gibi from his championship days. Moises Gibi, a world ultimate fighting champion, stood in the middle of the room with his arms crossed, silently judging our inferiorities while offering occasional grunts of advice. His hair may be graying, but he’s still intimidating: stocky, muscled, heavily tattooed.

Gibi quickly identified me as a weakling and pushed me off to the side to spar with a punching bag. Thank the Lord for that. Eddie sparred with another fighter, and he got knocked over by a solid kick to the head. “I took a hard hit,” Eddie told me after his bout. “I don’t think it was a concussion, but I’m having trouble concentrating.”

Eddie definitely had a concussion.

Telling all these stories and sharing all these stories with Gus, he told me he felt “saudade” for his old home. It’s a beautiful word unique to Portuguese, and it refers to a feeling of positive nostalgia or longing for something that will likely never return. … But I don’t think Eddie has any saudade for that kickboxing match.