Restaurants in Salvador

The streets of Salvador are a gastronomic delight, with stalls in São Joaquim, Santa Barbara and São Miguel markets selling local, traditional food. The Sete Portas Market which was inaugurated in the 1940s has been getting a stream of visitors since then to eat the famous mocotós sold there on Fridays. Walk into any restaurant in Mercado Modelo and order the delicious sarapatel, a stew accompanying an array of fried dishes. In Salvador, along the beaches are stalls selling fresh sea food, much of which is prepared in palm tree oil. Also, if you're really into gastronomy, don't forget to choose your Salvador pousada or Salvador hotel carefully, because many of them serve excellent meals in their unique restaurants.

In Salvador you will find restaurants offering superb local cuisine, as well as a large variety of international cuisines and dishes from the northern region of Brazil and Minas Gerais.

In our Salvador restaurant guide below you will find information about the local cuisine in Salvador, as well as some great places for eating out in Salvador, the perfect end to a day of shopping. For some general information about the food and cuisine in Brazil see our Brazil Restaurant Guide.

Food & Cuisine in Salvador

To appreciate food in Salvador it is essential to understand the gastronomic history of the area. The original inhabitants were Indians who planted corn and manioc, which they used in cooking and fermented beverages. The arrival of the Portuguese introduced a European influence with foods like meat stews with vegetables, sardines, codfish and delectable sweets. But the single biggest influence has been from Africa, when slaves arrived on the shores of Bahia in the sixteenth century.

The African slaves brought along okra, the malagueta pepper and palm tree oil. The Candomblé religion and African traditional cooking seeped into the older recipes, to evolve into Bahia's unusual cocktail cuisine. But some of the most popular preparations such as caruru, acarajé, mungunzá, and shrimp bobó find their origin in the rituals of the Candomblé cult.

The story goes that slaves were sold in what is now Mercado Modelo, and the plantation owners deployed the men to work in the fields while the womenfolk worked in the landlord's kitchen. These slaves first mastered the art of making food from traditional ingredients such as meat, chicken, rice, garlic, lemon, salt, sugar, beans and corn. Once the landlord's wives approved of the food, the Africans slowly started adding their own ingredients such as ginger, manioc, bananas and peanuts.

Since the Portuguese were open to experimenting with these new preparations, the cooks went one step further and adapted the ritualistic cooking of the Candomblé rituals to suit their master's tastes. Arany Santana, a researcher from Casa do Benin, has found evidence on the extensive use of palm oil. The slaves started using palm oil in almost everything as they discovered that it made food tastier. Xinxim de Galinha and Caruru dos ibejis, both rich in palm oil, were preparations in honour of the Catholic Saints, Cosme and Damião. The left over oil was very often mixed with manioc flour or fried bananas.

As the three distinct influences merged, new dishes started evolving. Coconut became an important ingredient in Salvadorian cooking and sea food prepared in coconut milk gave birth to the ensopados, the moquecas and the escabeche. Desserts such as the cocada branca were made of sugarcane bagasse, molasses and rapadura, a type of sugarcane juice. Similarly, manioc flour was mixed with Portuguese stews to create a traditional Indian styled mush.

Amalá, which is served during the Candomblé rituals, is made from sliced okra. Over the years the recipe changed as plantation owners did not like the original. Shrimps, peanuts and chestnuts were added to the preparation. It was called caruru, which later became one of the most popular dishes in Salvador.

A number of dishes have evolved over the years, with many having been originally used as ritual offerings for the gods. Munguzá was a preparation dedicated to the Candomblé deity Oxalá, the father of all the gods. According to Arany Santana, ipetê, which was prepared for the deity Oxum, is the precursor to shrimp bobó; and akará offered to the deities Xangô and Iansã is now the famous acarajé. Other dishes such as the haussá rice made from jerked beef, bolinhos, fubá, cuscuz, and mingau, a type of porridge, became a part of the daily diet.

Apart from the African experience, colonial habits in Bahia also helped in the evolution of some unique recipes. According to Hildegardes Vianna in her book A Bahia já foi Assim, the landowners selected only the prime cuts of meat for their tables, leaving the hides, secondary cuts, and viscera for their slaves, who created delicious, traditional dishes like mocotó, feijoada, and sarapatel from them.