Sao Paulo

oi aluizio, helo, meg, wagner, jackson, rafael, mocada,

saiu um artigo sobre sao paulo no new york times...

eh uma opiniao de gringo...interessante...

March 12, 2006
The New São Paulo
By DAN SHAW
IT'S a sultry January day in São Paulo, and dozens of
people are dining beneath a gargantuan fig tree with
dramatic horizontal limbs reminiscent of "Jurassic
Park." An entire restaurant has been built around this
130-year-old tree, and the expansive glass-ceilinged
patio is so ingeniously constructed that it's hard to
tell whether they are sitting inside or out.

Families and couples can sit for hours in Figueira
Rubaiyat, a popular gathering spot for the traditional
Brazilian Sunday lunch. They'll snack on hot, puffy
cheese rolls and drink caipirinhas, an icy national
cocktail made with limes and a sugar cane liquor
called cachaça. They will devour thick, charred steaks
and bountiful seafood casseroles, enjoying the
pleasures of summer in the city and the feel of the
warm sun on their bare arms.

São Paulo's sane and sensual side is not always so
easy to find. At first glance, this sprawling city of
10 million — the cultural and economic capital of
Brazil — appears to be a hard-edged urban jungle a
place whose seemingly haphazard design, a bit like Los
Angeles, can make it hard for the outsider to
negotiate. São Paulo is no Paris, Rio or Buenos Aires
— cities where you can just show up and fall in love
on a first pass-through.

Even on Rua Oscar Freire, the narrow boulevard that is
often compared to Rodeo Drive, a visitor would not
immediately be seduced by the fashion boutiques with
unfamiliar names. One of the most original and
enchanting stores on the street, Clube Chocolate, is
so chic that it has no display windows and is so
exclusive that security guards flank the heavy wooden
door that hides the glorious, airy interior. How would
you know that inside there's a bright, three-story
atrium with floor-to-ceiling palm trees and a sandy
beach that you reach by descending a polished steel
circular staircase?

São Paulo does not go out of its way to cater to
foreign tourists, and this can be a blessing. At
restaurants, you will not find yourself surrounded by
Germans, Australians and other Americans. At the flea
markets, you will not see couples wearing fanny packs
and taking photographs. At museums and churches, you
will not find crowds. You get to experience life
undiluted and witness a South American city in
transition.

One gets a sense of the city's determination to become
a player on the international hipster circuit at three
boutique hotels: the Emiliano, the Unique and the
Fasano. When I arrived at the Emiliano on a Friday at
noon, after a 45-minute cab ride from the airport, my
room was not ready. Before I could settle into the
bright, minimalist lobby, with its avant-garde
armchairs wrapped in hundreds of yards of golden rope
by the Campana brothers — the Brazilian duo whose work
has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New
York— I was escorted by one of the good-looking desk
clerks to the glass-enclosed rooftop spa. He handed me
a fluffy white bathrobe and white Havaianas, Brazil's
famous rubber flip-flops, encouraging me to soak in
the wooden hot tubs, cool off in the marble plunge
pool or take a shower. I did all three.

I had decided to come to São Paulo for a long weekend
because it may be one of the easiest overnight flights
around. I took a nonstop nine-hour American Airlines
flight out of New York at around 10 p.m. and arrived
in São Paulo in the late morning. (In January, when I
went, São was three hours ahead of New York; the
difference can vary from one to three hours depending
on shifting Daylight Savings times.) Dinner and
breakfast were served close to take off and landing,
so I could sleep for nearly seven solid hours and wake
up ready for a full day.

My room at the Emiliano was soothing and sybaritic:
white Egyptian cotton sheets and six pillows of
different firmness; an Eames lounge chair upholstered
in an oatmeal fabric; a wall of honey-colored wood
that hid closets and two Sub-Zero drawer refrigerators
stocked with drinks; and a large bathroom with a view
of neighboring penthouses. As the guest services
manager tried to teach me how to work all the lighting
controls (which I never mastered), she told me she
could send a butler to unpack my bags. (I declined.)

From the posh to the prosaic, São Paulo can sometimes
seem like a European capital. There's the Metropolitan
Cathedral, a building with Gothic and Byzantine
elements said to hold 8,000 worshipers, the 1911
Municipal Theater inspired by the Paris Opéra, art
museums whose buildings are as noteworthy as their
exhibitions and a downtown public food hall where
everything from baby pigs to hot peppers are displayed
in their stalls like art installations.

The Pinacoteca do Estado is an outstanding example of
how a historic structure can be preserved and turned
into a 21st-century museum. Stripped down to the
bricks as if it were an ancient ruin, the 1897
building now has a series of interior skylit
courtyards with sculptures by Rodin and Niki de
Saint-Phalle and an impressive collection ranging from
19th-century landscapes to 20th-century abstracts by
pioneering modernists such as Waldemar Cordeiro and
Willys de Castro.

Paulistas are very proud of their modernist
architecture, especially the Copan, a 1950 apartment
building designed by Oscar Niemeyer, who worked with
Le Corbusier on the United Nations and created
Brasília, the capital city. Elsewhere, a repurposed
1930 train station, Sala São Paulo, has been turned
into a strikingly contemporary symphonic hall. The
Museum of Art of São Paulo (MASP), a landmark 1968
building by Lina Bo Bardi that is suspended above a
plaza by colonnades at either end without any interior
supports, has a collection that includes works by
Renoir, Cézanne, Manet, Degas and Modigliani.

While traveling around town by car is essential, it is
easy to stroll for hours in the Jardins district, a
pedestrian-friendly village that would have appealed
to the urban ecologist Jane Jacobs, who wrote that a
"good city street neighborhood achieves a marvel of
balance between its people's determination to have
essential privacy and their simultaneous wishes for
differing degrees of contact, enjoyment or help from
the people around." Set on a sloping grid of narrow
streets, the Jardins has scores of restaurants,
sidewalk cafes and luxury high-rise apartment
buildings separated from the sidewalks by gates and
lush foliage.

"When you are in the Jardins, it's very easy to think
you are in the richest country in the world," said
Lauer Alves Nunes dos Santos, a semiotics professor I
met while having lunch at Prêt Café, a small Jardins
restaurant tucked away in a restored house. As an
American dining in a neighborhood hangout — where a
buffet set out in pretty glass bowls and iron pans
makes you feel as though you've stumbled upon a
private lunch party — I was a novelty. The owner,
Beatriz Ticcoulat Alves de Araújo, came out to meet me
and asked if I enjoyed the gnocchi, fish stew in
shrimp sauce, stuffed zucchini, rice and beans, green
salad and coconut pudding. "This is the type of food I
would serve you if you came to my house for lunch,"
she said.

There is nothing homey about the sexy and ominous
Unique Hotel. Designed by Ruy Ohtake, the ark-shaped
hotel seems like a set for a James Bond movie, with
its darkened windows, secret doors and suited security
guards. To get there, my taxi passed through Jardim
Europa, a neighborhood of shady streets with baroque
and modernist houses hidden behind tall walls — the
Brazilian equivalent of Beverly Hills. This L.A.
moment continued at the Unique's rooftop Skye bar,
where cocktails are served outdoors next to a lap pool
with panoramic city views. Even on a cloudy night,
there is a sunset glow, with the terrace artfully
illuminated by pink floodlights.

Summer weekends tend to be quiet in São Paulo as
residents head for the beaches or mountains, but many
of the style-conscious families and young
professionals who do stay in town end up dining at
Spot, a bustling glass-box brasserie. The menu
features multi-ingredient green salads, inventive
pastas and small steaks with luscious sauces and
crackling fried potatoes. It was hard for me to
concentrate on the excellent food, though, as a steady
parade of tanned women in miniskirted halter dresses
kept joining a table where two movie-star-handsome men
continue buying rounds of drinks for all. It seemed
like an episode of "Sex in the City" dubbed into
Portuguese.

After dinner, I went to Bar Balcão, where a two-sided
serpentine bar winds around the restaurant. "This bar
is popular with artists, poets and academics," said
Ana Amèlia Genioli, an architect who was having a late
supper. "But São Paulo is not Brazil. You need to see
the countryside." I explained that I was more
fascinated by cities, and told her what a Brazilian
artist, Ronaldo Bregola, had said to me: "Of course
São Paulo is not Brazil, but Paris is not France and
London is not England."

São Paulo is certainly a world-class city when it
comes to shopping, no matter your taste or budget.
Bargain-hunting in Sunday's Liberdade flea market, I
bought inexpensive handmade crafts: children's
puppets, wooden spoons and hand-dyed silk scarves in
tropical hues. I loaded up on flip-flops at Page
Calçados, which looks like every off-price shoe store
I avoid back home. It is in a downtown wholesale
district and carries Havaianas in dozens of styles and
colors that are rarely imported to the United States
at just 10.99 to 13.99 reais a pair ($4.95 to $6.35,
at 2.2 reais to the dollar).

But the high-end shopping is even more engaging — even
if you are only browsing. I wasn't sure whether to
visit Daslu, the department store that had been
profiled as a citadel of conspicuous consumption in
The New Yorker three years ago. But then I met
Walkiria Vaney, a Brazilian who used to live in New
York and described Daslu as much bigger and grander
than Bergdorf Goodman. I had to see for myself.

You can't walk into Daslu off the street; you must
arrive by car (or helicopter) and pass through a
security checkpoint. The store looks like a five-star
resort hotel and has the ambience of an exclusive
country club where everyone is shopping instead of
playing golf or tennis. In the store are 10 coffee and
Champagne bars, and boutiques selling everything from
Frette sheets and Prada bags to Aspen ski vacations
and Harley-Davidsons. Daslu's staffing provides
insight into Brazilian class structure. Sexy, animated
women with good haircuts are ringing up sales while a
battalion of stoic housekeepers in French maid's
uniforms silently straighten shelves in the
background.

That Paulistas know how to spend lavishly is also
apparent at D.O.M., a restaurant run by the celebrity
chef Alex Atala, considered the country's Jean-Georges
Vongerichten for his reinterpretation of Brazilian
ingredients — black beans, codfish, ferofa — with a
French twist. The dining room is hushed and
corporate-looking but attracts a diverse clientele:
Brazilian pop stars like Clara Moreno and her
entourage, couples splurging for a special occasion,
and rich families so blasé about fine dining that they
talk on their cellphones while they eat.

They should pay more attention, because the food is
superb. A friend and I had the four-course tasting
menu for 160 reais a person: shrimp with a papaya
mango salsa; codfish brandade in a reduction of black
beans; a fish called filhote in a crust of manioc, a
root vegetable; duck confit with peppercorns. The
unconventional cheese course was served by a waiter
who twirled a mixture of potato purée and Gruyère with
two spoons in the air as if it were taffy, before
divvying it up onto each plate.

After such a refined meal, the idea of a loud
nightclub was out of the question, so I ended up
having a nightcap at another of the boutique hotels,
the Fasano, where the sumptuous masculine décor
suggests that it attracts more hedge-fund managers
than models, and whose Baretto bar is a contemporary
riff on a 1930's cocktail lounge.

On my last day, I headed back to the Jardins, and its
world-class shops, curious to see the interior of
Galeria Melissa. Designed by Karim Rashid of New York,
the store's signature all-rubber high heels — by
designers such as Alexandre Herchcovitch (whose rock
star fashions are sold at his boutique around the
corner) and the Campana Brothers — are displayed in
plastic bubbles that hang from the ceiling, creating a
trippy "2001: A Space Odyssey" effect.

During a typical summer torrential rainstorm, I took
cover at Cavalera, one of many stores that sell
skintight Brazilian-made jeans and silky-soft cotton
T-shirts. The salesclerks spoke little English, but
they all looked like models and were eager to please,
producing stack after stack of jeans, some embellished
with Portuguese graffiti.

After an hour, it was still raining hard, so I ran
across the street to Z Deli, an idiosyncratic place on
Alameda Lorena, another street of fashionable shops.
There, the buffet lunch includes brisket, pierogi,
cole slaw and, improbably, gefilte fish. Run by two
Jewish women, Zenaide Raw, who once lived in New York
and speaks good English, and her sister Rosa, Z Deli
made me feel like an insider. When Zenaide heard I was
from the United States, she brought me a piece of rich
poppy seed cake and sat down at the table. When I told
her I was staying only three days, she scolded me:
"How can you see everything in such a short time? Next
time you have to see me first, and I will tell you
what you should do." I assured her that I would.

IF YOU GO

HOW TO GET THERE

Several airlines offer nonstop flights from New York.
If you take American Airlines flight 951, which leaves
New York at 10:20 p.m., you arrive in São Paulo at
9:40 a.m. The return flight leaves São Paulo at 10:35
p.m. and arrives at Kennedy at 6:06 a.m. My January
coach ticket cost $928 with taxes.

HOW TO GET AROUND

Taxis are plentiful, but don't expect your driver to
speak English. The trip from the airport to my hotel
was 75 reais ($34, at 2.2 reais to the dollar). A
friend negotiated with a cabbie to stay with us all
day for a flat fee of 150 reais.

WHERE TO STAY

The city now has three equally luxurious boutique
hotels. All quote their rates in U.S. dollars. The
country-city code is 55-11.

Emiliano, Rua Oscar Freire, 384; telephone 3069-4369;
www.emiliano.com.br. Rooms begin at $299 a night.

Fasano, Rua Vittorio Fasano, 88; 3896-4000;
www.fasano.com.br. Rates on weekends from $260; $295
on weekdays.

Unique, Avenida Brigadeiro Luis Antonio, 4700;
3055-4700; www.hotelunique.com.br. Rooms begin at
$285.

WHERE TO EAT

Bar Balcão, Rua Dr. Melo Alves, 150; 3063-6091.

Canto Madalena, Rua Medeiros de Albequerque, 471;
3813-6814. Set in the Vila Madalena neighborhood, this
open-air bar is known for typical Brazilian dishes
like carne secca (salted air-dried beef), best served
with a cold draft beer. Meals, all served for two,
about 45 reais.

D.O.M., Rua Barão de Capanema, 549; 3088-0761. Dinner
for two, with wine and drinks, about 600 reais.

Figueira Rubaiyat, Haddock Lobo, 1738, 3063-3888.
Lunch for two, without wine, about 250 reais.

Prêt Café, Rua Bela Cintra, 2375; 3085-8544. Buffet
lunch for two, without wine, about 80 reais.

Pitanga, Rua Original, 162; 3816-2914. Lunch for two,
without wine, about 100 reais. Feijoada, the
traditional Saturday lunch of black beans and meat, is
part of a buffet served in a homey setting.

Spot, Al. Ministro Rocha Azevedo, 72; 3283-0946.
Dinner for two with drinks about 200 reais.

Z Deli, Alameda Lorena, 1689; 3088-5644. Buffet lunch,
without dessert or wine, about 74 reais.

WHERE TO SHOP

Alexandre Herchcovitch, Rua Haddock Lobo, 1151;
3063-2888, extension 111.

Cavalera, Alameda Lorena, 1682; 3083-5187.

Clube Chocolate, Rua Oscar Freire, 913; 3084-1500.

Daslu, Avenida Chedid Jafet, 131; 3841-4000.

Liberdade flea market, Liberdade Square. Sundays, 10
a.m. to 7 p.m. Native crafts sold under tents in a
mostly Japanese neighborhood.

Galeria Melissa, Rua Oscar Freire, 827; 3084-3612.

Huis Clos, Rua Oscar Freire, 1105; 3088-7370.
Exquisitely cut dresses and blouses by the Jil Sander
of Brazil.

Page Calçados, Rua Comendador Alfonso Kherlakian, 102,
3326-6060.

WHAT TO SEE

Copan building, Avenida Ipiranga, 200.

Fundação María Luisa e Oscar Americano, Avenida
Morumbi, 4077; 3742-0077;
www.fundacaooscaramericano.org.br. A 1950 house museum
surrounded by a lush tropical garden with 25,000
trees.

Galeria Fortes Vilaça, Rua Fradique Coutinho, 1500;
3032-7066. Gallery that shows contemporary work by
Brazilians as well as Americans.

Millan Antonio, Rua Fradique Coutinho, 1360;
3031-6007; www.millanantonio.com.br. Gallery devoted
to established and up-and-coming artists from Brazil.

Museum of Art of Sao Paulo, Avenida Paulista, 1578;
3251-5644; www.masp.art.br.

Metropolitan Cathedral Praça da Se; 3107-6832.

Municipal Market, Rua Cantareira, 306; s228-0339. A
public food hall that resembles a United Nations
bazaar.

Pinacoteca do Estado, Praça da Luz, 2; 3229-9844.

Sala São Paulo, Praça Júlio Prestes; 3337-5414;
www.salasaopaulo.com.