Mamaggiore, Vila Leopoldina

Today it was time to visit a new area of São Paulo, Vila Leopoldina, where a friend lives. Andrea showed Johanna and myself around a little before she took us to an Italian restaurant called Mamaggiore. At this point we were all pretty much starting to lose weight and I even struggled to think. We were hungry, to put it lightly. Any place would have worked for me at this point, but this is not just any place. I said in my post about Terraço Itália that people tend to take me to luxury restaurants and bars. This is not that kind of place; you don’t wake up crying the next day as you will still have money for food. That’s a good thing. But do not think they have gone easy on the menu. Not even on the pictures in it! It was actually pretty much a torture at this point; trying to decide what to eat whilst looking at the pictures of creamy pasta dishes and starving at the same time. The waiter saved our lives by serving us bread and dips. It wasn’t just “bread”. I mean, it wasn’t just simple bread, but quite frankly, I didn’t have time to ask for details. I grabbed a crispy salty stick thingy and dipped it in some kind of anchovies salsa mix. I don’t even like anchovies, but I am hungry and this was a good anchovies dip. Then I grabbed a piece of bread which had stuffing in it, ahhh italian stuffing, and I dipped it in the little plate of olive oil.

I am now back to reality, I have finally snapped out of the world of hunger, pain and irrational thinking. I can talk and actually make sense again. I can even concentrate on the menu. But if it usually takes me half an hour to order it would take me at least twice that today if I wasn’t starving. Also maybe I should not go to restaurants where they have pictures in the menu, if there are no pictures I can always try to tell myself that it is crap. But when there is visual proof that’s a challenge. After considering a five coarse meal I finally settled for a creamy dish called Raviobrie. Picture this: brie & leek filled homemade ravioli with a touch of Salvia, honey and almonds. Of course when the lovely waiter offered parmesan I failed to decline, actually I failed to say “when” completely. Oh, and the ravioli was wholemeal. If I could input a sound here, you would now listen to opera or someone having sex – whatever makes you tick.

Food, and your choice of sound, aside the restaurant is spacious, nicely decorated and houses some very pleasant people. KEY!! Everyone from the smiling lady who opened the door and showed us to our table, through every waiter we interacted with and all the way to Dennis who owns the place and his beautiful wife to be Renata who runs the back office. A good team and a place to revisit for sure!

Love, CJ