Mocotó e Lumini

Courtesy of www.rainhadolars.com

We celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary a few weekends ago. Hard to believe this poor man has been married to me this long ... So he did his best to surprise me, and surprises don't come easily to him. We went to a restaurant I have been DYING to go to, Mocotó. He had to tell me as I would've complained the entire (long) drive there. We haven't made it out there before mainly because of practicalities. It's far away and I hear it's crazy busy on the weekends. I'm not really one for queueing for anything, let alone with 2 hungry children on a street corner. But I say this now, I will queue all morning for that Caldo do Mocotó!

What I love is that it is considered one of the top restaurants here in Sao Paulo and you sit in this restaurant / bar (it use to be his Dad's cachaçaeria) you actually feel like you are in Brazil. On the other hand, a restaurant like D.O.M could be anywhere in the world; though there food is not so bad either : ). It is super casual (thank god I put that "special occasion" dress back in the wardrobe) and you can't make a reservation. We were told to get there before 8pm to make sure we would get in on a Saturday night. We only had to wait 30 minutes which was spent supping my kiwi-caipi and people watching. 

The food is North-Eastern so has lots of flavour and chilli. Yay for my asian tastebuds! There are dishes where you can choose the size you want and share. I'm going to talk about the Caldo again... yes, it was that good. I wish we had ordered the largest bowl possible. I can't remember the name of the other dishes but one was rice based, another was a stew of some sort and we also got a plate of Carne do Sol. Our entire meal came to just under R100 including tip. 

So the plan for the second half of the night was a Love Motel. I've never been to one before but you see them dotted along the marginal. He had been doing alot of research to make sure it was a good, and more importantly a clean one for me. He picked one called Lumini Motel in Barra Funda, which has been rated No. 1 by Playboy. So I didn't quite know what to expect.. coming from a western minded upbringing, you always think of love motels being dirty and seedy. I've been told that most Brazilians lose their virginity in one. The Hong-Kong-in-me was super impressed with the efficiency. We drove up to the counter Mc-Donalds drive-through style, chose our room (Deluxe) on the screen infront of us, and handed in ID*. The gate opened, and so did our garage door as we approached it and we drove straight in to our private garage. The room was above the garage and had a spa and sauna, plus a retractable roof. For R200 we had 4 hours in the room but by hour 2 I was bored of sitting in the spa and just plain old tired, I just wanted to go to my own comfy bed to sleep!**

On the subject of Love Motels, I've heard that for Rio 20 next month they don't have enough hotels so they've had to block book Love Motels for all the UN officials. Where are people going to go when they want an hour of getting down and dirty?? I can just see it now... no one is going to be getting any, the whole city is going to be frustrated and angry, crime is going to go up and there's not even guaranteed sunshine this time of the year. Moral of this blog: don't go to Rio in June.

*remember that you have to have your ID every time you check into a hotel / motel here
** yes, i'm one of those boring married people