“A few weeks ago, an older gentleman, English guy maybe 70 years, and his son came in,” says Christian Estevam, who with his wife Marile, presides over a little corner of Sao Paulo in the Salford shopping precinct. “And he is asking a lot of questions about our pastels, about the ingredients. And they’re saying ‘I don’t know if I’ll like it’.” Pastels are small fried pastry parcels, often filled with cheese, or cheese and ham, and in the case of Christian and Marielles’, also a ‘pizza’ filling, with tomato and cheese and oregano. Really, what’s not to like? But nevertheless.
“I just said ‘try one of the pastries, you might like it’. So he tries a pastel, and his son tries one of the coxinhas (a teardrop shaped deep fried croquette filled with chicken and encased in silky pureed cassava, a root somewhere between a potato and a yam).
After eating two of them, his son has another coxinha and another pastel, then they have a dessert too. He says to me ‘I’ve never tasted anything like this before’. He was amazed with the flavours. But people come in, and at first they were curious, but now they come in and they are buying. They now accept us.”
