Sud, o Pássaro Verde Café (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
At Sud in Rio de Janeiro, a wood-fired oven informs a rustic menu in a small, cozy dining room.| Credit: Roberta Sudbrack
It is possible to arrive on this leafy side street in Rio de Janeiro’s Jardim Botanico neighborhood and completely miss Sud, which is located in a house behind a large white wall. There is no way to know you’re in the right spot before you’ve entered what could easily be someone’s private property. Many days the only giveaway is the line of people snaking out the gate, waiting for a spot at one of 12 tables. They’re here for the heartfelt cooking of Roberta Sudbrack, who owned a highly awarded eponymous fine dining restaurant in Rio from 2005 to 2017. In 2018, Sudbrack opened this far more casual café-restaurant, cooking much of the menu in a large wood-fired oven that sits at one end of the cozy dining room. The food has the feel of home cooking, if it were made by your most culinarily talented friend with access to the most beautiful produce imaginable. Okra is smoked, draped in lardo, and dusted with crumbled cornbread. Corn and sausage comes sizzling out of the oven then spooned over a fat lobe of burrata, the cool cheese and the hot ingredients coming together in milky, meaty, crunchy harmony. One of the simplest dishes—a pot of rice topped with a variety of perfectly seasoned and fire-roasted vegetables—was also one of the most memorable, outdone only by the airy, crispy, burnt-sweetness magic of dessert: Sudbrack’s raspberry clafouti, cooked in a cast-iron pan and showered in powdered sugar. instagram.com/sudopassaroverde
