🦀
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Enjoy ♥
Dishes from Ceará
📍 Fortaleza
What to eat in Fortaleza
The dishes of Fortaleza and Ceará explained: what they are, how to eat them and where to find them.
- 🦀Best knownCrab on Thursday
- 🍚With almost everythingBaião de dois
- 🐟Pick your ownMercado dos Peixes
- 🍬SweetCashew fruit and rapadura
The food of Ceará
Sea and sertão on one table
Two kitchens meet in Fortaleza. From the sea: crab, prawns, lobster and fish. From the dry interior of the Northeast (the sertão): beans, rice, dried meat and cassava. You eat it at the barracas on the beach, in restaurants on the Beira Mar and in neighbourhood places across the city.
Tip: on Thursday evening the barracas at Praia do Futuro fill up: that is when the city eats crab.
The dishes
Ten things to taste
From the best known to the dishes for the brave.
🦀
Caranguejo (crab)
Cooked with coconut milk and served with peppers, tomato and coriander. You eat it with a small mallet, cracking open the claws and legs.
📍 Barracas at Praia do Futuro, especially on Thursday
🐟
Peixada and moqueca
Fish stewed with vegetables and herbs, eaten with pirão (a thick sauce of broth and cassava flour). Common fish: cavala, pescada-amarela, robalo and pargo.
📍 Restaurants on the Beira Mar
🍤
Camarão (prawns)
On almost every menu: with garlic and oil, grilled, or served in a pumpkin (na moranga).
📍 Beira Mar and Mercado dos Peixes
🐠
Fresh fish from the market
Choose your fish at the stalls and have it fried or grilled on the spot.
📍 Mercado dos Peixes, Mucuripe
🍚
Baião de dois
Rice and beans with herbs, onion, pepper and tomato, often with queijo coalho. The side dish that comes with almost everything.
📍 Almost everywhere
🥩
Paçoca
Farofa of cassava flour mixed with carne de sol, salted and dried beef.
📍 Regional restaurants
🍗
Galinha à cabidela
Chicken stewed in its own blood with vinegar and lime.
📍 Regional restaurants
🍲
Buchada and sarapatel
For the brave: offal. Buchada is cooked in pouches made from the stomach; sarapatel is a stew made with blood.
📍 Regional cooking
🫓
Tapioca and cuscuz
Tapioca is a thin pancake made from cassava starch, with a sweet or savoury filling. Cuscuz is often served alongside.
🍬
Cashew fruit, rapadura and fruit
Caju (the fruit of the cashew tree), rapadura (cane sugar in blocks) and fruits such as sapoti, siriguela and cajá.
A tradition
Quinta do Caranguejo: crab on Thursday
Every Thursday evening locals and visitors head to Praia do Futuro to eat crab. This is the Quinta do Caranguejo ("crab Thursday"): packed barracas, live music and sometimes comedy shows.
The tradition took off in the 1990s and has since spread to other parts of the city, such as Bairro de Fátima and Cidade 2000.
Featured: taste it here
Restaurants and barracas that serve these dishes and want to be seen here.
🍲
🧑🍳
Drinks
What to drink with it
Cold and fresh, the way it should be by the sea.
🍺
Chopp
Ice-cold draught beer by the glass or by the litre. Thursday crab comes with beer.
🧃
Regional fruit juice
Juices of acerola, caju, cajá and graviola.
🍻
Botecos by the market
Small bars with cold beer right next to the Mercado dos Peixes.
Frequently asked questions
Questions about food from Ceará
How do you eat crab in Fortaleza?
With your hands and a small mallet: you crack open the claws and legs. The crab is cooked with coconut milk and comes with peppers, tomato and coriander.
What is baião de dois?
Rice and beans cooked together with herbs, onion, pepper and tomato, often with queijo coalho. It comes as a side with fish and meat.
Can you pick your own fish?
Yes, at the Mercado dos Peixes on the Beira Mar. Choose your fish at one of the stalls and have it cooked at one of the frying stalls.
Sources: 360meridianos (2018): As comidas típicas do Ceará · Diário do Nordeste (2023): Como a Quinta do Caranguejo tornou-se uma tradição · QuintoAndar: Mercado dos Peixes de Fortaleza
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