Botequim? Boteco? Choperia or Cervejaria? Who cares? The food's delicious!

A glass of the house 'chopp', a basket of bite-sized cheese pasteis and seasoned fries served in white ceramic cups at Maria de Lourdes boutequem in Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Year after year, I find that my mother's home city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, has developed into something more exciting than it was before. This time around, my cousins introduced me to a lively social scene in the district of Lourdes, a stylish neighborhood with many enticing restaurants, designer stores and million-dollar properties.

It was a cool September evening—a Wednesday, I think—and the sidewalks pulsated with pedestrian traffic and animated patrons at crowded corner restaurants, though none so packed as Maria de Lourdes. Maria de Lourdes is just one of many local choices of cafes, barzinhos, botecos, botequins, choperias and cervejarias—think sidewalk taverns of varying levels of rusticity and glamour—specializing in beer, salgadinhos (sahl-gah-jeen-yooz) which are snack-sized meat patties and croquettes, and caipirinhas (kai-pi-reen-yahz). With that many names for bars with food, clearly this is a city that appreciates the art of hanging out.

Fortunately, it didn’t take long for us to be seated at what looked like the last available outdoor table. The waiter brought us menus along with the house chope. Chope or chopp (shoh-pee) is draft beer. In Brazil, bottled beer, is called cerveja (sair-veh-zhah). I decided to go with the chope, but I probably should have ordered a caiprinha. In truth, I don’t enjoy beer as a beverage as much as I appreciate it as a cooking ingredient. But the beer was fine, and anyway, what I was most excited about was the basket of pasteis (pah-steh-eez).

A pastel (pah-stel), is a very thin fried dough stuffed with various fillings—typically beef. It’s very similar to the Spanish pastele or pastelito or Jamaican meat patty, but typically made with a lighter dough. For those who prefer a non-meat filling option, many places also offer cheese and cheese and palmito (hearts of palm) pasteis, which is what we ordered at Maria de Lourdes. Like hotdogs and pretzels in NYC, pasteis are everywhere in Belo Horizonte, along with chicken croquettes known as coxinhas (koh-sheen-yahs). The pasteis at Maria de Lourdes come in little ravioli-sized squares, giving this typically fist-sized street food a bite-sized neatness. As we plunged into our basket, so we plunged into the night. We chatted and munched under a handful of stars, while alongside us, the crazy traffic of Belo buzzed with mopeds and motorcycles and passing cars discharging sporadic shouts and howls for Cruzeiro, one of Belo Horizonte's two soccer clubs, who had apparently won a match that evening against Ceará, a team from Fortaleza in Ceará.