Nino's Brazilian Restaurant & Pizzeria

This is the only Brazilian restaurant I've found in the East Bay that serves typical Bahian cuisine. The location is just a few blocks from all of the action of Downtown Berkeley but in a weird enough spot and so nondescript that it's easy to miss it. I used to work around the corner from this place and must have passed by it many times without noticing it. I found it through a Google search of Brazilian restaurants in Berkeley!

Once you walk in, it's quite an ugly and tacky restaurant (plastic Brazilian flag picnic tablecloths etc.) and it's somewhat disguised as a pizzeria. But I guess even in Bahia it's normal to find restaurants that serve a combination of Brazilian and Italian dishes. They serve a variety of authentic Brazilian appetizers, entrees, Guarana soda and with no salty grilled meat in sight. They have feijoada, moqueca and bobo de camarao. The only things missing were pao de queijo and caipirinhas! I ordered moqueca de camarao, a heavy palm oil and coconut milk stew with shrimp. It was a familiar and satisfying taste and it came with delicious buttery garlicy rice and greens.

It definitely doesn't have the cool atmosphere of Bossa Nova in San Francisco (see my previous review on that restaurant) but it's authentic and tasty. The bad decor actually brought back good memories of some of the random restaurants we ate at in Bahia. I'll definitely go back for Brazilian food, especially when I am overcome with feelings of saudade. Maybe I'll eventually get around to trying the pizza!