Get your new Havaianas for the summer

We've been to the Bourbon Country supermarket this morning and
saw an extended Havaianas department. They usually have a nice selection of flip flops, but now they have plenty more!
(Sorry for the poor quality of the picture, I didn't imagine there would be something THAT exciting in the supermarket today)
Another store that always has a nice selection of Havaianas flip flops and accessories is HSC Concept on Padre Chagas St. They also sell socks to fit flip flops (in shape and color) and have bling charms to add to the flip flops.
Address: Padre Chagas 400, Mon-Sat. 10:00-20:00, Sun. 14:00-18:00

Feta Cheese

A good feta cheese can be found in different delis and also in Nacional stores. It has 4 months validity and is made in Brazil by Lacaune company. Made of goat milk.
Click on the photo below to enlarge image.

Beer - Brazilian and Imported

There is a nice variety of local beers available at any supermarket in Porto Alegre. Imported beers are available too, but may be very expensive (for example - a 500 ml can of Irish/English beer may cost 10 to 15 R$). Some of the international beers are produced in Brazil, what make them available with local prices (Heineken, Miller, Budweiser). I found that the local beers can actually be very good and I, as a "dark-beer" addict, could even find few nice dark and bitter Brazilian beers.

The Brazilians prefer lighter beers (Brahma Extra is my preferred beer in this category). Simple popular beer (Brahma, Bohemia, Polar, Skol...) price may vary from 1.20R$ to 1.70R$ for a "long neck" (335 ml bottle). What I consider as the best dark beer for this price range is Xingu. It can be found also as a draft beer ("chopp") in some of the pubs and even served in Gol flights.

My favorite Brazilian Brewery is definitely Eisenbahn (they have an English website!!!). It costs a bit more than the common local beers (2.50 - 3.00R$) but in my opinion - it worth every cent of it. Eisenbahn has a nice variety of more than 10 different beers and i will mention the most interesting ones:
Dunkel - Dark Lager, with roasted and chocolate malt character. Medium bitterness. Rich and complex.
Pilsen - Light color beer - Pilsen style. Clean and dry, brewed only with natural ingredients.
Weizenbier - South German style wheat beer, unfiltered, with banana and cloves aroma and flavor.
Strong Golden Ale - "killer beer". Golden colored with high alcohol content (8.5%). This powerful beer presents hops flavor, besides spices. The yeast for this high fermentation beer is imported from Belgium
Pale Ale - A Belgian style pale ale, medium bodied but very complex, with hints of cloves and some citrus. Amber colored with medium bitterness.

BTW - the Eisenbahn brewery is located in Blumenau (SC) and they offer brewery tours. I'm still looking for the opportunity (and the partners) for this visit....

Supermarkets

The 2 biggest supermarket chains in Porto Alegre are "Zaffari" and "Nacional".
Zaffari has bigger shops that are called "Bourbon" and Nacional has "Big". Nacional was recently purchased by Walmart. On this Nacional site, it is possible to buy groceries on-line.
Both supermarkets are good and each specializes in different areas.
We think that Nacional is better for imported foods, while Zaffari has a bigger verity of foods in general. The best Zaffari store that usually has everything fresh is the one on rua Plinio Brasil Milano. The best Nacional store is on rua Lucas de Oliveira.
Important: Only Nacional accepts credit cards. Zaffari only accepts debit card or cash (of course...)

Fresh Milk

We really like to drink milk, but a tasty fresh milk is so hard to find in Porto Alegre.

We tried a lot of types and the best one we found so far is "Leite Santa Malta". It comes either in a plastic bottle or bag and you can find it in the Zaffari supermarkets. It has 6 days shelf life and it has 3% fat.

In general it is important to know that fresh milk in Brasil is divided to "Tipo A" (Type A), "Tipo B" (Type B) and "Tipo C" (Type C), where Type A is the cleanest, bacteria wise. So make sure you always get a type A milk. Click on the photo for a lerge image.