Moqueca @ The Flavours, St Johns Market
St Johns Market, Liverpool, L1 1LR
In an earlier post I stated that if you wanted South American food in Liverpool your options were a bit limited. I’ve since discovered you’re less constrained than I thought.
As well as Venezuelan café Noso in Fazakerley and Argentinian restaurant Meet off Castle Street, there is also the fantastic Flavours, a Brazilian (and Angolan) canteen and deli in St Johns Market.
On offer here are Brazilian cuisine’s greatest hits — feijoada (rich, dark stew of pork, beef and beans), coxinha (egg-shaped, breadcrumbed parcels full of shredded meat and cheese) as well as fried pastels, which look like jumbo versions of McDonalds apple pies and are filled with combinations of beef, chicken or juicy palmito (heart of palm).
The best of the menu though is the moqueca — a sweet yet intensely savoury stew of tender white fish with garlic, coconut and pepper, cut through with lots and lots of lime. Served with a mound of white rice and the sort of salad you usually only get in a little plastic baggie with your Indian takeaway. Wash down with a chilled can of tart, crisp Guarana Antarctica.
It’s a delicious plate of food, and costs about as much as a meal from the McDonalds or KFC in the shopping centre food hall downstairs. Well worth a visit. To paraphrase a great man, we need sometimes to exercise our right to ‘buy a little picanha’ — the grilled rump cap of beef so popular across Brazil, incidentally also available at The Flavours.
