A PLATEFUL OF PRIDE

The cuisine of the Amazon Basin’s Indigenous peoples was dismissed for generations. Now its historic trade hub, Belém, is being heralded as Brazil’s most dynamic food destination.

- MICHAEL SNYDER

ON A BALMY afternoon in Belém do Pará, a historic port near the mouth of the Amazon River in northern Brazil, I sat down for lunch in the creaky-floored dining room of Iacitata Amazônia Viva (entrées $14–$18). Wooden doors opened onto a Juliet balcony, beyond which a low mantle of cloud mirrored the pewter-gray surface of Guajará Bay. Eager to sample the flavors that have, over the past decade or so, earned Belém a reputation as Brazil’s most interesting food city, I ordered the restaurant’s tasting menu.

Dish after dish arrived in glossy black cuia, traditional vessels made from dried tree gourds. There were shredded hearts of açaí palm and crisp morsels of fried water buffalo, half a million of which live on the immense Amazon Delta island of Marajó, where chef Tainá Marajoara traces her roots.

My favorite was kanhapira: a medallion of filhote, or Amazonian catfish, in a sauce of fermented tucumã, a palm fruit. Even in Belém, kanhapira isn’t often served in restaurants—which is why Marajoara keeps it on her menu. “When people truly want to eat the food of the Amazon, they come here,” she says. “We want to keep our culture alive.”

Founded by the Portuguese in 1616, Belém is today home to 2.5 million people and serves as the capital of the state of Pará, which covers an area three times the size of California. Following the arrival of the Portuguese, cacao, rubber, Brazil nuts, and copaiba oil passed through Belém’s port en route to Europe and the rest of Brazil, though the Tupinambá peoples had been using the area as a trading post for far longer.

On a steamy mid-morning stroll through Ver-o-Peso, Belém’s main market, I passed stalls piled with smoked and salted river fish from distant inland villages; bottles of amber-colored