Carioca in Venice: From the Land of the String Bikini

A Brazilian restaurant: Why not? It’s the one place on the Westside you’re pretty much guaranteed not to hear Paul Simon or David Byrne mangle the tropical greats.

On a sunny Saturday afternoon, Carioca looks like the grooviest place in town, sidewalk tables full of tan, handsome people laughing, sipping freshly extracted sugar cane juice and swaying slightly to the sambas that come blasting out from the kitchen. It’s almost enough to convince you that you are not in fact on a bleak stretch of Venice Blvd. speeding toward the 405. Though it’s only been open a couple of months, the Brazilian takeout shack is already attracting a crowd of West L.A. locals and Brazilian expatriates whose cheekbones hit the sky.

Inside, the tiny dining room is dominated by a big glass case filled with fruits and tropical flans; another case displays Brazilian fried pies.

“This one, risoli , is stuffed with shrimp or chicken and then fried,” the guy behind the counter explains, “and croquete is stuffed with shrimp or beef and then fried. Empadinha is also stuffed, like a chicken pie. Coxinha , which looks like a piece of chicken, is stuffed with chicken. And then fried.”

To tell the truth, you probably couldn’t tell one pie from the other with your eyes closed--they’re all kind of dank and doughy, a lot like Carioca’s springy golf balls of cheese bread. The appetizer you want is called pasteis , which is a puffy, deep-fried turnover filled with pully lumps of white cheese, or a glop of creamed heart of palm sort of like great chicken pot pie filling without the bird. Try it with a glass of sugar cane juice--which tastes, reasonably enough, like slightly grassy sugar water--topped off with a squeeze of lime.

Brazilian cooking may be vastly complex, rich with unusual fruit essences and Creole spices, complicated stews and elusive sweet flavors. It’s probably the greatest American cuisine. But Carioca is simpler than that. The special of the day seems to be the special of every day--grilled slabs of protein, marinated and garlicky, topped with a fresh, chopped Brazilian salsa. And whether it’s liver or pork chop or pounded chicken breast, the special always tastes the same: good, straightforward and clean.

Lunches come with rice, black beans and a soup that seems always to be made of black beans, pureed and zapped with hot sausage and Cajun spices perhaps, or thinned down and made elegant with broth. To thicken the beans, there is cassava flour, a product with the gritty consistency of crumbled dry wall: It’s an acquired taste. To spice up the beans, there’s sometimes a salsa made of pureed black beans that explodes into chile heat. This is another restaurant where a black bean is never far away.

On weekends, Carioca features feijoada , the insanely heavy national dish of the country that invented the string bikini, good black beans studded with sausage and creamy chunks of long-simmered pig’s foot that melt into a delicious homogenous goo. Come to think of it, the stuff is not unlike an Ivan Lins album.

Carioca, 10831 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles. (213) 837-8957. Open seven days 10 a.m.-10 p.m. No alcohol. Cash only. Lunch or dinner for two, $9-$15.