By Priscila Camargo Reis, VRG intern from Brazil

Santos is a mid-sized city on the coast of São Paulo County, in Brazil. It is beautiful, flat, with a good bicycle route, and is where some people who worked hard in the overwhelming city of São Paulo and earned a lot of money, choose to live their retired life. For that reason and due to being a touristic place, it is hard to live there, since for those living on a typical Brazilian income it is an extremely expensive city.

As a result, the vegan restaurants also will have a bitter price (be expensive). In Brazil veganism is still not very popular and is usually thought of being only for higher income people. I don’t have a high purchasing power yet, but my belly doesn’t care about this. And something my stomach discovered is that vegan restaurants from Santo don’t have a bitter taste, but the opposite. The  vegan restaurants are delicious and there are several of them around the city. From my point of view, it is a good number of vegan businesses for a city the size of Santos, since the majority of cities that size have hardly any vegan options.

The restaurant I patronized most -and which bankrupted me a little bit- is called Master Veggie. It is very well located, in a central region and it is open from 11 am to 11 pm, from Tuesday to Sunday. It is a small place, stripped-down style, with super friendly, attentive and helpful attendants, and it also has a small grocery store offering vegan food. Actually, Master Veggie is a burger shop, but they also serve lunch and dinner a la carte. You can eat there, take away, or ask for delivery.

The hamburgers are tasty, a good size, and not just soy-based. But the so called salty snacks, despite being wonderfully delicious, are too small for their price, except for the onions rings, which are a good size. There are vegan milkshakes. Although there is no freshly made juice (something that Brazilians are blessed with finding everywhere), they do have kombucha! Master Veggie serves desserts and vegan ice cream, too.

The first dish I tried was a lunch plate. A “PF” is how it’s called. Parmigiana, consisted of white rice, salad (tomatoes, lettuce, and a seed mix), French fries, and one veggie meat (selected from about ten options) with nut cheese and homemade sauce. When I’ve been sad, a chocolate milkshake and French fries were my comfort food.

Every time I traveled, I ordered one of their hamburgers. I’ve tried at least three different types, including a very new one made of onion rings. Usually I used to order a bean burger (we can choose the protein) and the sauces were all tasty.

I said good bye with a lunch, too, to close the cycle. I’ve ordered The “saladão” (big salad), that an assistant told me was the  biggest deity of the place. It followed the standard of beautiful, yummy, and nutritious. However, it was much more light than the other options. It included leafy green mix, carrot, tomatoes, purple onion, mini (and cute) tofu cubes, lemon, bitter sweet sauce, salty granola (did you know this exists?), and more than ten veggie meat options to be chosen, covered by melted nut cheese. I still can feel this dish in my mouth.

So, if you visit Santos, Brazil, it is worthy doing a gastronomic tour to this restaurant/snack bar. And, please, be sure to purchase frozen jackfruit (jaca) meat. You will surely be surprised how the Brazilians managed to turn a fruit into shredded fowl. Bon apétit.

For more info, visit https://www.facebook.com/masterveggiebr/

When traveling in the United States and looking for restaurants, go to https://www.vrg.org/restaurant/index.php