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Joaos (Brazilian cuisine)  $

 8
JaT Rating

57 Washington St, Santa Clara, 95050  (Directions)


408.244.1299


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Family-style Brazilian restaurant also serves up traditional diner food


Reviewer: Jason
Total Reviews: 1040
Reviewed: 5/23/2007
Rating: 7.5
My photo gallery 		We picked up the new jatbar shirts in Santa Clara and on the way back we stopped at Joaos. This restaurant has been on our wish list for a very looooooooong time. This might even belong on wish list 1.0. Joaos is a brazilian restaurant named after the owner. The menu has plenty of american offerings on the menu from pancakes to sandwiches to traditional brazilian dishes.

If you plan a visit here, 2 things to keep in mind;

1. You WILL like Futbol and pretend you watch/know about Futbol
2. Joaos loves Futbol

I thought Europeans were fanatical about futbol but I think Brazilians are nuts. Joaos is crazy about futbol like jatbar is about food. Speaking of crazy, you have to see the collage of pictures on the walls. He must of been taking pictures for the last decade or so.

Let's get to the food! I could have went for a sandwich or burger, but why would you want to do that for a 1st visit? Why not try the brazilian food! If there's one dish I know for Brazilian food, it's Feijoada. Feijoada is a stew of beans with sausage, pork, and beef. I've seen the color range from brown to purple to black. It's normally served with rice, collard greens, and a farofa. The farofa is kinda hard to explain. It has the texture of cornmeal, I don't know if it's salty or not, but you sprinkle it over your collard greens and stew. When you take that first bite, don't inhale the farofa or you'll be coughing up a lung. The rice was on the oilier side and collard greens was easily the best part of the meal. The greens were bright green and seasoned with a light oil/salt/possibly broth.

I know a dish like Feijoada takes hours to make and it's understandable a dish like this would need to be reheated but it didn't taste the freshest. The sausage/linguica? tasted as if the seasonings were boiled out of it. Beans were mushy and stew was watered down. Even after the meal, my mouth was dry as a desert needing multiple glasses of water after the lunch.

Food is a 7 but atmosphere/service is an 8. I think there's free wireless access as I saw 2 Apple employees coding away. When futbol season is in full effect, you can be sure to see hordes of people glued to the tv screens eating brazilian/american food.
 
  RETURN VISIT for Jason! 11/11/2007 - 8 Rating: I got the Brazilian Chicken this time. Serves with large piece of chicken, beans, rice, and starts you off with chicken soup. Everything was very good. I was expecting the chicken soup to be canned but it tasted homemade goodness to me. Chicken meat fell off the bone and it's covered with this chicken broth sauce. Mix it with the rice and beans and you have very comforting meal. As expected, the service was one of the friendliest you can get in the area.

Thanks to Nina for suggesting the Brazilian Chicken. Much much better than my first visit.
 


Reviewer: Terry
Total Reviews: 739
Reviewed: 5/23/2007
Rating: 8.5
My photo gallery 		We were driving back after picking up the Jatbar T-Shirts and looking for a place to try. We passed a few common business-park restaurants. Thats the tough part, deciding if a place is worth reviewing. I mean if you see a restaurant in the middle of a bunch of warehouses that serves pizza, sandwiches, soup, burgers, etc, is that really a place you want to review? Sometimes we do, but today we wanted something a little less ordinary.

We drove by Hungry Hound and *almost* dropped in, but figured it wouldn't be prudent. When we spied Joaos, we knew we had to try it out. Its been on our list of places to try for a LONG time.

We enter the back door and its kind of old and ratty looking in there. Seriously, it looks clean, but it has the feel of a place that has been around for a long time. I liked the old school feel of it. Felt homey. The guy is quick to bring over the menus for us.

The menu, while featuring a good selection of brazilian items, also has a lot of traditional diner foods like breakfast items, sandwiches, etc. I had to go for a brazilian item of course. Not surprisingly, there isn't a whole lot of vegetarian items in the brazilian cuisine, yet the menu had 1 or 2 non meat brazilian items which was nice. I opted for the Vegetarian plate which merely mentioned that it had rice, beans, and vegetables. This really didn't sound incredibly appealing to me, but I said what the heck. I also went for a fruit shake.

Fruit shake arrived first and was a blend of banana and orange, and probably some more flavors. Simple, yet good. I finished it quickly and the guy surprised me by bringing out another. Maybe he blended more than he would have used right then since the place was empty - regardless, it was a nice touch to get the refill.

My plate arrived and it looked nice. Sure, the food looked kind of plain, but the plate itself was ornate and quite decorative. I sampled the vegetables first since I like spinach. The veggies were a bit steamed and still a bit crunchy. They had a lot of salt flavoring on them, so of course they were good.

The beans are what blew me away. I was expecting them to be kind of bland and boring, especially with the rice, but quickly found myself scarfing these things down. They were simple, still, yet had a great flavoring - and again a lot of salt. It tasted like the ultimate comfort food. While the serving size wasn't immense, it did fill me up, and I could go back to the office and fall asleep now.

At about $7 for the plate, it wasn't too expensive either. The shake was a little over $2. I definitely wouldn't mind returning here and ordering this dish again. Just looking at the picture again is getting me hungry for more. In fact I googled the recipe and plan to make my own soon.
 
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