Top to Bottom: Hes Carvalho

Top to Bottom is quick-fire interview series where we show off our cutest friends in the world of food.

Particularly steamy Hesli Carvalho grew up in a small countryside town in Brazil with a huge family. Meals were a major production and some of his fondest memories. Later, Hes spent ten years in computer science before changing trajectories to food. After cooking classes in Sao Paulo, Paris and Istanbul, Hes started a catering service and later, HM Food Cafe, a small restaurant that specializes in simple but incredibly flavorful food. The genuinely eclectic menu is influenced by food from NYC to Japan and considers every piece against three pillars: design, flavor and experience.  

For more Top to Bottom features:

Gus Reckle

Jon Fancey

We caught up with Mr. Carvalho for a little Q&A:

Whats your earliest food memory?

I was around 8 years old, cooking with my grandma. I can remember the taste of the seasoning today.

Favorite cuisine or food origin?

Asian in general (Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, India) and Middle Eastern food.

What's the sexiest thing a guy can eat?

Ice cream.

What's the least sexy thing a guy can eat?

Soup.

Favorite restaurant in Sao Paulo?

HM Food Café (of course), Arturito e Chou.

Favorite bar or night out in Sao Paulo?

Frank bar at Maksoud Hotel and Festa Mel (party).

Favorite meal to cook?

Traditional food from Minas Gerais - the state that I grew up.

What have you been working on this summer?

Im working on new dishes for lunch in my café - fresh salads and healthy daytime food. Also developing new combinations and flavors of teas + fruits.

Where's the best place for a foodie dude to meet another foodie dude?

Street food market.

What would be your last meal?

My mom's cooking.

Food and Contrasts in Lima, Peru

If you have been paying attention to the goings-on of the gastronomic world, you’ve probablyheard something about Peru: about how the world’s top chefs are enamored with the cuisine, about how Peruvian restaurants are opening around the globe like bottles of poppers at an orgy, and how its capital city of Lima is considered by many to be the culinary epicenter of Latin America.  The city that was once known – even to Peruvians – as “Lima the Ugly” and used by tourists as little more than a stepping stone to Machu Picchu is now becoming a destination in itself, especially for those who are devoted to their palates. 

Visitors to the Andean nation’s capital city will more than likely settle in the tony seaside neighborhood of Miraflores where the majority of Lima’s tourist accommodations, as well as its finest restaurants, are situated.  While the “Thrice Crowned City of Kings” has been making strides in cleaning itself up to become more accessible and less intimidating, Miraflores is still one of the few places where visitors can feel safe walking around at night.  This might make it seem as if the neighborhood is a sterilized, bland compound for prissy tourists to feel safe, but Miraflores offers a lot of local color along with unpretentious eats mingling with the backpackers and pitucos, the local upper crust snobs. 

The heartbeat of Miraflores is inarguably found at the Parque Kennedy, a triangular patch of green surrounded by restaurants, cafés, bars, a department store, and the requisite church.  It is a great introduction to Lima’s schedule where it is normal to have dinner with your family at 10:00 PM on a weeknight.  The park also presents a vibrant tableau of Lima: sacred and profane, wholesome and perverse, rich and poor all amongst a backdrop of food and drink.

Young couples kiss and fondle each other on benches facing a playground of screeching children, their parents chasing after them – the before and after, if you will. A less fortunate child in rags begs for money from people waiting in line for a sánguche (sandwich) before receiving a stern “camina, mocoso” (keep walking, brat) from a police officer.

Steps away from the displays of heterosexuality, an effeminate boy on a study abroad trip chats with his fag hags about nothing in particular while cautiously checking out the loitering male prostitutes through the corner of his eye.  Abuelas and other faithful file out of the baroque church that anchors the western end of the park while a pusher unabashedly whispers “mareewana, cocaeen” to passing gringos in the hopes of profiting from someone’s high.

Food options abound around the park.  There is the popular Haiti (pronounced “high tea”), known to locals and tourists for its WASP country club specialties, fruity cocktails, and people watching.  The D’Onofrio parlor serves every Peruvian’s favorite brand of ice cream in the form of spaghetti or princesses or animals.  There are eateries specializing in rotisserie chicken, pizza, hen broth with noodles, and Peruvian standards served with pisco cocktails.

To truly enjoy the park like a local, however, a visitor must eat a sánguche.  The bustling La Lucha serves a variety of these Peruvian sandwiches filled with roast turkey, pot roasted beef, or local country ham on pan francés, a roll whose shape is said to be a model for the perfect ass: rounded, firm, and with a crease down its center.  La Lucha is also known for its fries made with huayro potatoes that feature ribbons of purple running through them.  You can also get a shot of pisco there, perhaps to spike one of the sanguchería’s Amazonian fruit smoothies.

La Lucha does a fine job, but the carts that dot the park are where the real taste of Parque Kennedy is.  The same sandwich from La Lucha will cost you half as much, and you get to experience Peruvian street food culture firsthand – the shouts, the banter, the begging mocosos.  Your sweet tooth can be satisfied at the next cart over with a cup of politically incorrect (to Americans, at least) “zambo rice,” a rice pudding enriched with dark brown sugar and topped with chopped nuts and shredded coconut.

Walking back to your hotel, you may stop at the Ripley department store to use the restroom only to see that all the urinals are occupied by men who look like they have just been interrupted from something illicit…you may linger a while, yourself.  When you decide to call it night, the 24 hour Metro grocery beckons and you walk out with a couple of bottles of water – all named after Catholic saints – and a pack of Hamiltons. The barely legal hustler sees you and asks how you are doing?  After the sights, sounds and flavors you respond that you’re doing well and ask how he’s doing?  He replies, “waiting for you, my love!”

Story and mouthshots by the loveable Carlos C. Olaechea. Follow him on Twitter for his latest eats and more. 

Laura Jane Grace on Being Trans in the Punk Community

Laura Jane Grace, founding vocalist of Florida punk band Against Me, talks transitioning, disappearing bandmates and the difference between gender and sexual attraction in a new podcast with Marc Maron.

In a moment that seems to speak directly to Mouthfeel, Grace tells Maron about coming out to the punk community:

“People in the punk scene are, in general, kinda homophobic. If it had not come up, I think people would have been way more unaccepting than if I said, ‘Look, this is what’s going on with me, can you please fuck off while I do this.’”

While not completely devoid of awkwardness (mostly on the part of host Maron who admits that trans issues aren't really a part of his "everyday life"), the entire interview is a great, mainstream moment for trans people. Grace represents a large number of people, both in the punk community and otherwise, living at this physical and mental intersection of different lives. She might not have the same resources that her contemporaries do but this has hardly stopped her from building the life that she envisions for herself. 

Listen to the full interview here: WTF Podcast With Marc Maron - Laura Jane Grace

After Hours: An Inappropriate Taqueria in Chicago

Chicago is known just as much for its Mexican cuisine as it is for its deep dish pizza and hotdogs, and no visiting food lover should forgo at least a nibble of a taco during his stay, especially if coming from a Mexican food desert.  Considering that many taquerías and burrito spots are open 24 hours, you might be able to fit that nibble in at two or three in the morning, maybe after visiting the city’s impressive bath house or one of the numerous clubs or bars in Boystown. 

You can go to any number of all-night taco joints in Chicago. However, it would be hard to imagine a place that would serve your burrito and horchata with such a heaping side of playful inappropriateness as Taco & Burrito Express in Lincoln Park.  Your ears are bombarded by blaring banda music the moment you walk in and as you walk up to the counter you feel as if you’re walking into a party where everyone is welcome. The men working behind the counter are all joking around, and I’m sure that if you asked, they’d let you in on the joke.  The mustachioed ringleader of this jovial gang of taco slingers flashes a big, toothy grin and asks you what you want before yelling it back in a lilting northern Mexican accent to his comrades who go to work deftly preparing whatever hunger killer you've ordered – in my case, it was a breaded steak torta.

As soon as you take your seat with your glass bottle of Jarritos soda or your bucket of hibiscus tea so sweet it could do a hummingbird in, the joking continues.  If you know a few words of Spanish, you might catch bits and pieces of their lewd and comical banter.  If you’re lucky, one of the staff might get tired of whatever banal norteña is blasting on the sound system and change it to a quick paced song about urinating while walking.  You’ll be singing “caminando y meando” to yourself for days until it audibly escapes your lips in front of the shocked cashier at a bodega, moving you to stop singing about watersports and move on to some other depravity.

The fun may not stop there, however.  When you finally get that torta, there might be a DePaul coed ordering at the counter, her leggings-clad posterior unknowingly positioned perfectly between you and the employee sweeping nearby. He might just catch you glancing at her and take advantage of the moment to make surreptitious hand gestures on the quality of her backside while pursing his lips, ignorant of your possible assessment of his equipment while he was so preoccupied with hers.

If you could pay a cover just to witness this show, I would say it is totally worth it, and yet the food is as good as the spectacle: meaty, spicy, cheap, and delicious. Their torta is enormous, and for the  virgins, Taco & Burrito Express’s rendition is a good introduction to this Mexican sandwich.  The giant water roll is smeared with refried beans and guacamole and topped with meat, lettuce, pico de gallo, and sour cream. The soft bread will soak up any liquor sloshing around in your stomach, and the mélange of textures and flavors will put a smile on your face as you walk back home singing about walking and pissing.

Story and mouthshots by the loveable Carlos C. Olaechea. Follow him on Twitter for his latest eats and more. 

After Hours: Colombian Food in Boston

Boston is a town known for having an early bedtime.  Most of Boston’s residents are at home ready to call it a night when people in other burgs are thinking about what to have for dinner. There are few options when hunger hits past 10:00 PM- much less, past midnight.  Of course, there is late night pizza, the 24-hour Italian bakery in the North End, and the lone, perpetually open diner near South Station, but gastronomic diversity after last call can be scarce.

Luckily, Boston’s growing Latino population - coming from cultures where a midweek, all night fiesta to celebrate a nephew’s ninth birthday would not be uncommon – provides some relief from the town’s culinary curfew, as well as some much needed sabor in the wee hours.  East Boston’s most famous attraction is Logan International Airport, but in recent years the neighborhood has become a stronghold of Latin American culture. A short walk from the Wood Island T station, just north of the airport, is one eatery that serves a taste of Colombian junk food after hours.  Open until 3 AM every day, La Chiva is more of a snack bar than an restaurant, and upon entering, you’re greeted by a large glass display case made slightly cloudy by a mix of steam and grease with just enough clarity to make out the assortment of fried and baked antojitos, or “little whims.” 

There are cheesy breads made with yucca flour shaped into rings, nearly perfect spheres, or little mounds reminiscent of bra pads. There is an endlessly replenished supply of dainty, crispy cornmeal empanadas encasing savory braised beef and potato- just big enough to hold between your thumb and forefinger while carefully portioning out drops of tangy hot sauce into the filling.  There are also curls of scored deep fried pork rinds that offer a mix of crispy, crunchy, chewy, and meltingly soft textures as you bite through layers of skin, meat, and fat.

If you end up empty handed after a night of drinking, you can console yourself with some of the more phallic offerings in the display case or show off your skills to the severe looking blue-collar worker quietly nibbling on an arepa.  The question is whether you want a blood sausage or a garlicky pork sausage, or perhaps the whole ripe plantain stuffed with cheese and caramelized in the oven.

Nevertheless, there is no better way to satisfy a taste for something long and fleshy in your mouth, an affinity for the flamboyant, and a desire for authentic Colombian fast food than with a perro ­– Colombia’s extravagant adaptation of the hotdog.  La Chiva’s version comes topped with cole slaw, melted mozzarella cheese, several different sauces, crushed potato chips, and a hard boiled quail’s egg.  Such a creation is best enjoyed while under the influence, but the combination is equally good when sober.  Along with some other more substantial menu items that appear on an illustrated signboard, the perros have to be prepared to order, giving you ample time to sip on a sugary tropical fruit juice while enjoying the mix of Spanish speaking eye candy and local color that is East Boston.

Story and mouthshots by the loveable Carlos C. Olaechea. Follow him on Twitter for his latest eats and more.