Welcome to 25 for 25 my project to watch and eat my way around the world in 2025 with 25 movies from 25 countries matched with 25 country themed dinners. Today’s entry is Brazil but you can see the full Masterlist to watch and cook along with me.

Country: Brazil
Movie:  Estômago: A Gastronomic Story [Stomach]
Director: Marcos Jorge
Year: 2007
The Elevator Pitch: Nonato arrives in the city penniless and clueless and builds a life for himself when he discovers that he is actually a good cook. Cooking is a means of survival but it also becomes something more sinister as Nonato blossoms as a chef.

How Was the Movie?: 

This was actually a really interesting movie though at times I felt like it needed another edit or two to actually be a great film because there are a lot of inconstant character beats and I don’t think the movie actually really comes together. It took me a good 20 minutes to figure out what was really going on in the story which at first I thought was clever but the more I actually thought about, became just an indication of all the small issues I had with the actual construction of the film.

I did a pointing Leo meme when I saw the coxinha in the film

Overall I enjoyed Estômago and I accidentally made one of the foods that served as the centerpiece of the film, coxinha, so that’s always extremely fun.

My assumption about this film is that we were actually missing quite a lot of things because we’re not familiar with Brazilian culture. It became obvious about halfway through the film that it was leaning more on archetypes than fleshing out full characters. In fact, the movie is chock full of these stock characters which made it feel like it was extremely regressive. Its theme is mostly about social climbing but it bizzarely does capitalize of the actual paralells between cooking/chefery and social mobility and station. The fact that I think this is the directors first film did not help either because at times the movie is a little scattershot.

There is plenty to like about the film especially the acting and some of the food photography and a couple of good laughs to be had but because the use of food and cooking both aren’t particularly meaningful despite taking up such a large part of the film, I found my feelings more middling after a day or two of mulling it over.

What was for Dinner?: 

After I visited Portugal my one real take away was that the world is completely sleeping on Portuguese food and after this meal, I kind of feel that way about Brazilian food too. There were so many amazing and unique dishes I could have made but I ended up making coxinha because I’ve always wanted to try them and I’m probably never getting to Brazil in this lifetime. They’re street food that is seasoned chicken stuffed into a thin flour casing (though sometimes it’s potato) and then coated and fried. It was phenomenal. I actually decided not to put any cream cheese in mine and I didn’t miss it at all. I did do some sneaky time saving things but it didn’t hurt it at all. 10/10.

I rounded out the meal with feijoada y arroz which was good. I don’t eat pork or red meat so I’m not making authentic beans and rice but there’s really nothing wrong in this world with some good old beans and rice. 

For dessert we had brigadeiro which are super simple to make and absolutely out of this world delicious. I’m not surprised they’re a Brazilian staple because it’s hard to stop eating them. They are kind of a sugar bomb but that didn’t stop us from eating the entire batch while watching the movie >.>

That’s it for Brazil, see you next in Morocco!