Food in Portuguese: 100+ Words for Eating Well in Brazil

Meals in Portuguese: from café da manhã to janta

Food is the fastest way into a language. You'll use these words three times a day, and nothing warms up a conversation in Brazil like a visitor who orders in Portuguese. If you've worked through your first 100 Portuguese words, this page is the delicious next step.

Everything here is Brazilian Portuguese; where Portugal says it differently, you'll get a quick note. Pronunciation hints follow Brazilian habits: a final -o sounds like "oo," de/di soften to "jee," te/ti to "chee," and the til (~) means the vowel hums through your nose.

Start with the meals. In everyday speech, o jantar (dinner) often relaxes into a janta. Same meal, cozier word. And careful with o lanche: it sounds like "lunch" but means a snack.

In Portugal, breakfast is o pequeno-almoço, literally "small lunch." Brazilians say café da manhã, "morning coffee," which tells you plenty about breakfast priorities. If hours and schedules still wobble, the time in Portuguese lesson pairs well with this one.

What's on a Brazilian plate? Staples and proteins

The daily Brazilian plate is built on arroz e feijão, rice and beans. Add a protein, a little salad, and a snowfall of farofa, and you can read half the menus in the country. These are the Portuguese food words you'll see morning to night.

Staples

Farofa is cassava flour toasted in butter, and Brazilians sprinkle it over everything from beans to barbecue. Cassava itself travels under three names depending on the region: mandioca, aipim, or macaxeira.

Meat, chicken, and fish

On menus, carne usually means beef specifically, even though it's also the umbrella word for meat. The dish that gathers everything on one table is feijoada, a slow stew of black beans and pork served with rice, farofa, sautéed collard greens, and orange slices. It's Brazil's classic Saturday lunch.

Fruits and vegetables worth knowing

Juice counters are everywhere in Brazil, and they're the best classroom for fruits in Portuguese. A few of these barely have English names. Order them anyway.

Fruits

Two notes. In Brazil, limão nearly always means the small green lime, the caipirinha one; a yellow lemon is called limão siciliano. And pineapple splits the Atlantic: Brazil says abacaxi, Portugal mostly says ananás.

Vegetables

Couve, sliced into ribbons and fried with garlic, is feijoada's faithful sidekick. It also shows up in the ever-present green juice, suco verde.

Drinks in Portuguese: from cafezinho to caipirinha

Say yes to the cafezinho, the small, strong, usually pre-sweetened "little coffee" that Brazilians offer as a gesture of welcome.

Guaraná is the national soda, made from a caffeinated Amazonian fruit. The caipirinha is the national cocktail: cachaça, lime, and sugar. Juice marks a border, too: suco in Brazil, sumo in Portugal. And mate shows up everywhere, iced in Rio and hot as chimarrão in the South.

Street food in Portuguese: the snacks Brazil runs on

Between meals, Brazil runs on salgados, savory snacks stacked in the glass counter of every bakery and lanchonete (snack bar). Here's your field guide, the Brazilian food vocabulary of the 4 p.m. hunger.

Pão de queijo is chewy cheese bread from Minas Gerais, made with cassava starch, so it's naturally gluten-free. A coxinha hides shredded chicken inside golden fried dough; the name means "little thigh," which is exactly the shape. At the street market (a feira), the classic order is a pastel with caldo de cana, sugarcane juice.

On the sweet side, the brigadeiro is a fudge ball of condensed milk, cocoa, and butter rolled in sprinkles, born during the 1945 presidential campaign of Brigadier Eduardo Gomes and now the star of every Brazilian birthday table. Açaí na tigela is frozen, mashed açaí served thick in a bowl under granola and banana. Tapioca is a soft cassava-starch crepe filled with cheese, coconut, or condensed milk. In Portugal, ice cream is o gelado, and a pastel usually means the custard tart, pastel de nata.

How do you order food in Portuguese at a restaurant?

Restaurant Portuguese is mostly nouns plus courage. Walk in with a confident bom dia, and these words handle the rest.

Three menu concepts decode eating out in Brazil:

• Rodízio: one fixed price, then waiters keep circling with skewers of grilled meat (or pizza, or sushi) until you flip your table card to "no more."
• Comida a quilo: a buffet where you load a plate, weigh it, and pay by weight. A lunchtime favorite in Brazilian cities.
• Prato feito (PF): the cheap set plate at simple restaurants: rice, beans, a protein, salad or fries. The kitchen decides, you eat well.

For the ordering itself, three phrases carry you: Eu quero... ("eh-oo KEH-roo," I want), the softer Queria... ("keh-REE-ah," I'd like), and Pode ser... ("POH-jee sehr," "could it be..." or "that works"). If the food is good, and it will be, say Tá uma delícia! ("tah OO-mah deh-LEE-see-ah," it's delicious). Finish with A conta, por favor (the bill, please) and a warm obrigado or obrigada. Full restaurant dialogues deserve their own lesson; these three plus this page's nouns will keep you fed. In Portugal, the menu is a ementa and the waiter is o empregado de mesa.

Gender and pronunciation quick wins

Every Portuguese noun is masculine (o) or feminine (a), and food words play fair. Words ending in -o are almost always masculine: o suco, o bolo, o queijo. Words ending in -a are almost always feminine: a fruta, a cebola, a farofa. The -ão crowd on this page is masculine, o pão, o feijão, o limão, o camarão, while -ção words flip feminine, like a refeição. Words ending in -e keep you guessing, so learn the article with the word: o tomate and o leite, but a carne, a alface, a couve.

Three sounds to nail:

1. The nasal ão: pão is "pown" through your nose, feijão is "fay-ZHOWN." If your nose isn't buzzing, add more hum.
2. Açaí has three syllables, and the accent on the í drags the stress to the very end: "ah-sah-EE."
3. The letter x usually sounds like "sh" (abacaxi, coxinha), and a starting r sounds like English "h," so rodízio comes out "hoh-JEE-zee-oo."

That's a full toolkit: you can name every meal, read a cardápio, order food in Portuguese, and compliment the cook afterward. When you're ready for more, all the free lessons live at the Portuguese hub.