When I was a teenager living in S.P, in the Morumbi neighborhood, I would always arrange a barbecue before going to the matches of my dear football team, São Paulo – and I’d stop at Santa Bárbara, at Três Irmãos Street, to buy the best meats in town.
It started as a small butchery, but their special cuts of meat caused Santa Bárbara to stand out since then. It had a craftsmanship thing to it – they had a perfect “picanha” (which can be roughly translated as rump cap), which is everyone’s favorite around here; pork leg sausage; pork loin sausage and every type of sausage you can imagine at a time when all you could find were a few branded, industrial cuts of meat.
The thing was to gather all the kids, friends, boyfriends and girlfriends, buy the meat and the beer and make a barbecue at someone’s house. It is like that for most people today! So Santa Bárbara really understood the concept of the paulistano who enjoys eating meat on the weekends.
On Saturdays and Sundays, besides the raw meat of every possible variety – offal, ostrich meat, you name it! – from the simplest to the most sophisticated, there’s ready meat, made in their special ovens, everything beautifully cut, clean and vacuum packed for you to take out. It stands at a level of its own, always a step ahead of other butcheries.