The pão de queijo mineiro needs no defense. It arrived before any gastronomic trend and will continue long after all of them have passed. But what happens when someone decides to treat it as a platform — not as an end, but as a beginning?
At Nicolau Bar da Esquina, the answer appears on a rustic board: three gratinéed pães de queijo, melted cheese dripping down the sides like contained lava, and over them, generous folds of pastrami. The ensemble arrives alongside an orange drink that gleams against the bar’s dark and welcoming atmosphere.
Each pão de queijo was split in half and received a layer of cheese that went into the oven until it bubbled. The pastrami — cured, smoked, with that marbled fat that melts at the touch of heat — rests over the still-warm cheese. The result is an unlikely crossover that works because each element maintains its own identity: the bread holds the texture, the cheese provides the creaminess, the pastrami brings the smoke and salt.
The boldness here isn’t in the unprecedented combination. It’s in respecting both ingredients enough to let them work together without interference.
Nicolau is not a bar trying to seem like a restaurant. It’s a boteco with awareness, one that has invested in its own charcuterie and understands that good petiscos don’t need truffle emulsion to justify their existence. The dark atmosphere, the close tables, the customers’ conversations mixing together — everything there says that the food is the destination, not the starting point of a performance.
The drink in the background is no detail: the citric bitterness of a Negroni or a Spritz cuts through the cheese’s fat with efficiency, preparing the palate for the next pão. It’s the kind of combination that happens naturally when whoever runs the place drank well before putting together the menu.
BH has many botecos. Few know when to stop innovating.
Technical Details
- Location: Nicolau Bar da Esquina, Belo Horizonte, MG
- Category: Boteco / Bar
- Average Price: R$ 50–80 per person
- Rating: ⭐ (4/5) — mineiro classic reinvented with competence and respect