Tamborim Brings Brazilian Cuisine to Jersey City | Eater NY

"Just a few steps from the PATH station on Jersey City’s Grove Street stretch of Newark Avenue, I stepped into a cave-like Brazilian restaurant that opened last December and is run by Michael Casalinho, a Portuguese native who grew up in Newark’s Ironbound and previously operated the sandwich shop Broa. The dining room feels dramatic — distressed wood walls opposite a long bar with basket-woven stools, a two-story ceiling that dwarfs intimate niche tables, a wall of sugarcane stalks, and an open front that spills potted palms and sidewalk tables. The menu leans into Brazil’s mix of indigenous, Portuguese, African, and Middle Eastern influences: starches favor corn, tapioca, and yuca, but wheat stars in the kibe (two for $14), submarine-shaped hand pies of oniony, cinnamon-flavored ground beef wrapped in cracked wheat and served with three sauces (an orange spicy mayo, a mild green herbal sauce, and a vinegary chopped salsa). The appetizer selection is mostly fried and baked — perhaps the most delicious are the bolinhas de bacalhau (four for $14), potato-and-salt-cod fritters briny with sea and earth — alongside shrimp and chicken fritters, beef empanadas, fried pork and yuca, and indispensable pao de queijo; if the three house sauces aren’t enough, ask for the molho apimentado, a tart, garlicky, oily relish with tongue-searing heat. Mains are generous and meant for sharing: the signature feijoada ($32) arrives in a cast-iron cauldron of black beans stewed with coarse pork sausage, pork belly, ears, tails, and carne seca, accompanied by shredded oily kale, tangerine segments, rice, and farofa (toasted yuca meal with bits of pig skin) that I strewed over the feijoada each time I served myself. The Afro-Brazilian influence appears in dishes like bobo de camarao ($23), a shrimp porridge thickened with yuca meal and laced with dende (palm oil) that I found a bit bland until I stirred in the molho apimentado. Even the unexpected beef stroganoff is adapted to local tastes — chicken or beef in a creamy, tomato-tinged pink sauce with mushrooms and corn, served with the crunchy potato sticks — and most mains are so voluminous they comfortably feed two. To finish, or to accompany the meal, the bar does strong caipirinhas in flavors like watermelon, passion fruit, and blackberry, though I’d stick with the classic lime and be cautious about having more than one." - Robert Sietsema