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For every pastel carried to a table at That’s Bananas, Ottawa’s newest Brazilian café, another may perish in the fryer.
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The dough is rolled paper-thin and flash-fried so the shell shatters at first bite, almost like a delicate toaster pastry. Fillings are soft and rich by contrast, packed with a mash of creamy shredded chicken or warm banana folded into dulce de leche sauce, among other savoury and sweet options.
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“It’s something we remember from home,” says co-owner Patrícia Silva Mancilha Neves Ferreira, who fondly describes ending nights out in her home country with a pastel in the market at six in the morning, washed down with fresh sugar-cane juice. The pastry is part of growing up in Brazil, she says, well worth the extra effort to remake any that crack before being served, which can happen a lot.
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Pasteis are an immigrant’s invention, adapted by Chinese arrivals in São Paulo in the mid-twentieth century who reworked their spring rolls with Brazilian ingredients. A food born of one community remaking home in a new country is in the hands of two sisters doing the same in Ottawa.
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Patrícia and Beatriz, the duo behind That’s Bananas, grew up in Itu, a small city in the state of São Paulo. Patrícia came to Canada in 2019 as a student and stayed after meeting her husband. Beatriz followed in 2021, trained as a pastry cook, and spent her first years in the country selling Brazilian sweets from rented kitchens and farmers-market stalls before a storefront on Baseline Road came up for lease.
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Between them, the menu bridges two worlds of Brazilian comfort food: fried snacks sold at bars or markets and decadent cakes a grandmother might bake on Sunday.
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First-timers walk in expecting the heat of Mexican cooking, says Patrícia, but Brazilian food is milder. Peppers and hot sauce are served on the side. Among the savoury draws are pão de queijo, the chewy cheese bread that is the café’s best-selling snack, and the coxinha, a teardrop-shaped chicken croquette whose name means “little thigh.” The shredded filling is bound in potato dough and crisped in panko.
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The daily lunch board changes through the week, much of the menu drawn from their grandmothers’ recipe book. Meatloaf, lasagna and sweet rice come around as specials. The pulled pork, braised soft, is piled on a white roll under a long pull of melted cheese.
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They opened the café for local expats, “the dream of every Brazilian who lives in Ottawa,” in Beatriz’s words, a community in search of a room to laugh in and to “talk very loud, which is our way to live.” Far more people have turned up in the first six months than the sisters expected. The staff grew from five to eleven to accommodate the foot traffic.
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Brazilians visit on weekends and in the evening, while weekday lunches are frequented by the surrounding neighbourhood, office workers and people walking over from the Queensway-Carleton Hospital.
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Patrícia, who is raising a one-year-old and has few easy places to take him, added an enclosed play area for toddlers and young children, so parents can enjoy a carefree coffee or meal. Wide windows, generous spacing between the tables and surrounding greenery give the cafe a sense of privacy and calm.
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Beatriz makes the sweets and her carrot cake is one of the most popular offerings at That’s Bananas. Her Brazilian bolo de cenoura blends raw carrot blended straight into the batter, skips the cinnamon and nutmeg and bakes a startling orange, topped with a generous pour of melted chocolate. The spiced cake Canadians know, “doesn’t exist” in Brazil, says Beatriz.
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She hesitates over the word flan to describe her crème caramel. Eggs, milk and condensed milk go in, and the custard bakes to a firm set, sturdier than the trembling pudding the word suggests.
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Condensed milk is the undisputed star at the cafe, to the tune of around 150 cans a week. A local cashier has taken to teasing her over the haul. “What do you do with all that?” The answer is Brazilian soul food. In the brigadeiros, chocolate truffles given as birthday treats, it creates a satisfying, dense texture. However, its best application may be in Swiss lemonade, a drink that is, in fact, 100 per cent Brazilian, so named because Swiss-owned Nestlé first brought condensed milk to the country. It is a refreshing combination; the heavy sweetness counters the tartness of whole blended limes.
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“We call a lot of food by another country’s name,” says Beatriz, laughing, “but it’s never something typical of there.”
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Soccer will steer much of the season ahead. Beatriz speaks of the game the way many Brazilians do, as something close to religion. “I actually cry about it,” she says of Brazil’s matches.
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For the upcoming World Cup, she and Patrícia plan to decorate the café and host watch parties on the days Brazil plays; the first two have already sold out, with a few seats left for the third. Reservations are made via direct message on Instagram.
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On match days, Patrícia will fry pulled pork and Philly cheese steak pastéis and prepare chicken wings in the Brazilian style.
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Come summer, the sisters want to hold a churrasco, Brazilian barbecue, set up outside the cafe. They have begun testing part of the menu on Uber Eats, called the Brazilian Experience, which features picanha (the rump cap Brazilian cooks prize above other cuts), plated with sausage, white rice, black beans and farofa, or toasted cassava flour spooned over the plate for crunch.
