Brazil 13
Belmond Copacabana Palace, dominating Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach, is stylish through and through – see the caricature of the main building, above. This is a first. Girlahead features at ashtray, admittedly one that is partly painted in gold.
Suite #602 starts with the left of the central windows, top floor. There, in the sitting room, a 1920s bureau holds a Dorea record player, with plenty of vinyls – Capital Inicial, Maria Bethânia: Palcoiluminado, all to do with the hotel.. Local flowers, including birds of paradise, in heavy golden glass vases.
More style in the bathroom, so classic and so elegant. Where else do all the hanging towels each have their own linen covers, these covers exquisitely embroidered with the hotel’s coat of arms and certain macramé work? Everything’s white. There’s a white linen pouch that holds toothbrushes and the like.
And they, presumably management and the superb butler guys, want you to keep fit. There’s a cork yoga mat in a closet. A 3-fold standing tent card suggests 45-minute hotel tours, daily – and Tuesday’s 60-minute floral therapy, stretch on Pérgula rooftop, Thursday run with GM, tennis court circuit, 90-minute Forte do Leme hike (Sat) and 90-minute tennis clinic (Sun). Everyone’s fighting fit, here: on 11 June, 1,000 staff are taking part in a marathon.
Girlahead felt fighting fit after a 50-minute facial massage by Barbara. She also felt fabulously fit after her meals at the Copa. Pé rgola, poolside and overlooking the road and the beach, is a local institution. Sunday brunch seems to attract A-listers from far and wide. It’s a long space indoors with a Brazilian rainforest mural at one end wall and windows down the two long sides, and a kitchen servery at the other end. Everything’s big here. When you get chunks in the salad on display, they’re big chunks. When you want a bread roll, the selection is enormous. You come here with big appetites and you have to be careful not to leave with a big stomach.
It’s interesting that Belmond as a company has so many touchpoints associated with food, not necessarily only the meals, but with the food in general. Girlahead thinks, for instance, of breakfast at Monasterio in Cusco, and going down the its long flight of mediaeval steps, uneven through centuries of monastic footfall, to the subterranean dining space to the riveting accompaniment of Georgian chants. She thinks of afternoon tea-on-a-terrace at Reid’s Palace in Funchal, where, coincidentally, Ulisses Marreiros, now boss here, was previously. And here, at the Copa, one of so many touchpoints is the recollection of sitting outside on Pérgola’s terrace, and people-watching
Well, you say, what about the food? It started back in the suite, where the goodies included brigaderios, a Brazilian specialty, chocolate knobs the size of walnuts, invented in 1946 by a Rio confectioner, Hloiso Nabuco de Oliveira, as a fundraiser for presidential candidate Brigadier Eduardo Gomes. Out in public, so to speak, Girlahead’s first meal was Sunday brunch, big salad and so much else off the buffet at Pérgola. A new Italian concept will be launched in November but that night, it was dinner at the always-full all-Asian MEE initiated some years ago by Ken Hom and now own-run.
Recent MEE tweeks have brought into focus, even more, a painting of a metre-tall Asian woman’s head, hung on a scarlet wall. The drinks menu came: golden leather-covered menu by Stefano Giglio de Barros, the head bartender. Headings are Classics, On the way to Shinto, With a Japanese flavor, and Taking it easy (low ABV). We tried one of the Taking it easies, a kaise, which, in a handled copper mug, frankly looked like the traditional gentleman‘s shaving mug, topped with yuzu and wasabi foam – underneath, but difficult to get to, is Hakutsuru-Nigori Zuzu and tangerine. There’s a nine-course tasting menu and an omakase, but we went à la carte, which included a sashimi plate, pork bun with pork belly and wasabi mayonnaise, and we finished with Hayashi dessert (sesame ice cream on a miso caramel base, topped with two sheets of chocolate with togarashi and cocoa crumble). Divine. As was the Chateau d’Esclans Rosé 2024 from that master of marketing, Sacha Lichine. Breakfast, another buffet, the biggest chunks of papaya and mango you could imagine. Superb throughout, and so stylish.
