Bar do Delgado with Baixa Gastronomia by Nenel, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil 

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Bar do Delgado with Baixa Gastronomia by Nenel, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil
"Menu? "Today I'm a little lazy, there's tripe and barbecue. When I feel like it, I make sardines.” Service? "If I don't like the person, if I see that it's going to be a problem, I say that the beer is warm, that I'm going to close the bar." About the more than a thousand bottles of cachaça on the wall: “I put that paper with R$50 written on it so they would stop asking me all the time.”
There's no waiter, there's no music, there's no sign on the door, there's no menu. The small, old TV is turned off. Two unaccompanied diners occupy half of the four plastic tables, among plants and crates. This is Delgado's Bar.
Opened and commanded by the Portuguese Antônio Delgado de Andrade, 76 years old, who was born in Póvoa do Concelho and raised in Belo Horizonte, this bar in Bairro Pompeia is just one among many in the city that go through the decades untouched by trends, apparently at the time margin.
There is no marketing, demolition furniture, craft beer, canned drinks, pairings, much less a chef. In the empire of tripe, cooked meat and pig's trotters, resisting the sophistication trend that gained momentum with the fashion for haute cuisine is not a mission; is that there is no way to be different. Thus, a representative part of the cultural identity of Belo Horizonte remains alive.
There is a touch of folklore in all this and perhaps the owners of these bars do not realize it. It's not just for the appetizers or the environment. A peculiar atmosphere forms in these places, in which the mood of the clientele decisively influences. It is not uncommon for people to arrive alone, but who do not feel lonely because of this: the tables “talk” to each other and to the owner of the house, who is always present.
There is a certain complicity in the air. Anyone who wants to talk can easily catch up over there; whoever wants to meditate quietly will not feel like a fish out of water. Everyone feels at home.
“Only good people come here and it's always the same people”, says Delgado, next to the old slicer that today he only uses to cut the cold cuts he takes home. Memory of the times when the property, built by him in 1964, also functioned as a grocery store. “Here I sold bread, milk, vegetables. With the commerce that came to the neighborhood, this dropped a lot”, he says. Today, it's up to her to do the shopping, prepare the snacks and serve those who arrive - without any help from her family or employees. “It's not for money, I don't like employees. I never have,” he explains.
There is no bitterness in this speech. On the contrary, he reveals a calm certainty that managing the bar is a job that only he can perform and that the lives of his three children are different, completely different from his. He doesn't miss Portugal, because he sees BH as his homeland.
In fact, the Portuguese accent is sparse and the bonds of friendship with people from here are strong, as attested by the fish heads and paintings with photographs of the fishing crew. With a pen behind his ear and the meek way of watching life go by at the intersection of Casa Branca and Mário Martins streets, he could well have been from Minas Gerais." - www.uai.com.br... gastronomy/2015/02/10/notícias-gastronomia,164395/bars-de-bh-resistem-a-trends-of-culinary-sophistication.shtml
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