Casa De Francisca

Posted June 15, 2024

Casa de Francisca is located in a rather sketchy part of São Paulo. The area reminds me a bit of the early pages of the Art District in Los Angeles or the early gentrification in Bed Stuy in Brooklyn. They have 2 areas, one which is a regular restaurant, and the other being a second floor space. The second floor has a very interesting, artistic space where all the views are generously focused at the stage. This was basically a meal + show package all in one.

According to the website:

Casa de Francisca , a socio-cultural and gastronomic space, has been curating curation focused on artistic commitment and musical diversity since 2006. It moved to Palacete Teresa in February 2017.

Ambiance & Service

The ambiance reminded me a bit of an early afternoon party of sorts. Imagine going to a Latin restaurant midday, and there is already festive partying going on. In the corner of the room, there is a stage with musical instruments. In some areas, there is stadium type seating, where you face the stage. We were seated at the floor level at a table.

The music happens pretty quickly, and it’s fun to listen to. Towards the end, it becomes interactive in that they want you to get up and hold hands and dance in a line.

Here are the prices for the entire event. I am unsure which of the latter parts are optional:

The show itself costs R$48
Depending what you order for appetizers, it will either be an additional R$18 or R$28.
- For R$18, you have your choice of:
  - Escabeche de Sardinha (pickled sardines)
  - Abobrinha com hortelã e queijo tulha (zucchini with mint and cheese)
  - Conserva de jiló (eggplant compote)
  - Cebola e tomate (onions and tomato)
  - Vinagrete de moela (gizzard vinaigrette)
  - Salada de músculo com salsão (muscle salad with celery)
- For R$28, you have your choice of:
  - Camarão com erva doce (shrimp with sweet herbs)
  - Vinagrete de polvo com fava (vinaigrette with octopus and beans)
  - Pimentão espanhol com queijo de cabra (Spanish peppers with goat cheese)
  - Língua com azeitona preta (beef tongue with black olive oil)
And lastly for entree, it will be either R$62 for non-seafood or R$72 for seafood.

Food

For drinks, I got the caju amigo (R$28 - left), which came with Cachaça, their caju jam, caju juice, and lime. Caju refers to the Cashew pseudo-fruit and not the Cashew nut. It had a pleasant apple-like taste and has noticeable sweetness to it that is quite addicting.

My partner ordered the suco do dia (juice of the day) (R$13.4 - right) which was orange and passionfruit blend. The juice seemed to have been watered down, so not as tasty as expected.

This is the salad/appetizer window that you go up to and order 2 items per person. After you placed the order with your table number, you just go back to your seat, and the servers will bring you the appetizers along with some bread.

My partner got the sardines and muscle salad. The sardines were pretty good. Muscle salad is basically just braised beef muscles.

I got the lingua and shrimp for my cold plate. Lingua is beef tongue, and that was pretty good. The shrimp was decent, but there was really nothing special about it. It had some olive oil drizzled on top.

The Brasileirinho was part of the R$62 deal, and it came with shredded carne seca (dry meat), onion, rice, kale, vinaigrette, farofa de adobora, banana, beans on the side, and a fried egg on top. The carne seca was decent and reminded me of dry pastrami. It was salted, but paired well with all the other medley of things on the plate. There was nothing flavor wise that really stood out, but the food overall was tasty.

The Rosbife com Pesto de Manjericão was also part of the R$62 deal, and was served cold with potato salad and leaves. The roast beef was basically braised beef meat, so not much surprised there. The potato salad and leaves were very rustic.

Final Verdict

Casa de Francisca was a very fun outing to not only get some taste of Brazilian local foods, but also get a show with it as well. Highly recommend for something different to do in São Paulo city.

Yelp Jabs

Due to a lack of Yelp reviews, we’ll take a look at the plethora of Google review translations.

The food is simply fantastic and the venue is wonderful - but the way they treat tourists is not right. Our server made zero effort to make us feel welcome, explain the dishes and got several dishes wrong.

Yes, they are not very friendly to English speakers, so definitely practice your Brazilian Portuguese.

Very unpleasant experience. Service from poorly trained people, interested only in making you sit down, eat quickly, pay and leave. The customer’s length of stay is the one stipulated by them and not the time you want to stay.

They’re all about meeting the timelines of the show. The reason why they want you to sit down quickly and eat is because they need to prep for the next show. After the show ended for us, we were quickly ushered out. It’s definitely common for restaurants to do this. Perhaps some of the Brazilians were not used to this behavior and were surprised by the pressure.

Revisions

Jun 15, 2024 - Initial revision.