Vatapá in Salvador: what it is, how to order it, what to avoid

Overview

Vatapá is a paste, and calling it that undersells it: a thick, glossy, orange-gold cream built from dried shrimp, ground roasted peanuts and cashews, coconut milk, dendê (palm oil) and bread soaked and blended in, all cooked down and stirred smooth. It is rich in a way few things are — nut fat, coconut fat and palm oil in one spoonful — and it is savoury, faintly sweet and deeply shrimpy at once. It is rarely a plate on its own. Most often it is the filling inside an acarajé, a spooned side beside a fish, or a soft mound over white rice.

Like most of the dishes that define eating here, it is Bahian and Afro-Brazilian rather than Salvador’s alone — a version is also made in the north of the country, thinner and built differently — and it belongs to the same Candomblé kitchen as acarajé and caruru, the food of the religion as much as of the street. Its exact origins and even the root of its name are argued over and not settled; what is certain is the lineage, African by way of the enslaved cooks who made dendê, coconut and dried shrimp into a cuisine. It is famous enough locally that a classic song recites its recipe line by line.

The single most useful thing to know is what vatapá is not. It is constantly confused with caruru, its usual companion, and they are different things: caruru is okra, cooked with dried shrimp until it thickens on its own, green-brown and a little slippery; vatapá is the smooth nut-and-bread cream, orange from dendê. They often sit side by side on the same plate, and knowing which is which is the whole of ordering well.

What to order

You will meet vatapá in three forms, and the words change with each.

• Inside an acarajé or abará. This is where most visitors first taste it, and you do not order it separately — it is one of the fillings the baiana ladles in. If you want more of it and less of everything else, that is a thing you can ask for at the stall.
• vatapá com arroz — a proper portion served over white rice, sometimes with caruru and whole shrimp alongside. This is how to eat it as a small meal rather than a filling, and it is common on a comida baiana lunch counter.
• As a side — a spoonful next to grilled or fried fish, or as part of a mixed Bahian plate. Here it is doing the job of a sauce.

The shrimp version is the classic; a vatapá de frango, made with chicken, also exists and is milder. Whichever you meet, the marks of a good one are physical: it should be smooth and glossy, not gluey, hold its shape softly without being stiff, taste distinctly of nuts and dried shrimp under the dendê, and carry a warm orange colour rather than a flat beige. A little goes a long way, which is why it arrives in modest amounts — that is correct, not mean.

What to avoid

The failure of a bad vatapá is always the same: too much bread and not enough of everything that costs money. The shrimp, the peanuts and the cashews are the expensive parts, so a version cut with extra bread turns pale, bland and stiff — a beige paste that tastes mostly of soaked loaf, with no nutty depth and no shrimp behind it. If it is the colour of porridge rather than of dendê, it has been stretched.

Texture is the other tell. Proper vatapá is worked until it is smooth; a lumpy, grainy or watery one has been rushed or made from a packet. Supermarket “vatapá seasoning” and instant mixes exist, and a stall or a canteen leaning on them produces a uniform, slightly artificial version that is recognisably not the slow-stirred thing — flat where the real one has layers.

And do not treat it as a bland side to be ignored. The trap is the opposite of a tourist trap: it is under-ordering, dismissing the pale spoonful next to your fish as filler and missing that a well-made vatapá is one of the best things on the plate. If the one you are served is genuinely dull, that is the kitchen, not the dish.

Practicalities

Vatapá follows the rhythm of the things it accompanies. Inside an acarajé it is an afternoon-and-evening street food, sold from a baiana’s tray as the day cools; as vatapá com arroz or a lunch-plate side it belongs to the midday comida baiana counter and the sit-down table. It is not really an early-morning or late-night food on its own.

Priced on its own it is modest — a plate of vatapá com arroz runs roughly 15 to 30 reais depending on whether shrimp and caruru come with it — but you will most often pay for it folded invisibly into the price of an acarajé rather than as a line of its own. A portion sold as a large, cheap tub of smooth paste with no visible shrimp and a pale colour is the bread-heavy version; the price being low is the point, because the cut ingredients are the costly ones.

At a street tray it is cash, like everything a baiana sells; at a restaurant or a lunch counter, cards are normal. Because it is so rich — three kinds of fat at once — it sits heavily, and a small portion with rice and fish is a more comfortable introduction than a large bowl of it alone.