Street Stall · Jambu & Shrimp Soup
Tacacá
Photo: Carlos-alberto-teixeira / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
The jambu leaf floating in the broth contains spilanthol, a compound that genuinely numbs and tingles the lips and tongue — it's used in folk medicine as a natural anesthetic.
A scalding-hot soup of tucupi (a yellow broth made from fermented manioc juice), goma (tapioca starch), dried shrimp and jambu leaves, served by street vendors known as tacacazeiras in cuias, bowls made from gourds. It's traditionally sold in the late afternoon and drunk standing at the cart.
Why it's made this way: Tucupi and jambu are Amazonian staples almost never used outside Pará, making tacacá one of the few Brazilian street foods with genuinely indigenous Amazonian roots rather than European or African ones.
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Part of World of Street Food — 3443 dishes from 118 countries.
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