Beach Vendor · Iced Mate Tea
Mate Leão
Photo: Jgsodre / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
Beach mate vendors carry two metal tanks on a shoulder yoke, one of mate and one of lemonade, and mix the two to order as 'mate com limão'.
Chilled, sweetened toasted mate tea poured from metal tanks by vendors walking Rio's Copacabana and Ipanema beaches, often mixed with lemonade. Mate Leão is the best-known brand, and it's also sold in cups and bottles at beach kiosks.
Why it's made this way: Toasted mate is brewed and drunk cold, unlike the green, gourd-sipped mate of the south, and Rio's beaches made the iced version a fixture of the walking-vendor economy that also sells Biscoito Globo.
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Part of World of Street Food — 3443 dishes from 118 countries.
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