RESTAURANT REVIEW: Little Rock's Bossa Nova dishes out delight

Cafe Bossa Nova has been around for eight years in Little Rock's bohemian Hillcrest neighborhood, where, despite its being one of the area's most underappreciated restaurants, it continues to do well.

Well enough to add a next-door bakery where you can buy co-owner/chef Rosalia Monroe's famous Pao de Queijo (Brazilian-style cheese bread, made with gluten-free yucca-root flour). Well enough to start selling many of its bakery and menu items to the cafe at the Central Arkansas Library System's River Market Books & Gifts. Well enough to regularly pack the place out at Sunday brunch.

Bossa Nova is one of those restaurants that has been so dependable for such a length of time that it flies under the radar even among the area's foodie elite. Which is why it was such fun for us, with the excuse of some recent menu changes, to rediscover the place.

We didn't actually partake of the new yakisoba bowls (Monroe's Brazilian take on the Japanese noodle dish, $10-$15), but we did partake of the lovely aroma arising from the one a nearby diner was consuming. Also new: some steak dishes for carnivores and several appetizers.

The two dining rooms have also had a makeover since last we visited. Soft oranges and greens have replaced the Brazilian flag's yellow and green on the walls, which are also decorated by travel posters and Brazilian scenes. Tables, which used to feature a riot of lively paint, are now covered by patterned tablecloths and topped with easier-to-clean glass. The soundtrack is still a pleasant mix of American and Brazilian standards. (We didn't on either visit hear "The Girl From Ipanema," but we'd bet it's still in the mix.)

Our one complaint involved slow service. On both our visits, the place was either understaffed or the staff was poorly deployed -- our first server was covering tables in both dining rooms; our second was both waiting on tables and tending the bar. Food runners got our dishes from the kitchen to our tables in decent time, but both times it took us awhile to get drinks refilled, other needs fulfilled and checks delivered and picked up.

Make sure you order the Pao de Queijo ($7 for a basket of four rolls), which you can order as an appetizer or as support for the entree. They're a bit gummy but they're delicious.

We were surprised by the hugeness of our Cogumelos Recheados ($6), two Portobello mushrooms the size of Mini Coopers, stuffed with spinach and Italian sausage. That and the Almondegas ($9), a pair of pork-and-beef meatballs wrapped in puff pastry, with a zippy, Tabasco-like piri-piri dipping sauce, could pass for small entrees.

The conical and delicious Coxinhas ($7) are billed as "deep-fried Brazilian chicken and Catupiry cheese dumplings," but they're a lot closer to croquettes. They, too, come with piri-piri sauce, but there was so little of it in the metal ramekin that it was closer to "piri" than "piri-piri."

Intrepid Companion went directly for her favorite entree, the tangy Stroganoff de Frango ($18), shredded chicken breast in a white-wine sauce with hearts of palm, mushrooms, garlic, onions, tomatoes, fresh herbs and creme fraiche, topped with batata palha (potato sticks), all surrounding a tower of herbed rice. (The menu also offers a differently prepared Vegetarian Stroganoff, $22, "assorted mushrooms, red bell peppers, broccoli [and] onions cooked in cognac sauce and served over rice and steamed green beans.")

We also enjoyed one of the new steak entrees, the Bife Enrolado ($19), which tasted better than it looked: thin strips of top sirloin and bacon rolled into medallions, served in a red-wine sauce with garlic, onions, tomatoes and fresh herbs. We devoured with pleasure the black beans and the rice, but pretty much left the somewhat bitter collard greens salad.

Also tasting better than it looked: Moqueca de Peixe ($25), a seafood stew -- shrimp, scallops and chunks of mahi-mahi, cooked in dende (palm) oil, with garlic, onions, tomatoes, red bell pepper, fresh herbs and coconut milk. According to the menu, it's "served steaming" in a cauldron; when it hit our table, it was lava-hot (and lava-orange). There was plenty of seafood, but the broth was rather thin. It also arrived without instructions, but on our own we hit on the right way to eat it: You're supposed to spoon it over the accompanying tower of rice.

Weekend on 12/29/2016