Making food from scratch typically requires advance preparation, adherence to a recipe, and your third and final genie wish. Save the third wish for more wishes with today's Groupon to Pipa Restaurant. Choose between the following options:
- For $40, you get a three-course prix fixe meal for two people (a $84 value).
- For $75, you get a three-course prix fixe meal for four people (a $168 value).
Click here to view the prix fixe menu.
Ranked as one of Where's top ten new Canadian restaurants in 2009, Pipa Restaurant seasons its traditional Brazilian and Portuguese delicacies with fresh herbs grown on its premises. As arugula accompanies marinated figs, presunto, and a balsamic coulis in the salada de rúcula, shrimp slinks into a creamy soup replete with garlic, onion, tomato, and white wine. Revoking its allegiance to jelly and bread, peanut butter douses a grilled 10-ounce gaucho steak. The halibut stew, a Brazilian staple for more than 300 years, makes room for cilantro, tomato, onions, herbs, and garlic, and a braised lamb shank, smothered in Madeira and fig sauce, shares its plate with roast potatoes and a vegetable medley. Brazilian-style chocolate mousse coats tongues, and an almond tort drizzled with caramel sauce warms frigid sweet teeth and cold-hearted snow angels.
A recipient of the 2010 RANS Best Design & Décor award, Pipa Restaurant is housed in one of Halifax's oldest buildings, still standing strong with stones from the historic Fortress of Louisbourg and chunks of Martian rock donated by time-travelling historians. Thursday and Saturday nights Pipa Restaurant scores feasts with live bossa nova or Latin jazz trios.
Pipa Restaurant + Bar
Victoria and Luis Gaspar sought to introduce Atlantic Canada to new types of world cuisine by filling the menu at Pipa Restaurant + Bar with iconic Brazilian and Portuguese dishes. This distinctiveness helped earn it a spot on Where magazine's 2009 list of Canada's best new restaurants, as well as praise from Halifax Magazine, which has lauded the restaurant for being "something different on the downtown dining scene."
The menu items' names may seem unfamiliar at first, but the flavours evoke a certain homey quality. The mains include hearty Brazilian stews such as feijoada, a blend of smoked meats and black beans that bears the honor of being Brazil's national dish. Appetizers incorporate Portuguese staples such as chouriço sausage and salt cod. The wine list complements these robust flavors with its selection of Portuguese wines, including crisp vinho verdes and bold reds from the Douro region's subterranean reservoirs of grape juice.
Located within the historic Carleton building, which dates as far back as 1759, the restaurant combines modern and Old-World ambience, garnering the Restaurant Association of Nova Scotia's award for Best Design & Decor in 2010. Fireplaces and floorboards from reclaimed timber add a rustic vibe to the two dining rooms, but the atrium gets a bright, airy feel from its glass pyramid ceiling. Throughout the week, Pipa Restaurant + Bar hosts live Latin jazz or bossa nova bands, and salsa-dancing events help attendees pick up the dance's basic steps and competition-level hair tosses.