Uma Nota brings food from the streets of São Paulo to SoHo in Hong Kong

Peel Street’s latest addition is casual-cool yet
unpretentious. Latin music livens up the wooden and rattan detailed space.

The Japanese-Brazilian menu at Uma Nota is not extensive - making the restaurant a place to chill, hang out and enjoy a drink with some food on the side, rather than somewhere to bring guests for a full-on dining experience.

We started off slow, ordering the dadinhos de tapioca - Brazilian tapioca and cheese dices with a sweet chilli sauce (HK$65) - and the banana dulce - fried banana with crab meat and sour cream (HK$75). The fried tapioca left no traces of oil on the plate and was a pleasant light bite. The crabmeat in the banana dulce was salty, but eaten with a good amount of the banana it made for an interesting appetiser. For skewers, we went for the chicken with chipotle sauce (HK$80) and squid (HK$80). The chicken was tender and, though chipotles are made of smoke-dried jalapeños, the dish wasn’t spicy at all. The squid was fresh and tasted excellent.

We added more substance to these light dishes with an order of the fraldinha (HK$320), a 300-gram grilled flank steak with farofa (toasted cassava flour mixture) and feijoa salad. The steak was supposed to come medium rare, but part of it was so rare that it was tough and chewy. Our favourite dish of the evening was the scallop tiradito - scallops with coconut milk, orange juice, cilantro and mint (HK$130). The flavours were spot on, and the use of onions
further enhanced the dish.

Uma Nota offers no desserts on its menu; however, there is still the option to end the evening with a nice shot of yuzu or one of the caipirinha or cocktail offerings available.