Be sure to begin your meal with the ubiquitous Brazilian street snack known as coxinha.

To mark the cheese coxinhas they usually have a toothpick where the bone would be in a chicken coxinha.

Coxinha is a chicken croquette shaped like a chicken thigh.

The coxinha is a popular chicken-based croquette, intentionally shaped to look like a chicken thigh.

The coxinha is coated in batter , then in bread crumbs or manioc flour and deep fried.

I eat pão de queijo and coxinha at Canela and Cafe Rio, and I go to Brazilian gigs.

Waiters bring around trays bearing snacks to choose from; the most famous is the coxinha de camarão (7.90 reais), a shrimp version of Brazil’s staple bar snack, chicken croquettes.

The coxinha is based on dough made with wheat flour and chicken broth and optionally mashed potato, which is filled with shredded spiced chicken meat, or a whole chicken thigh.

Also in São Paulo, the term coxinha gained more currency in the late-2000s, making playboy fall out in the early 2010s, when the usage spread around Brazil, especially after the 2013 Brazilian protests.

It will be a family afternoon filled with fun, games, music, dance and of course traditional Brazilian food, including chicken croquette (coxinha), cheese balls, meat risolli, churros, sweet corn cake, hominy corn pudding (canjica) and black beans soup.

Pastries like chicken coxinha fried dumplings and risolis, and the Mediterranean or Syrian-Lebanese kibe and open sfihas are often served in birthday and wedding parties followed by a glazed cake, guarana' and other sodas, champagne, caipirinha sugar-cane liquor or beer.

Appetizers include citrus-dill cured salmon served with a lime cilantro sauce and a pepper-chayote salad; chicken coxinha, which is a Brazilian potato teardrop stuffed with chicken and roasted pepper and served with a sweet chili sauce; and cornmeal and paprika-fried calamari.

Other unconventional ingredients, generally used for home-made coxinhas made by aficionados, include peas, chopped button mushrooms, palmheart, carrot, as well whole-wheat flour batter or even a vegetarian version of either textured vegetable protein (soy meat) or falafel with appropriate seasonings so its taste resembles a traditional coxinha more closely .