After the parade, the table

The week the city dances, kitchens do something less poetic: they close, they shorten, they sell a fixed menu, or they stay open and become the most valuable rooms in town. A dining guide to Rio that ignores Carnival week is a guide to a different city than the one in the parade photographs.

The formal rooms have, in recent years, included Lasai in Botafogo - Rafael Costa e Silva’s house, long among the country’s most exacting - and ORO, Felipe Bronze’s Rio kitchen. Star counts move. Treat any guide, including ours, as a reason to check the current list and the restaurant’s own calendar, not as a booking. During Carnival, assume the table you want was released early and is gone, or that the restaurant has chosen not to work those nights at all.

There is a strong argument, made at more length elsewhere in the archive, that the city’s true table is the boteco: cold beer, a fritter, a counter, late afternoon. Carnival does not repeal it. If the starred rooms are dark, the honest plate is often the simple one eaten before you go back out, not a tragic attempt at seven courses at 10 p.m. on a parade night.

Practical notes, all of them perishable: reserve before you fly; confirm the week of; eat your ambitious meal on a night you are not also trying to stand for four hours; and do not take a closed door personally. The city is busy being the city.