Bauru
Photo: Romerito Pontes from São Carlos · CC BY 2.0

Ponto Chic's Bauru layers roast beef, melted cheese, tomato and pickled cucumber in a hollowed pao frances, invented at this Sao Paulo diner in the 1930s; in Brazil we have verified places to eat it in São Paulo. Start with where to eat Bauru in São Paulo.

Bauru · São Paulo

Ponto Chic's Bauru layers roast beef, melted cheese, tomato and pickled cucumber in a hollowed pao frances, invented at this Sao Paulo diner in the 1930s.

In the 1930s, law student Casimiro Pinto Neto, nicknamed Bauru for his hometown, walked into Ponto Chic on Largo do Paissandu and asked the sandwich maker to build him one to his own specification: melted cheese inside a pao frances with the soft crumb removed, then roast beef and tomato. Pickled cucumber joined the recipe later. The sandwich became the house's best seller and spread across the city under his nickname. The city of Bauru later wrote an official recipe into municipal law to protect the name. Accounts disagree on the exact year, with 1934, 1936 and 1937 all cited, including by Ponto Chic's own current telling, so this account keeps to the decade rather than pick one.

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