Campos Sales sits deep in the Cariri region of Ceará, and its food is as honest and sun-baked as the landscape around it. The sertanejo kitchen here leans hard on staples like feijão verde — green beans slow-cooked with dried meat and seasoned with coriander — alongside pirão de leite, a thick cornmeal porridge that shows up at almost every family table. Meals are generous, unpretentious, and deeply rooted in what the land and the goat herds provide.

The municipal market is the best starting point for any serious eater visiting the town. Stalls pile high with rapadura blocks, tapioca flour, and dried herbs, while vendors ladle out caldo de mocotó — rich trotter broth — from wide aluminum pots early in the morning. Grilled carne de sol with manteiga de garrafa and baião de dois is the dish locals point strangers toward without hesitation, and for good reason: the combination of cured beef, clarified butter, rice, and feijão is as satisfying as food gets in the Brazilian interior.

For something sweet, keep an eye out for doce de leite made in the old way, thick and grainy, sold wrapped in plastic at corner shops and roadside stops. Locally produced cachaça, often flavored with umbu or maracujá, surfaces at informal botecos where conversations stretch into the evening. The dining scene here is small but genuine — no pretense, just cooks who have been making the same beloved recipes for generations and see absolutely no reason to change them.