Mateiros sits deep in the Jalapão region of Tocantins, and its food scene is as honest and elemental as the landscape surrounding it. The local diet leans hard on the cerrado — Brazil's vast savanna — with small-town kitchens turning out dishes built around pequi, buriti, and bacuri fruits that most Brazilians outside the region have never tasted. Freshwater fish from the Novo River, particularly pintado and traíra, show up grilled over wood coals or slow-cooked in thick, rust-orange caldos that smell like the earth itself.

Don't skip the community kitchens and family-run pousadas, where meals are served at long tables and plates keep coming whether you asked for them or not. Rice, feijão, farofa, and a rotating cast of braised meats form the backbone of every lunch, but it's the homemade pequi rice — its funky, pungent bite polarizing and utterly unforgettable — that really tells you where you are. Local women often sell doces made from buriti and other native fruits out of their front doors, and tracking those down is well worth the detour.

Mateiros has no fine-dining scene to speak of, and that's entirely the point. The town's mercadinho stocks dried goods, cachaca from small local stills, and occasionally fresh cheese from nearby farms. At night, simple plates of grilled meat and cold beer flow freely at the few informal bars around the main square. Eat simply, eat locally, and let the cerrado pantry do what it's quietly been doing for centuries — surprising everyone who bothers to show up.