Cheapest of all, and surprisingly pleasant, are the food sellers and suco stalls clogging the streets of Santo Antonio , with the usual selection of iced fruit juices, kebabs, cakes, sandwiches and pastel. There's a row of reasonably priced stalls licensed by the city authorities on the pedestrianized Rua da Palma , across the road from the main post office, much patronized by office workers. The area also has many cheap lanchonetes and restaurants, although as their clientele is mainly workers they tend to close in the early evening. There's also an inexpensive lunchtime-only vegetarian restaurant, O Vegetal, which has branches on Avenida Guararapes (no. 210, 2nd floor) and Avenida Dantas Barreto (no. 507). Santo Antonio is pretty dead at night, with the exception of the cobbled square around Sao Pedro church, the Patio de Sao Pedro , where there are some good regional restaurants, with tables in the square and nice views of the church. Also worth a visit is the classy Restaurante Leite, Praca Joaquim Nabuco 147 (tel 081/3224-7977), close to the Hotel Quatro de Outubro, which serves good local dishes in a very stylish nineteenth-century interior.

Recife island has plenty of restaurants, and you may want to eat there as a prelude to going on to a bar or a nightclub. But prices are relatively high and the emphasis is on sophistication rather than good old-fashioned hearty Brazilian cooking. Buon Gustaio, on Rua do Bom Jesus, does superb Italian food, and Gambrinus, at Rua Marques de Olinda 263, is one of the places where you can get some local dishes. There's also a branch of the vegetarian restaurant, O Vegetal, on Rua do Brum (lunchtime only).

Down on the beach there are hundreds of places to eat, with one of the biggest concentrations in the Pina district, between the city centre and Boa Viagem. Catch a bus in the direction of Boa Viagem and get off on Avenida Herculano Bandeira, which is just where the bus veers round to run parallel to the sea. Almost the whole of the avenida is taken up with restaurants, most of them concentrating on seafood; especially recommended are Marinho's and Pra Voces.

In Boa Viagem itself the best value is to be found at the seafood places on the promenade near the city-centre end of the beach, and in the dining rooms of the cheaper hotels, all of which are open to non-residents. Peixada do Lula, at Av. Boa Viagem 244, is a reasonably priced seafood restaurant; Bargaco, on the same street at no. 670, does a mixture of seafood and spicier Bahian dishes; Edmilson da Carne de Sol, at Rua Jose Trajano 82, is good for meat; and La Pinha, Praca Boa Viagem, is a pleasant and inexpensive little pizzeria and seafood restaurant. On either side of the main drag Avenida Domingos Ferreira, there are a number of other eating places, such as the comida por kilo Restaurant Lacador, and the more expensive Chinese restaurant, the Shanghai Palace.