As I was winding down my run the other day, I passed by a juice bar that had recently opened for business. I don’t remember seeing any juice bars like this one when I first moved to Belo Horizonte two years ago, but now it seems like they are on every corner. I’m pretty happy about this because it increases the amount of healthy snacking options available. Before the rise of juice bars in BH the only snacking options available were salgados, and if you didn’t want to eat a fried snack then you were out of luck.
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The way these juice bars work is that they have 5 or so of the most popular juice options premade but they will also blend a fresh juice for you by request. The premade ones all have milk in them, so they’re actually more like smoothies. I wanted to try a different juice so I ordered a pineapple, orange juice and açaí juice.
The girl who took my order looked at me funny but she went ahead and made my juice. I stopped her as she was about to put sugar in my drink and she gave me another funny look as if there was something wrong with me. I handed over R$3 as she filled up my 500ml glass of juice and took my first sip. Not a bad price for such tasty juice.
I noticed that there was still some juice left over in the blender, enough to fill half of my cup. It was very unlikely that someone else was going to come and order a pineapple, orange and açaí juice with no sugar so the juice was probably going to be poured down the drain. What a waste.
I said to the girl, “Me dá o chorinho, por favor” with a big smile on my face. “Fique à vontade” was her response as she gestured for me to fill up my cup.
Luckily there is a word that you can use in situations like this to ask for the juice that remains. Chorinho, literally meaning little cry is the word that you can use in situations like these. When I first heard about this word I was doubtful that it could be that easy to ask for more juice, but to my surprise it worked.
It’s a lot of fun ordering juice when you know that there is a special word you can use to get extra for free. I like taking friends out to get juice so I can show them this trick. As they are sipping their juice I point to the blender full of juice that they’re about to throw away. When my friend comments that it’s a shame, I utter the magic word chorinho and they magically fill up our cups.
Now that you’ve been introduced to the term chorinho, its your turn to go out there and give it a try. Report back in and tell us how it worked for you.
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