These versions were sweet enough to accompany a dessert; I had a papaya cream with cassis.At a bar called Academia da Cachaca, hidden behind a grove of almond trees, I was led through 10 examples of the spirit itself, from a total range of about 50. The more well-heeled among the Brazilians probably need this, given their taste for a type of restaurant called the rodizio.The word “rotisserie” hardly does justice to this type of institution, in which as many as 20 cuts of beef, pork and chicken are brandished on sword-like spits by any number of wandering waiters. It is then topped up with plenty of ice cubes, over which the Cachaca is poured. Stir, smell (the combination of the resinous spirit, the lime zest and juice is extraordinarily aromatic), contemplate (you will feel cooler just looking at it) and enjoy.As well as being refreshing, a Caipirinha with not too much sugar and plenty of lime can be a potent aperitif.

Each passing server will add a few slices to your platter unless you display a thoughtfully provided sign pleading: “No more, thanks!” Even a carnivore can be grateful for the ubiquitous manioc chips, sweet potatoes and fried bananas.At a rodizio in Rio, I was also offered variations of the Caipirinha made with passion fruit, kiwi or the yellow, honeyish Persian lime, one of the many unusual tropical fruits grown in Brazil. Many other spirits are distilled at higher strengths, to a greater “purity” (and therefore less flavour), then diluted with water.A Caipirinha cocktail is made from a couple of ounces of Cachaca, a couple of teaspoons of sugar and a fresh lime or two The fruit is trimmed at the ends, but not peeled. It is cut into quarters, from top to bottom, the central pithy core removed and the hunks of fruit, still in their shells, placed in a chunky tumbler or “old-fashioned” glass, covered with the sugar and pounded with a pestle so that not only the juice but also some of the oils from the skin enter the drink. Their Brazilian cousin is sometimes known as Aguardente (“burned water”) de Cana, diminutively as Caninha, or colloquially as Pinga (“a wee drop”, in the Portuguese of Brazil, and properly as Cachaca (pronounced k’shassa, and perhaps deriving from the Portuguese for “juice of the cane”).
This spirit actually has a cane-like, woody, aroma and taste, heightened by its being distilled at an unusually low level of alcohol (usually between 36 and 54 per cent). Last month, The Washington Post reported that Harrison Ford took a party of 50 to a bar called Coco Loco and spent more than $4,000 on Caipirinhas The name is surely ironic. It means “peasant’s drink”, according to Salvatore Calabrese, in his book Classic Cocktails.

The base is a pale spirit distilled in Brazil from the juice of crushed sugar cane. Some rums are made in a similar manner, though they are more often produced from molasses, a by-product of sugar refining. From London to Los Angeles to Tokyo, the coolest cocktail is the same: the Caipirinha. Needless to say, we didn’t stop for chips on the way home.The Seafood Restaurant, Riverside, Padstow, Cornwall, 01841 532700 Mon-Sat 12-1.30pm, 7-9.30pm (winter hours), closed Sunday Fixed price lunch pounds 28, dinner pounds 34 All cards except American Express and Diners Club Limited disabled access..

We noticed that several of the tables around us held couples, and that an unusually high proportion of women seemed to be paying the bill. This, we concluded, indicated that it was they who had chosen to come, and that for many men, a meal still isn’t a meal if it doesn’t include some kind of meat. A visit to the Seafood Restaurant should be enough to convert any sceptic, and we returned to our rented cottage with a renewed enthusiasm for seafood, and a determination to work our way through our trusty – and by now rather sticky – book. Stein’s combined businesses now apparently employ over a hundred people, more than the entire Padstow fishing fleet, so perhaps a certain loss of the personal touch is inevitable, but if we’d been saving up for a special occasion, as many of our fellow diners obviously had, we would have been disappointed.Richard and I finished with sticky toffee puddings, which managed to be both light and rich, while Sharon found her chocolate meringue tartlet slightly too sweet, and she couldn’t finish it, despite the fact that we’d worked up an appetite by spending the morning surfing near Padstow. “Normally when I eat fish in a restaurant, I want to get a bag of chips on the way home,” she said, “but the portions here are so big that I’m quite full.”Our bill came to around pounds 50 a head, including wine, which I’m glad to report was left on the table rather than being brought over at intervals like a sacrament. We were ignored for long periods, the wrong utensils were brought, and an enquiry about what was really good on that night’s menu prompted the kind of weary response you might expect from a sulky teenager asked to list their hobbies.

Portions for all three of us were generous, and only the side-dishes of vegetables seemed slightly tired, betraying the pressure of maintaining attention to detail when handling a hundred covers.Service, too, was rather perfunctory, and we had the impression that some of the staff were merely going through their paces, rather than being genuinely enthusiastic about their work. Turbot is so firm and fine-flavoured that his troncon (a steak cut from a big fish, as I learnt from my indispensable book) would have been perfectly delicious on its own, even without the vivid sauce that accompanied it. “As porbeagle shark curry goes, this is the best I’ve ever had,” Sharon announced. There was an Asian touch, too, to my chargrilled sea bass, which sat in a fragrant vinaigrette dotted with thousands of microscopic vanilla seeds.