Café Bossa Nova is located in the heart of the Hillcrest community in Little Rock, Arkansas. Not a Brazilian steakhouse; Café Bossa Nova brings traditional dishes unique to the southeast region of Brazil just like the ones you would find on the corner in Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, or São Paulo. All of our recipes are prepared using the highest quality imported and fresh ingredients (organic when possible). Bossa Nova, a fusion of soft samba and American jazz, is a Brazilian music genre that began on the tropical beaches of Rio de Janeiro in the late 1950s when a small group of mainly middle-class students, artists, and musicians came together to create a new sound. It was a youthful celebration of romance, beach culture, and sensual pleasure. Bossa Nova's twin figureheads are Antônio Carlos Jobim (Tom Jobim), a gifted composer, also blessed with classical good looks, and João Gilberto, a guitarist and singer who came to Rio from the poorer Bahia state in the northeastern region of Brazil. The song that lit the touch-paper for the bossa nova explosion in the US and the rest of the world was called "The Girl From Ipanema," sung by Astrud Gilberto (João Gilberto's wife) in a wispy but beguiling girlish voice, which reached #5 in the US pop singles chart in the summer of 1964.
