Rua Padre Chagas in Moinhos de Vento is Porto Alegre's most pleasant street for café life: a tree-lined residential street where the ground floors of the old apartment buildings have been gradually converted into restaurants, cafés, boutique shops, and wine bars. It is the kind of street that appears in almost every well-heeled Latin American city without ever becoming generic — the particular mix of establishments and the specific character of the neighbourhood give it its own atmosphere.
The breakfast and brunch options along Rua Padre Chagas are the best in the city: croissants made properly (which is harder than it sounds in Brazil), good espresso, creative brunch menus that draw on both the Italian immigrant food tradition and more contemporary Brazilian cooking. Weekend mornings the street is full by 9am with a particular Porto Alegre type — well-dressed, unhurried, carrying small dogs and larger opinions. Lunch options are good too: several of the restaurants have serious wine lists that take the Serra Gaúcha and even some Argentine wines seriously. In the evening the wine bars fill up before and after dinner service. It is not cheap by Porto Alegre standards but it is affordable by any other.