Severino do Ramo Bezerra used to be a sort of country bumpkin. He had never seen a tunnel, like the ones that abound in Rio, when he arrived here in 1969. In his birthplace in the countryside, there was nothing like that. “I wanted to go back no matter what,” he recalls. But he persevered. He got a job at a bar in Laranjeiras, and the customers nicknamed him Mazzaropi. Not because of his rustic appearance, portrayed in so many films by Amácio Mazzaropi (1912-1981), but because of his resemblance to the actor: “I don’t know if I look like him. People think I do.” Mazzaropi worked at the same bar for over twenty years. The owners were Portuguese, and he owes a large part of the success of his codfish balls, which are now sold at the Saturday market in Laranjeiras, to them. “I increased the amount of codfish,” he says. The result is a light and soft ball, even though it’s slightly larger than the traditional ones.