BY FABIO DE OLIVEIRA
What to do when you’re wandering the bustling streets of São Paulo, Brazil, and not sure where to go for a good meal? Finding superb cuisine in South America’s largest city isn’t that difficult, of course, but with Menumixx.com, a site that launched about a year ago, it’s even easier, thanks to its restaurant reviews and menus published in English.
Here, a sample of three top Sao Paulo restaurant recommendations from Menumixx.com.
São Paulo Restaurant Guide
São Paulo is Brazil’s undisputed capital of culture and the country’s answer to New York. This multiethnic metropolis is an important business and financial center, as well as the heart of Brazil’s arts and entertainment industry. The city is also considered Brazil’s culinary capital and one of the great food cities of the world. It has a thriving and highly sophisticated food scene that brings the likes of world-renowned chefs Ferran Adrià and Daniel Boulud to town periodically to survey the city’s ever changing restaurant scene and to learn more about the exotic ingredients and cooking techniques being used by local chefs.
São Paulo chefs have famously melded avant-garde European cooking techniques with native Brazilian ingredients to create a distinctly original cuisine that is often referred to as New Brazilian Cuisine. Although Amazonian chef Paulo Martins originally pioneered this style of cooking in the 1970’s, it was Brazil-based French chefs Claude Troisgros and Laurent Suaudeau who made it famous in the 1980s.
D.O.M.
Sao Paulo chef Alex Atala is today the foremost authority on New Brazilian Cuisine. He is world-renowned for discovering new ingredients and incorporating them into his highly innovative cuisine. His flagship restaurant D.O.M. offers tasting menus of four and eight dishes so that diners may have a true gastronomic experience through several of the chef Alex’s creations. Each dish presented here represents a bold expression of this talented chef’s research and experimentation with uniquely Brazilian ingredients. D.O.M. is undoubtedly Brazil’s most celebrated restaurant. It is ranked forth on Restaurant magazine’s 2012 World’s 50 Best Restaurants list.
Rua Barão de Capanema, 549; Jardim Paulista; São Paulo; Tel: (11) 3088-0761
Cc: A, D, M, V; $$$$;
Hours: Mon-Thurs: 12h-15h & 19h-0h • Fri: 12h-15h & 19h-1h • Sat: 19h-1h • Sun: Closed
www.menumixx.com/SaoPaulo_DOM.html
MANÍ
Another São Paulo restaurant that ranked in Restaurant magazine’s 2012 World’s Best Restaurants list is Mani. Chefs Daniel Redondo and Helena Rizzo opened Mani in 2006. This husband & wife team met while working at the Michelin-starred El Celler de Can Roca in Catalonia where he was chef de cuisine and she was an apprentice. Chef Daniel, who hails from Catalonia, and chef Helena, who is originally from southern Brazil, draw inspiration from their respective cultures to jointly create innovative dishes based on Brazilian food traditions. The chefs often combine the use of exotic Brazilian ingredients with techniques of molecular gastronomy to create sophisticated dishes that reflect their training under the Roca brothers in Catalonia.
Rua Joaquim Antunes, 210; Jardim Paulista; São Paulo; Tel: (11) 3085-4148
Cc: A, M, V; $$$
Hours: Tues-Wed: 12h-15h & 20h-23h30 • Thur: 12h-15h & 20h-0h • Fri: 12h-15h & 20h30-0h30 • Sat: 13h-16h & 20h30-0h30 • Sun: 13h-16h30 • Mon: Closed
www.menumixx.com/SaoPaulo_Mani.html
BRASIL A GOSTO
Purism in food and cuisine can be found at chef Ana Luiza Trajano’s Brasil a Gosto. Prior to opening her award-winning restaurant, chef Ana Luiza traveled extensively throughout Brazil to study the country’s culinary traditions. Her in-depth research into regional cuisines, local customs and ingredients and the importance of food in Brazilian culture led her to develop a project aptly named Sabores do Brasil or The Flavors of Brazil. The body of work put forth in this study evolved into a highly regarded book and documentary that bares the name Sabores do Brasil. The interest garnered by her project inspired chef Ana Luiza to open Brasil a Gosto and use it as a tool to promote Brazilian regional cuisines. Brasil a Gosto’s menu features a variety of regional dishes that are prepared in their traditional way as well as reinterpreted in a more contemporary style.
Rua Prof. Azevedo do Amaral, 70; Jardim Paulista; São Paulo; Tel: (11) 3086-3565
Cc: A, M, V; $$$
Hours: Tues-Thurs: 12h-15h & 19h-0h • Fri-Sat: 12h-17h & 19h-1h • Sun: 12h-17h • Mon: Closed
www.menumixx.com/SaoPaulo_BrasilAGosto.html
About Menumixx.com
The idea for Menumixx.com came from personal experience, according to de Oliveira, who is based in both Rio de Janeiro and Miami. “Quite often, I would be dining in Brazil, with non-Portuguese speaking friends visiting from abroad, and I would find myself spending a good part of the evening verbally translating menus,” he explains. “Of course it was convenient for my friends to have a native speaker with them who could explain the menus but what about those visitors who didn’t have that luxury? We felt this was a niche that needed to be filled especially in a country that is expecting a huge influx of tourists in the coming years when it hosts the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics.”