Reinventing Brazilian Cuisine in São Paulo

São Paulo, Brazil’s business capital, has long received praise for its international cuisine. Yet the local Brazilian food it offered received little glory. It seems pretty simple to eat Brazilian food while in Brazil. However in the past, typical Brazilian food was what you ate at rural roadside pit stops or restaurants that serve dirt-cheap lunch specials known as "pratos feitos," which literally means "made plates." Therefore, there was a generalized idea that Brazilian food was too common to be considered great cuisine. However, despite these stereotypes, the idea that Brazilian food can hold its own against the global food market is beginning to take hold in São Paulo. This is thanks to a new generation of chefs who have renewed the sense of local pride in the traditional culinary heritage.



These new chefs are changing the ways of dining in São Paulo by structuring their menus with traditional dishes will keeping in mind that the "heaviness" of traditional Brazilian dishes will likely never become popular with the country’s thin elite. Most of the chefs have primarily European training, which they use to combine European presentation with lighter Brazilian dishes. They have adopted a loose version of locavore, by buying domestically, if not locally.



Brazil is far too large of a nation for a visitor to taste everything, so the continent’s largest city, São Paulo, is a great place to sample a wide variety of dishes. Start off at one of Alex Atalva’s restaurants. His international fame stems from using Brazilian ingredients in inventive contemporary dishes. Both of Atalva’s restaurants, D.O.M. and Dalva e Dito, focus on typical Brazilian cuisine. If you’ve never tasted manioc-based farofa and codfish croquettes, the menu at these restaurants may be a shocker.



For the unacquainted, start at Brasil a Gosto, an elegant yet modest two-story restaurant with delicious plates that manage to give a load of flavors in each bite without being intimidating. The TV screens in the background play traditional cooking techniques from throughout rural Brazil. The chef, Ana Luiza Trajano, used these scenes to create recipes for the restaurant and write a book, also called "Brasil a Gosto." Visitors to the restaurant must try the baru-crusted sea bass or fillet of pirarucu (white-fleshed Amazonian fish, served with a purée of squash and sweet potato) and a caipirinha cocktail.



For dishes slightly less expensive, travel outside the city center and the hip districts. Here, you can dine like a local at much lower prices, but often times with comparable quality.



This guide to São Paulo’s new take on Brazilian cuisine was written by a Brazil travel expert at Brazil For Less, available to help you custom design your exciting Brazil vacation package.