In Marylebone, there is a glitzy new Brazilian restaurant that represents a significant development in the story of Brazilian cuisine in London. This is Bossa (4 Vere Street, W1G 0DG, bossa.co.uk).
Elegant and opulent, the food is refined and ambitious — with prices to match. Its name is a nod to the fusion of jazz and samba that emerged in the late Fifties, but is also slang for a “mess”, explains founder Alberto Landgraf. “Bossa is like: let’s mix things up, Brazilian ingredients with British ones, and see what comes out of it.”
With a team of Brazilians brought from his two-Michelin-starred Rio de Janeiro home Oteque, Landgraf is attacking the London fine-dining scene with purpose. Globally, Brazil is well represented and respected in art, design, architecture and, of course, music and football. But, Landgraf notes, “in gastronomy, there is a gap.”
Certainly, there’s one here. Brazilian food in Britain is often thought of as little more than churrasco (grilled meats), or feijoada, the hearty national dish of black beans and all manner of porky bits, including ears, tails and feet alongside sausage and ribs. Landgraf wants to change that. “The idea was to come here and show that a Brazilian professional can do as well as other professionals on a high-end level, with Brazilian ingredients, and deliver good food in a competitive market like London,” he says.
For him, London was always the logical location for his first restaurant outside Brazil. Arriving as a backpacker in 2000, he worked in pubs and under Gordon Ramsay and Tom Aikens, earning a classical training and a respect for British produce. At Bossa, ingredients are roughly 60 per cent British, with lamb, beef and seafood from these shores complemented by Brazilian cashews, açaí, tapioca and farofa. Brazilian wines are served not because they’re Brazilian, but “because they’re good,” says Landgraf. “It’s not a restaurant built for Brazilians,” he adds. “It’s a restaurant with a Brazilian chef who wants to do the best food with that mix of ingredients and bring some new flavours to London.”
His ambitions speak partly to the fact that here, Brazilian food has long been misrepresented, stereotyped, and lumped into a generic South American whole. There are swish Japanese-fusion spots like Sushisamba (EC2N, WC2E, sushisamba.com) which offers only a few cursory nods to the giant South American country. Cabana (across town, cabana-brasil.com), meanwhile, promises “Espírito Amazônico” — but serves dishes like “buttermilk churrasco fried chicken” or “crispy halloumi”, which are about as authentically Brazilian as a baked potato. Elsewhere, some guides point readers to Inca London (8-9 Argyll Street W1F 7TF, incalondon.com), a Mayfair spot with a largely Peruvian-Japanese offer (the clue’s in the name), or Omnino (78-79 Leadenhall Street, EC3A 3DH, omninorestaurants.com) an “international steakhouse” in the City where all the starters are ceviche. Amazónico (10 Berkeley Square, W1J 6BR, amazonicorestaurant.com), meanwhile, is said to offer a something akin to a Brazilian rainforest experience — presumably minus the humidity and deforestation.
But Brazilian food deserves more than this kind of simplified fusion. Brazil is one of the world’s great cultural meeting points: it is a country founded on significant immigration from Japan, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Germany, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, but also, and fundamentally, on centuries of enslaved Africans. As such, Brazil’s cuisine is enormously diverse, and is it increasingly acknowledging its indigenous roots, too. Finally, this is being recognised here: Bossa follows the two-Michelin-starred Da Terra (8 Patriot Square, E2 9NF, daterra.co.uk) in Bethnal Green, where the food is up there with the best in the city and showcases Brazil’s culinary variety, particularly with the native tucupí, a fermented cassava sauce, or the proper use of açaí (as a savoury sauce, rather than blended into a smoothie).
It wasn’t always like this. “There was nothing whatsoever when I arrived in the Eighties,” says Graça Fish, the food-loving vice-chair of the Anglo-Brazilian Society. “People didn’t have any idea about Brazilian food, it was something totally strange. English people’s idea was that it was South American or Mexican. They didn’t have a clue.”
In 1991, there were just 9,000 Brazilian-born people in the UK. I was born that year and, growing up in an Anglo-Brazilian household, can attest to Fish’s point holding true throughout the Nineties as well. Proper Brazilian food was hard to come by. A few Portuguese delis stocked ingredients like black beans or farofa, a cassava flour, and one or two all-you-can-eat churrascarias emerged, including Rodízio Rico (The O2, SE10 0DX, rodiziorico.com). As a youngster it was the ideal birthday spot for gorging on endless slices of steak and chicken hearts, but it was pretty much all we could find.
There was nothing whatsoever in the Eighties. People didn’t have any idea about Brazilian food, it was something totally strange
By 2009, though, the number of Brazilians had jumped from 9,000 to 60,000, the vast majority in London. Newcomers from states with strong culinary traditions like Goiás or Minas Gerais wanted access to affordable food that reminded them of home, and Brazilian shops, cafés and restaurants sprung up — first in Bayswater, then further afield, from Stockwell and Brixton to Stamford Hill and Stratford. Mostly, however, in the northwestern neighbourhoods of Willesden, Kilburn, Kensal Rise and Harlesden which, with butchers, delis, lawyers and salons, quickly became a Little Brazil. Dishes like vaca atolada (beef rib and cassava stew) or frango com quiabo (chicken and okra stew) were suddenly available.
One man who has done more than most to promote Brazilian food is Luiz de Souza, who recalls just one Brazilian restaurant when he arrived in 1985. “Brazil wasn’t fashionable yet,” he explains. Selling peanuts from a cart, where he hung a Brazilian flag, compatriots would ask where they could find Brazilian food so frequently that, in 1996, de Souza opened Brazilian Touch Café on Oxford Street, where he became famous for serving a killer feijoada. After running several Brazilian spots, including Boteco Carioca on Charlotte Street — praised warmly in this paper by Fay Maschler — in 2017 de Souza returned to Oxford Street, opening Feijão do Luis (35 Oxford Street, W1D 2DT, feijaodoluis.co.uk), meaning “Luis’s beans”, opposite the original site.
Just 500m down from Bossa on Oxford Street, it’s on the opposite end of the spectrum. Rustic and homely, Brazilian classics like the silkiest feijoada, beef stew, stroganoff and chicken parmigiana are cheap and filling, catering to Brazilian tourists, workers and curious Brits. That both Feijão and Bossa exist is testament to the growing hunger for Brazilian food, both modern and traditional. “A friend of mine said ‘your food is too salty for English people’,” says de Souza, who takes a different tack to Landgraf. “I’m not cooking for English people. I was always hard-working, and I always believed in the gap in the market for Brazilian food.”
That gap is diminishing. “Now, there must be 20-30 Brazilian restaurants in London,” says de Souza, who recently opened a deli below his restaurant. “The demand is growing all the time. Opening a Brazilian business, if you do it well, whether a shop, butcher or café, there’s no way of going wrong.”
Perhaps that’s why the sheer quantity of Brazilian spots shows no sign of slowing down. In Kensal Rise, Frigideira’s (37 Chamberlayne Rd, London NW10 3NB, frigideira.co.uk) perfectly-cooked picanha draws a constant stream of customers, including most Brazilian Premier League footballers. In Kilburn, Kaipiras (10 Kingsgate Place, NW6 4TA, kaipiras.com) has the atmosphere of a Rio de Janeiro boteco. Bermondsey’s Fine Cut (51 Blue Anchor Lane, SE16 3UL,finecutbr.co.uk) is a brilliant butcher-cum-steakhouse, while in Stratford, Eli’s Deli & Pastelaria (Unit 54, 70-73 Broadway, E15 1XQ, 07379 200 169), where Brazilian dishes are served by the kilo, is just about the best value lunch in the city. On Finchley Road, Padoca Bakery (9 Frognal Parade, NW3 5HH, @padocauk.bakery) is elevating Brazilian bakes, while the newly opened Fazenda (100 Bishopsgate, EC2M 1GT, fazenda.co.uk) on Bishopsgate finally provides a rodízio (all-you-can-eat) churrascaria worth visiting. But go out, explore: there are even Brazilian caffs and pubs about.
For a cuisine to truly become embedded, it needs strong mid-range options, which at present are largely lacking. But an alternative is emerging, led by the likes of Filó Dining (72 Prebend Street, N1 8PR, filodining.co.uk) in Islington, which opened earlier this year. Founder and head chef Aline Quina has lived in London since 2002, working at Gordon Ramsay’s Aubergine and the Park Lane Hilton among others. For Quina, Brazilian restaurants too often focus on “fun” rather than food, and she says Brazil tends to be represented reductively, as one big carnival, with “no one talking about the food.”
Yet, inspired by dishes from all over Brazil, Filó has the care and attention to detail of a modern British bistro applied to Brazilian tastes. Quina bakes pão de queijo, the addictive Brazilian cheese breads, and they are among the best in the city. She makes her own version of a Brazilian cheese called queijo minas, which she grills and drizzles with truffle honey. The Brazilian Sunday roast features slow-cooked beef ribs, rice and beans and fried cassava. There is often live music, but it’s more than matched in the kitchen.
We are a long way from a Brazilian on every high street, but the needle is beginning to move. “Brazil is always the ‘next big thing’, says Landgraf. “It never gets to be ‘the thing’.” Perhaps, finally, that is starting to change.
