What have chefs Diego Guerrero, Paco Méndez, Vicky Sevilla and Juanjo López missed in São Paulo a few days before Madrid Fusión? Well, very simple: participate in the Porco Mundi event, which was held there on January 25, coinciding with the anniversary of the Brazilian metropolis and with Spanish cuisine as the guest star of this edition.
Organized by Janaína Torres and Jefferson Rueda, at the time owners of the restaurant A Casa do Porco (number 12 in TheWorld's 50 Best Restaurants) and under the sponsorship of Banco Santander, the experience consisted of celebrating the multiple applications of pork in haute cuisine but also in popular recipes. Not in vain, the Torres-Rueda Group – which currently manages five establishments in the center of São Paulo – has had the democratization of cuisine as an inalienable philosophy since its origins.
“From nose to tail, we want to make pork known in all its versions, flavors, colors and textures. A Casa do Porco is almost a church, a cult, a philosophical current. The beauty and flavor of pork in all its extension, splendor and generosity,” proclaims the website of this restaurant located on the corner of Rua Araujo and Rua General Jardim, just 200 meters from Bar da Dona Onçá where it all began in 2008, on the ground floor of the iconic Copan Building.
If Janaína, Jefferson and the Bar da Dona Onçá started the movement to demand the Center – a district weighed down for decades by drugs and street robberies – it is no less true that today there is a municipal urban development project that should contribute to the definitive gentrification of this area. And to the normalization of neighborhood life, the couple's other businesses also contribute with authentic and affordable food, such as Sorveteria do Centro, Merenda da Cidade, where all the staff of the Torres-Rueda group have lunch daily – pay attention to their menu. at €9 which includes two dishes, dessert and natural juice–, or that Hot Pork founded in 2018 so that anyone can consume, at the bar on the sidewalk, the famous homemade linguiça sandwich – a type of smoked pork sausage– from A Casa do Porco, which comes on a spongy milk bread seasoned with preserved red onion, spiced apple ketchup, tucupí fermented mustard and mayonnaise. A succulent bite suitable for all budgets in this street formula.
The venerated sausages arrive in São Paulo, just like the sausages and the rest of the pork cuts, the vegetables and some artisanal liquors, from our cicerones' own farm in São José do Rio Pardo: fertile lands with a subtropical climate, 250 kilometers from its urban operations center, where herbs and vegetables are grown and the various Brazilian breeds of sparrows (Sorocaba, Plau, Canastra, Caruncho and Pereira) that supply the twelfth best restaurant in the world are also raised. It is worth the 4-hour drive to the Caipira region to visit the Sítio São Francisco farm, where pigs roam freely feeding on carrots and beets from the moment they are adults, and then Sítio Rueda, that land next to the Río Pardo where the boss – born here – played as a child, acquired during the pandemic and transformed into a nursery and agricultural research center, which functions as the main source of supply for A Casa do Porco under the strict supervision of Jefferson, who now spends almost as much time on the farm as in the kitchen.
In between both visits, a brief stop at the Bar do Carlão in São Sebastião da Grama, where the endearing Carlão prepares with the greatest rigor every morning those succulent torreznos that are a priceless appetizer with a very cool caipirinha in the glass and which was served a while ago to our protagonists as inspiration for one of the signature dishes of their São Paulo flagship: the addictive bacon with guava.
Few of the thousands of customers who frequent A Casa do Porco every day uninterruptedly are aware of all this social background, but there is no doubt that its menu and its current tasting menu – which is titled We Are of Flesh and Bone , as a reminder of the human component of the experience – they would not be like this without the neighborhood consciousness and the rural roots of this ex-marriage that is held together by the passion of a project that goes beyond the culinary and in which they are beginning to get involved also his teenage sons João Pedro and Joaquim.
“A Casa do Porco seeks not only to demystify certain beliefs about pork, but also to reflect on Brazilian gastronomy, support small producers, organic agriculture, worrying about the production chain and environmental issues,” Janaína Torres explains to me. , three months after being designated by 50 Best as the Best Chef in Latin America, which then defined her as a “bold, powerful and with a voracious appetite” woman.
Lady Jaguar – as she has been baptized by the press due to the spots of ocelot skin that decorate the walls of the Bar da Dona Onçá and that she has tattooed on her left arm – also emphasizes two fundamental aspects of A Casa do Porco: the use of all parts of the gorrino as “a way of respecting its life and death”, as well as the own production of bread, pasta, sauces, desserts, sausages and even liqueurs under the A Licoreira label – pay attention to its jabuticaba vermouth –, all without preservatives or chemical additives.
And what do you eat at A Casa do Porco? Well, it is the result of an evolution that, according to legend, was promoted by Ferran Adrià himself when he suggested to the couple – when they had not yet founded their flagship restaurant – the path of specialization. If roast pork is your signature dish, why not adopt this animal as your flag? To their credit, they had that Jefferson was a butcher before he was a cook and had done internships in the peninsula under the orders of Santi Santamaría and Joan Roca, also learning the art of charcuterie with the Rovira family (Els Casals). Seeing each other's resume and tenacity, nothing could go wrong.
The menu usually always starts with smoked or cured sausages (copa, guanciale, lardo, head...) from their own brand, Porco Real, duly accompanied with homemade pickles and served on trays made with pork bones in collaboration with Studio Lumumba. Then come some miniature classics to eat with your hands, such as the crispy polenta with liver pâté, the Paulistano sandwich with ham and fried tripe (I ate two!) or the ciabatta with mortadella and watercress cream. The double chin sushi deserves a special mention: truly crazy.
Another essential bite is the torrezno with guava, which arrives inside a pink porcelain pig's head. The pork tartare with radishes and crispy tubers continues in the same line of tasty dishes that reconcile you with Mother Earth and is accompanied by a shot of non-alcoholic citrus fruits based on lemon juice, tangerine, apple, celery, ginger, onion and mint, to counteract fat. The ossobuco with onion soup is a novelty this season that has already become a favorite among customers.
Finally, the very famous Porco San Zé: roasted whole slowly on the grill for hours – from 6 to 9, depending on the size of the specimen –, cut into thick cubes with very crispy skin and accompanied by a festival of garnishes ( salads, vegetables, beans, rice), each more cheerful and colorful, with an abundance of herbs and flowers. When you get to the desserts – balanced papaya cream with caramel and jabuticaba sorbet – and the coffee, you are literally dedicated to the cause and the best thing you can do is enjoy the pleasure of the conversation while sipping some slightly sweet cocktail based on aged cachaça and exotic fruit juices.
But we had forgotten about our Spanish chefs who had gone overseas. What happened to them? Well, they culminated their days of immersion in the rich Brazilian culinary tradition – including some memorable musical parentheses –, contributing their masterful recipes to this great celebration of the universality of pork that is Porco Mundi, in a banquet with the cream of the crop (journalists, chefs , sponsors, VIP clients) of the São Paulo society: the garlic soup with ham broth, Iberian jowl and egg from La Tasquita de Enfrente (Madrid), the celery flan with Galmesano cheese and suckling pig juice from Arrels (Sagunto), The false omelette with double chin from Dstage (Madrid) and the dessert of corn, chocolate and dulce de leche with chicharrón from Come (Barcelona) did not clash at all next to our hosts' iconic Porco San Zé. Meanwhile, on the small stage, a local sambista group reminded us, evoking that Gonzaguinha song, that life is beautiful, it is beautiful, it is beautiful...
