Zenilda Lopes Bezerra or Dona Zena or Zeninha - Your Choice

In yesterday's post on Flavors of Brazil, we highlighted the recent coronation of a dish of meatballs as Fortaleza's favorite casual dining dish in the annual national competition known in Brazil as Comida di Buteco. Among the 16 bars, botecos and restaurants that entered dishes in the competition, which is voted on by diners themselves, not by professional judges, Dona Zena was the clear winner with her recipe for meatballs, perfectly seasoned and simply fried.

As mentioned in the earlier post, Dona Zena's triumph in the Comida di Buteco competition wasn't the first recognition this hard-working woman has received. She recently shared her recipe for meatballs with a national television audience in Brazil, and at that time, an extensive interview with Dona Zena was published in Fortaleza's best daily newspaper, O Povo.

Dona Zena with happy customers

Though her full name is Zenilda Lopes Bezerra, she's known to most of her customers as Dona Zena, and that is the name her restaurant has had in all the years of her existence. To her family, and close friends (including many faithful customers of the restaurant) she's simple Zeninha (an affectionate diminuitive meaning "little Zena"). Now 65 years old, she's still at the restaurant every day, where she's assisted by her only daughter, Paula. She's been married for more than 30 years, and tells all that she is "a daughter, a wife, a mother, a grandmother, and only then a cook."

In the interview Dona Zena spoke of her joys and sorrows during her life, and what the restaurante means to her and to her customers. Here are some excerpts from that interview (translation by Flavors of Brazil):

On her childhood and upbringing:
I was born in Quixadá (a small town in the interior) in 1947. My story is difficult, we were a humble family. I was the backbone of my family. I am the daughter of parents who separated, and as the oldest child, it was I who raised the younger children. Including me, we were eight children.
When my mother brought the children to live in Fortaleza, my father stayed in the interior, he never took much care of us. He found another woman there and my mother remarried here. Now both of my parents are dead, but of my father nothing remains but the name.

How her restaurant got its name:
[At the beginning] it had no name, it was just a corner bar... Then its name became Zen. One day a man stormed into the restaurant shouting, "Look, didn't you know there's a restaurant named Zen on Barão de Studart Avenue?" It turned out even though my restaurant was older than the other Zen, he had registered the name and I hadn't. I was so sad, but a customer of mine said to me, "Just put an -a on the end of the name and turn Zen into Zena." So I did, and now we've had this name for 20 years.



Her recipe for meatballs:
It was a gift from God, really. One my customers, pregnant at the time, worked nearby at Teleceará. One day she said to me, "Zeninha, I had a dream that you made meatballs for me made this way..." and told me the recipe. I replied, "Woman, I've never made anything like that in my life. Are you crazy? I only know how to make steak. I've never tried anything like that recipe." But then Chica, my assistant in the kitchen, picked up some ground meat and finely chopped up the vegetables just like in the dream. Man, it was pure love on a plate. If you put your trust in God, it'll work out. Making meatballs without eggs, without breadcrumbs, nobody cooks that way. Just here at Dona Zena.


Her hopes:
For peace, no? For my daughter to be happy. I don't ask for anything for myself, no. I live through and for my daughter. Everything I have belongs to her. Money is good, for sure, but it's not everything. I know how to make money. My only worry is being the best at what I do.

Steve Luttman - The American Behind Brazil's Leblon Cachaça

I recently returned to Brazil from a three-week visit to Canada and the USA. I'm always looking for things that might appear on Flavors of Brazil when I travel, and one thing that I noticed is it is becoming increasingly possible to order a caipirinha in bars and restaurants. The caipirinha, of course, is Brazil's most famous cocktail, made with cachaça, a distilled sugar-cane liquor, limes and sugar. Ten or fifteen years ago caipirinhas were nowhere to be seen on the North American bar scene, but now they're popping up all over the place. Casual taverns, bars in airports, contemporary-gastronomy restaurants, even a Chinese restaurant in Vancouver - they all have caipirinhas on their drinks menu.

Steve Luttmann

I also noted that many times the brand of cachaça specified on the menu was Leblon (especially in bars where the vodka is likely to be Grey Goose and the gin Bombay Sapphire). It was not a brand that I was familiar with here in Brazil, and upon my return to Brazil my curiosity got the best of me and I did a bit of research on it. It turns out that Leblon (named after a chic neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro) is a relatively new brand which distills its product in the small city of Patos in the state of Minas Gerais. It also turns out that the CEO of Leblon is an American, Steve Luttmann, who has made it his own personal crusade to spread the good word about cachaça and the caipirinha around the world. Leblon's "Legalize Cachaça" campaign is classic 21st century marketing and seems to be doing what it's meant to do - increase consumer awareness and thereby increase sales.

Steve Luttman was recently interviewed by Brazilian gastronomic magazine Prazeres da Mesa. In the interview he detailed what he is attempting to do, and where he hopes to take the cachaça market outside Brazil. Here is a translation (mine) of that interview:

What is the image that most North Americans have of Brazil?
It's still considered an exotic place. Some still think, for example, that the capital of Brazil is Buenos Aires. But they know that Brazil has the most beautiful women and the best party in the world - carnaval.


And how are they reacting to cachaça?
One good point about Americans is that they like to try new things. Besides, the best-selling cocktail in the USA is the margarita, a [Mexican] classic that combines lime juice, tequila and Cointreau and which is very similar to the caipirinha. That's the key, in my opinion, to market innovation. In order to gain strength in the cocktail market, you've got to have a firm footing in familiarity.

What about Brazilians? Do you think they will accept having their national drink distilled by an American?
The problem is that the true Brazilian has a prejudice against cachaça, because he sees it as a low-quality product. A good cachaça can be as high-quality as a wine - it's the Brazilian "champagne." It's important that the consumer understands this. Our team is working round the clock to change this. We're now found in the most elegant hotels in São Paul and Rio de Janeiro and in restaurants such as those of Alex Atala, Claude Troisgros and Roberta Sudbreck plus the Fasano group.


The master-distiller of Leblon is Gilles Merlet, from France, and also responsible for other products such as Hennessy Cognac. Does he come to Brazil or work at distance?
Gilles spends three or four months in Brazil, at harvest time. Outside this period, we send samples to him almost daily so that he doesn't miss a single step in the production process. It's an honor, for us, to have him on the team. In the world market, Gilles is for distilled products what Michel Rolland is for wines.


In your opinion, what makes Leblon different from other cachaças?
Our product is a blended cachaça, resulting in a product with complex aromas and flavors.


Finally, does the average American know how to make a good caipirinha?
The traditional recipe for a "kuai-pur-een-ya" (as Americans tend to pronounce caipirinha) has been demonstrated [by Leblon] in videos and in our consumer marketing campaign. However, certain adaptations have been put into practice, too. Americans are always in a hurry, so they sometimes mix a caipirinha with boxed or bottled lime juice, or even lime soda! But the good bartenders use the traditional recipe, and are learning to experiment with exotic modifications such as strawberry with basil, or cucumber with jalapenos peppers and dates, for example.

Luttmann can prove his point about the continuing acceptance of Leblon in the international market merely by pointing to his company's sales growth. In their first year of business, 2005, Leblon produced 20,000 9-liter cases of cachaça. Last year that number was 100,000 cases. According to Luttmann, American consumer awareness for the caipirinha is currently about 30% and cachaça itself about 20%. He is intent on increasing those percentages significantly in the years to come.

Rei Leão - Interview with Chef Léo Filho

With a thirty-year career that dates back to the early 1980s, well-known Brazilian chef Léo Filho was one of the precursors of the "New Brazilian Gastronomy" that is changing the way chefs cook in Brazil, the ingredients and techniques they use, and which is also changing Brazilians' own perceptions of their national cuisine. For twenty years, Filho was chef at São Paulo's Maksoud Plaza Hotel, helming the hotel's French restaurant, Cuisine du Soleil. Today, he is not only a professor at a prestigious gastronomic academy in São Paulo, but also divides chef duties with his partner Walter Cordeiro at E.A.T., their very successful restaurant in São Paulo's upmarket Itaim Bibi district.

Born just over 50 years ago in the small town of Amargosa, in the northeastern state of Bahia, Léo Filho was one of the first black chefs to make it to the top of gastronomic circles in Brazil. Although in many ways, as Brazilians are proud to proclaim, racism is not a large social problem in Brazil, it is not to say that black Brazilians have all the opportunities, especially economic ones, afforded their white or mixed-race compatriots. Statistically, black Brazilians are under-represented in the professions and in upper echelons of the business world, and over-represented in the numbers of unemployed and underemployed.


In this interview with chef Filho, which I've translated from the original Portuguese and which comes from the Brazilian food and cooking magazine Prazeres da Mesa, he looks back at his career and how Brazilian gastronomy has changed during that time. He also speaks about what the future might hold for Brazil in the world of 21st century global gastronomy.
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After twenty years as executive chef at Cuisine du Soleil, what did you do after you left there?
In recent years, I decided to remain low profile and dedicate myself to my own catering company and my career as a professor in an institute of gastronomy here in São Paulo. During that time, I traveled extensively around the country, and received many invitations to return to restaurant work. But at Eat, I act on my own as a chef, alongside the promising black chef, Walter Cordeiro. We create and cook with four hands.

It's not very common for a black man to rise to the level of executive chef. Does discrimination exist also in the world of gastronomy?
I haven't felt much discrimination in my own professional life. For that, I thank the Maksoud Plaza Hotel. But I have to say that I had to prove myself more than a white chef might have had to do, just like every black man must prove himself better. The fact is that I had a strong family base, which gave me the incentive to study and fight harder. However, it is clear that there is discrimination is this area, which has as a cause the social conditions and low levels of education of the majority of black Brazilians. As a matter of fact, I have a current project of which I'm very fond - creating a technical culinary course for Brazilians from lower economic classes. I had an invitation to build this project in Angola, but I preferred to make my ideas concrete here, in one of São Paulo's favelas (slums). This is my grand dream which I plan to fulfill, since I love a challenge and a good fight.

With so many activities, what is your greatest professional pleasure?
Besides my family, and especially my grandson Lucca, cooking is my passion, my life.

Is it easier to work today than when you first began?
More than 25 years ago, we felt we were, and in fact were, pathfinders. Brazil had everything it needed in the area of cooking and cuisine. I belong to a generation of chefs, which included Laurent Suaudeau and Claude Troisgros, and which had a mission to shape suppliers, enable restaurant employees, locate products of true quality and create from zero a system of managing all this. Many times, I returned to Brazil laden with truffles, morels, foie gras and kitchen utensils hidden in my luggage.


But clients are better informed gastronomically today, aren't they?
Brazil loves novelty, but unfortunately, gives little value to the classics. Because of this, may chefs follow fads and surf that wave called "gastronomic re-readings" - and sometimes, they don't reread the gastronomic past very well. Of course a chef must today know how to make a foam, but he or she should also know how to make a classic brown sauce. One important French chef once said, "If you just mix ingredients without any critical thought, you run the risk of the result being nothing more than a culinary parade float." It's necessary to respect the taste of things - always.


Are the ingredients as important as the chef's skill in creating a great dish?
I think it's about fifty-fifty. You have to have a balance between the two. I think that kitchen stress and hard-times at the stove are essential if a chef doesn't want to lose his touch. You must study and gain academic knowledge, sure, but you have to continue to practice your art. Some chefs today spend more time giving interviews than they do in the kitchen. And in cooking school, some students are more intent on appearing in a magazine and achieving rapid success than they are on learning their craft. This shocks me: they want to be famous, that's all. You have to climb step by step and respect every stage in the process.

Is the increase in the number of culinary schools a good sign?
I think this growth is natural and a good thing, as long as the schools have the necessary qualities. However, the majority of students in these schools will not remain in the field. When they discover that a true chef has to work up to 15 hours a day, they throw in the towel. But those who have a vocation for cooking remain. And they will triumph, clearly, after a long fight and much personal investment.

And how to you perceive which students have that vocation?
Just by observing. Such a student loves what he or she is doing so much that their eyes shine. It's the way she picks up a knife, the way he cuts a vegetable. The true cook treats food as if it were diamonds. Also, they listen more than speak. And even more, they must love to work in a team, be disciplined, concentrating, and demanding of themselves. I consider my profession an art, and I demand the same of my students. For an artist, concentration is crucial. I work in total silence, and refuse to answer my cell phone when I'm working.

What still remains before Brazil will be recognized as a first-rate power in the world of global gastronomy?
We're getting close. Brazil's the flavor of the month today, and we already have great culinary diversity, great products and material with which to work, and a group of very talented chefs. But we still have to correct one thing: It's not necessary to for us receive accolades from outside Brazil, and only when we do clap our hands here. In other words, we don't need to wait for  Madonna or Ferran Adriàto to praise our sapoti, or our piracuru in order for us to recognize their worth and their quality.