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“Best chef in the world” comes from Brazil
Janaina Torre’s restaurant “A Casa do Porco”, ranked 12th on the list of the best restaurants in the world, is all about pork. photo
© Marcus Steinmeyer/The World’s 50 Best /dpa
Janaína Torres is the best chef in the world. The Brazilian runs the restaurant “A Casa do Porco” in São Paulo. As the name suggests, everything here revolves around pigs.
The triumph of female chefs from Latin America in top gastronomy shows no signs of slowing down. For the fifth time in a row, the Brazilian Janaína Torres, a Latina, has been named the “best chef in the world”. “Janaína Torres is a multi-tasking phenomenon. In addition to running the kitchen at the hugely popular restaurant A Casa do Porco in her hometown of São Paulo, she also runs a number of other dining establishments and advocates for issues such as nutrition , accessibility and social inclusion,” the jury announced on Thursday.
At her restaurant “A Casa do Porco”, ranked 12th on the list of the best restaurants in the world, it’s all about pork. Torres serves handmade sausages and meat roasted over an open fire for nine hours. At the equivalent of 60 US dollars, it also offers one of the cheapest tasting menus in haute cuisine. Torres also runs a bar, an organic hot dog stand, an ice cream parlor and a bistro.
“My goal is to make top-class gastronomy affordable and accessible to many people,” says Torres. Among other things, it works with the government of São Paulo to train school cooks and improve the nutrition of 1.8 million children by replacing processed foods with fresh products in school canteens.
Female chefs from Latin America have dominated top international gastronomy in recent years. Before Torres, the Mexican Elena Reygadas, the Colombian Leonor Espinosa, the Peruvian Pía León and the Mexican-American Daniela Soto-Innes were honored. “I’m Latina, I’m Brazilian and I’m inspired by the ancestral techniques,” says Torres.