Chef praised by Lula thought he was pranked by Janja – 06/01/2023 – Mônica Bergamo

When first lady Rosângela da Silva, known as Janja, called chef João Diamante to invite him to be responsible for an important Brazilian government dinner, his first reaction was to think it was a prank .

“When I answered, I said: ‘Wow, is that really Janja?'”, says the Bahian, born in Salvador, but raised in the Nova Divinéia favela, in Andaraí, in the north zone of Rio de Janeiro.

As soon as he confirmed that he was the first lady on the other side of the line, João immediately accepted the challenge, which was successfully fulfilled on Tuesday night (30), at the Palácio da Alvorada.

The chef has cooked for Lula and other South American presidents. “For a boy who came from the Northeast, who was raised in a Rio de Janeiro community with many difficulties, black, favela, to be able to hold an event like this… I don’t even have words to explain what I’m feeling. It seems like a dream”, he says. he to the column.

At the end of the meeting, João says he received a hug from Lula and a compliment in a confidential tone. “He told me: ‘João, it’s been a long time since I’ve eaten so well here at the Palace'”.

The 32-year-old chef claims he was so focused on making sure everything went right that he didn’t even remember to ask for a photo next to the president. “I know that someone from there took it, but I was very upset. In the end, I was supposed to say several things, thank you, but I couldn’t”, he reports.

João claims to be a Lula voter and defender of his public policies. “I was only able to go to college because of Fies [Fundo de Financiamento Estudantil].” The program was created during the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (PSDB), in 1999, and expanded by Lula in his second term as president, in 2010.

The chef and Janja met in person last year at an event on food safety at Morro da Babilônia, in Rio. Earlier, the two exchanged messages on social media. “She already liked my work and commented on some of the dishes I posted.”

When they met, the first lady showed interest in learning more about the trajectory of João, who for five years has also been responsible for Diamante na Cozinha, a social project that uses gastronomy as a tool for inclusion.

“Afterwards, she watched the documentary ‘Sonhos Possíveis’, which is on YouTube, and which talks in more depth about my story”, says the chef. “She said that she saw it with the president and that he was moved by my life”, he adds.

João says that he started cooking as a child out of necessity. As his mother had to work all day, and his sister didn’t like to prepare meals, he started to take care of his own food. “My sister just wanted to reheat what was already ready. To be able to eat fresh food, I started to learn the basics: rice, beans, egg, pasta with sausage”, he reports.

The passion for gastronomy came only years later, when he entered mandatory military service and went to work in the professional kitchen of the Navy. “That’s where I started to fall in love.”

João took a technical course and then went on to study gastronomy at Estácio de Sá, which at the time had a partnership with Alain Ducasse Formation, one of the most respected culinary schools in the world.

As he was among the top three students on the course, João went to live and do an internship in France with chef Alain Ducasse at the restaurant Les Jules Vernes, in the Eiffel Tower, in Paris.

On his return to Brazil, he took over the restaurant at the Museum of Tomorrow, in Rio, from 2016 to 2018. “It was there that I became nationally known and started participating in television programs, telling my story”, he says. In 2017, João was chosen by the specialized website Infood as a revelation chef.

Currently, in addition to taking care of the Diamante na Cozinha program, he also runs the temporary and traveling restaurant Na Minha Casa. “It’s a project that we opened for three months and closed for six months. It only fits 20 people and we have a dynamic suggested price, where each client pays what he wants”, he explains. At the moment, the initiative is on pause and there is no definition of when it will return and where.

Alongside chef Paola Carosella, João was also one of the judges of the culinary reality show Minha Mãe Cozinha Melhor que a Sua, shown by Globo, with presentation by Leandro Hassum.

“My cuisine is Brazilian with a contemporary look,” says João. According to him, his main proposal is to show that it is possible to use popular ingredients, present in the daily lives of Brazilians, but prepared in a different way. “Gastronomy is linked to knowledge, not ingredients,” he says.

That’s what he proposed to bring to the event at Palácio da Alvorada. “And the idea was that the cocktail would also have ingredients from other Latin American countries”, he says.

In this way, he prepared Argentine empanadas filled with canasta cheese and okra. Another delicacy was a plantain ceviche.

For dinner, northeastern couscous with fresh salad formed the chosen starter. The first course was a fish with a Brazil nut crust, and the second, sun-dried meat with pirão de leche and canasta cheese. For dessert, tapioca couscous and cumaru pudding were served.

According to João, the guests were only compliments at the end of the meeting. “I was so ecstatic that I could only hear the voices saying ‘What a wonderful dinner’, ‘What a delicious meal’, but I couldn’t even make out who the heads of state were talking about,” he says. “You see how pedantically I’m still talking,” he says, between laughs. “What’s happening is really crazy. A boy who until yesterday was inside the community, with all the difficulty, and now he cooked for the president”, he concludes.

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BOOKCASE

Journalist and writer Conrado Corsalette received guests at the launch of his book “Uma Crise Chamada Brasil”, held on Tuesday night (30). Writer Reinaldo Moraes honored the event, which took place at the São Cristóvão bar, in São Paulo. Journalist and writer Adriana Ferreira Silva also stopped by.

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