Dona Tati received Coldplay and occupied Bar do Alemão – 07/13/2023 – Bars and night
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The big yellow house on the corner of Rua Conselheiro Brotero and Rua Camaragibe is crowded both inside and outside, whether with people sitting at tables or standing with a glass in hand. Around a samba circle that cradles the night, they spin, taking a step this way and that. Among them, Dona Tati goes around and commands her team of attendants. Her Boteco is one of the engines of bohemia in the neighborhood of Barra Funda, in São Paulo.
The samba space is decorated with calico flags, sieves, hats and musical instruments. The windows with Senhor do Bonfim ribbons serve as a showcase for those accompanying the musicians outside, under the banner of Camisa Verde e Branco, the first carnival cordon in the capital of São Paulo.
On busier days, around 500 people pass by. It has been so successful that Dona Tati has just taken the first steps to expand her empire. She acquired the traditional Bar do Alemão, in the west region, where samba circles also took place, which will be reopened as a bar called Canela Preta at the end of the month.
“It’s a lot of responsibility. It panicked me”, she says when asked about occupying the space that for 50 years was Bar do Alemão, on Avenida Antártica, in the western region.
But it’s not as if 67-year-old Sebastiana Alves Martins (her registered name) hadn’t accumulated luggage.
Born in the city of Estrela d’Oeste, in the interior of the state of São Paulo, she moved to the capital at the age of 13, living as a maid.
In the 1980s, he started working in a bar with his mother and brother near the Vergueiro station. From that time, she remembers having to change her two children’s diapers under the counter and when they were still playing pool on tiptoe.
Years later, he left the bar and had other jobs. He worked at a lockhouse and at a public transport ticket office. Afterwards, he returned to work with his mother in a bar on the Barão de Piracicaba avenue. From then on, she never left this universe. She even had a grocery store in Itaquera.
In 2001, Dona Tati opened a business in Campos Elíseos, on a corner where she stayed for 16 years. She turned the place into a rotisserie. She didn’t want to work with alcohol because of family problems. “But my mother used to say that I would starve if I didn’t sell cachaça”. In the end, she put beer on the menu.
At that time, he already had the help of his youngest son, Thiago Martins. It was he who created the name by which it is known today, engraved on a plaque. It was a way to get customers to stop calling her aunt, something that always irritated her.
“At that time, I was a humble black woman with a bar and two children to raise”, she says. “It wasn’t easy. Many times I closed the bar, called the real estate agency and said to sell”.
Everything changed when the youngest son started to dedicate himself full time to the bar, as he didn’t want her to close down her activities. His first idea, at the end of 2016, was to create a menu of handmade hamburgers. “That got us out of the hole”, says Tati.
Before that, he already had a monthly Feijoada de Jorge, an event that counted on the participation of people from the old guard of Camisa Verde e Branco.
“The samba flirted with the bar. It came and went constantly”, says Thiago. The wedding was made official in early 2017, when the musical genre became a constant part of the schedule.
“We need to show our ancestry, because those who make samba are black, but those who attend are white”, he says.
The approach to samba and popular roots changed the face of the bar, and it became too small for so many people. There were a lot of customers looking for music, beer (R$12) and snacks like manioc dumplings with meat (R$40 a portion), not to mention the feijoada on Saturday (R$120).
Five years ago, Dona Tati found a bigger place, on nearby Rua Brigadeiro Galvão. When she saw the space, she thought it would be too big for the business. “We realized and it was small”.
It was in 2021 that the bar settled at its current address, on the corner of Conselheiro Brotero and Camaragibe streets. Loyal customers followed. It even reached famous people.
In March of this year, Chris Martin, lead singer of the British band Coldplay, took advantage of a gap in his tour to check it out. Dona Tati didn’t even know who he was. Someone suggested a photo, which at first they didn’t want to take. In the end, they gave in and the click was successful on the networks.
The visit attracted more onlookers. Today, it’s not uncommon to see someone ask for a photo with Dona Tati — shy, she says she doesn’t like to show up and do the clicks. “When my son came to work with me he asked me if I was ready to be famous. I even laughed and look what happened,” she says.
His new venture, in the place where Bar do Alemão used to be, will be an extension of Boteco da Dona Tati, with lots of samba and choro. “It gives us the possibility to build other things because it has a more intimate environment”, says Thiago Martins, the son.
The idea is that Canela Preta, which will open on the 31st, be a space where people can listen and get close to the musicians, which is difficult in the hustle and bustle of Boteco da Dona Tati.
The place will even open on Mondays, which is not common in the city. The menu is still being planned with the certainty that it will have Brazilian food, not German.
Dona Tati says she supervises the bar from afar, with the idea of gradually passing the baton to her son. But both claim that there is no Boteco da Dona Tati without her. “I wouldn’t do the bar today without my mom and she wouldn’t do it without me, it’s a set.”
Boteco da Dona Tati
R. Conselheiro Brotero, 506, Barra Funda, west region; Instagram @botecodadonatati
black cinnamon
Av. Antártica, 554, Água Branca, west region; Instagram @botequimcanelapreta. As of 7/31
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