São Paulo deserves more than bread and mortadella – 01/24/2024 – Cozinha Bruta

Imagine any city. Ubatuba, let’s say.

Ubatuba is on the coast. On the coast there are many banana plantations.

Now suppose that some smart guy from Ubatuba decides to sell bananas in his restaurant. Simply banana. Raw. In the shell.

The banana costs R$79 and is a huge hit at the smart guy’s bar. Other bars imitate it and start serving bananas.

The buzz goes up the mountain and, before you see it, there is already a flow of tourists traveling to Ubatuba just to eat bananas.

The city hall declares that bananas are the city’s intangible heritage. The whole of Brazil recognizes bananas as a typical dish from Ubatuba.

Stupid and implausible story, right?

Now imagine any other city. São Paulo, let’s say.

Suppose a person from São Paulo buys bread and mortadella at the bakery, puts the mortadella in the middle of the bread, sells the bread with mortadella, then the bread with mortadella from this person from São Paulo is so successful that it becomes recognized as a typical dish of São Paulo.

Calm down there. This really happened.

Without going into the merits of the grotesque disproportion of the Mercadão sandwich – I’ve already hit this point too much –, have you ever stopped to think about the absurdity of São Paulo being known nationally for something as simple as bread with mortadella?

Justo São Paulo, which has the presumption of being the world capital of gastronomy.

Bread with mortadella cannot even be considered a dish. There is no elaboration. There is no cuisine, there is no recipe. It’s as primitive as a banana in its skin.

And yet they celebrate it as a gastronomic creation. Other restaurants honor it with reinterpretations, the food industry celebrates mortadella as if it were a delicacy.

It makes no sense.

São Paulo may not be the gastronomy capital of the world. But the food is good, there’s a lot of fresh food here. São Paulo deserves more than bread and mortadella in the nation’s imagination.

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