The global decline of restaurants in São Paulo – 10/04/2023 – Cozinha Bruta

When I was a teenager, I caught the glimpses of a time when the menus of fancy restaurants in São Paulo were in French, without translation.

Worse: only the menus given to the men came with the prices of the food. Even worse: sometimes not even that. If you wanted to know how much you would pay, you had to subject yourself to the embarrassment of asking the waiter, in front of the purest maiden you had invited to dinner.

São Paulo was more country. Brazil was more hillbilly. The world was more country.

Or maybe not.

The world, all connected, found ways to reconcile the provincial and the cosmopolitan. Globalized jequicity manifests itself in different ways in Europe, the United States and, of course, in Brazil. São Paulo is a fascinating case of this phenomenon.

I just found out about the opening of a São Paulo branch of Les Deux Magots, a historic café in Paris. A place that calls itself a “literary café”, as Camus, Hemingway and the Beauvoir-Sartre couple, among many others, frequented it.

It is in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, an area to the left of the Seine whose bohemian aura has long been converted into a tourist capital. Still, a less affected place than the aristocratic parts of the Rive Droîte.

The São Paulo branch is in a small square on Rua Colombia, the name that Rua Augusta gets after crossing the United States. It’s where the Gardens no longer have buildings, just huge houses. It’s where poor people have nothing to do other than cleaning and pruning bushes.

São Paulo has a peculiar Midas touch when it comes to foreign restaurants that set up shop there. Everything becomes tacky and dazzling.

Pain Quotidien, a demi-bouche bakery of Belgian origin, arrived and caused a stir. Buddy Balastro’s bakery, famous worldwide for making bizarre themed cakes with no other special predicate, has become a pilgrimage spot on Instagram.

Even Outback, the Bart Simpsons show from life in the USA, gained restaurant status for a special outing.

Let’s go back to the French café.

In Paris, Deux Magots became a luxury tourist trap, with reasonable prices, for travelers with expired deodorant. In São Paulo, it will be a zoo for rich people and parliamentarian lovers from the corners of Brazil. Prices are equally compliant, of course.

The French website displays the menu in English first. The Brazilian menu comes with big French names, a magnifying glass to be able to read the Brazilian version.

And, speaking of reading, the Jardins literary café is expected to host heated intellectual debates about contemporary classics such as “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” and “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”.

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