Food For Thought

Manu Buffara, Latin America’s finest female chef, on why she is cooking to change the world

WORDS: JOHN THATCHER

By their very nature, pop-up restaurants are designed to swiftly disappear again. It’s certainly rare that they would still be in location months after opening, let alone a year. But then, when you’ve popped up on a sun-kissed Maldives island that’s swathed in jungle and ringed by slithers of cotton-soft sand and lucent, warm waters, in which pods of dolphin frolic, why wouldn’t you want to hang around?

But there’s another reason why Manoella 'Manu’ Buffara, Latin America’s Best Female Chef — as awarded by World’s 50 Best — opted for a year-long residency at Soneva Fushi, which runs until November: “Cooking at Soneva Fushi, for me, is an act of freedom and connection. I believe in the connection between land, sea, minerals, roots, fruits, and animals, and I respect the time, energy and people involved in this process.”

Manu hopes that more and more people come to respect this process, for the good of themselves and the planet we all inhabit. “I think sitting down to share a meal is a sacred moment. I try to create dishes that have a story and hope that those who eat them get intrigued by the ingredients and want to learn more about the process that created the dish. For a meal to be possible a lot of people had to work.

“We, chefs, need to think bigger and spread the same message: we need to take care of the garbage, we need to teach our children to eat well, we need to know more about where our food comes from and who makes it. This needs to be appreciated. We have to understand that a product took a long time to grow, and that there is human work involved. Knowing this helps us to think about not wasting. Gastronomy must be thought of as circular, and we have to close its ends.”

Soneva Fushi is the perfect location for Manu to spread her message. So much thought has been given to lightening its environmental footprint that it was able to issue an A-Z list of all things sustainable on the island, from the architecture through to a stringent zero-waste policy.

“When I first visited Soneva Fushi I was totally hooked by its eco-centre and the sustainable system they have in place there. The leftover food from all the island’s restaurants is processed to become organic compost; styrofoam is broken down into pillow stuffing and beanbag fillers. I saw in that space everything I believe every one of us should be doing in our daily routines, and I shared that feeling with the team.”

Manu and her team staff the kitchen at treetop dining destination Fresh In The Garden, its name derived from its location above the resort’s extensive organic island gardens, from which they pluck ingredients, and below cloudless sky. Manu’s menu here serves 35 guests per sitting, and places an emphasis on plant-based, vegetarian and sustainably-caught seafood dishes. “Visiting organic gardens is one of my favourite activities,” enthuses Manu. “But Soneva Fushi’s organic garden exceeded my expectations. It contains hundreds of types of vegetables and herbs, some of which I saw for the first time.”

Gardens play a significant role in Manu’s life. In her home city of Curitiba, Brazil, where her five-table eponymous restaurant continues to rack up industry awards, she performed a pivotal role in the government-backed Urban Gardens project, which allows for vacant land to be transformed into community gardens for the purpose of growing food. More than 5,000 families have since benefited.

“The idea was to develop ways to avoid waste and create simpler and cheaper solutions with the full use of vegetables from the community gardens. I joined a group of chefs and we started visiting the community gardens, giving workshops to teach cooking techniques. I showed that they can clean their wooden cooking boards by rubbing squeezed lemon pomace on them, or that by mixing organic banana peel and brown sugar, they could make highly nutritional molasses. I was in love with becoming part of this little change in the poorest outskirts of the city. By the end, I was teaching the community farmers how to clean some seeds and learning from them about the preparations they made at home. They would receive me into their homes any time and give freshly harvested vegetables to my girls to taste.” Manu has two girls, aged seven and six. The desire to unite the pleasure of eating with sustainable food production is a seed harvested from Manu’s formative years, growing up in a city but close to her family’s farm. “I remember being raised surrounded by animals. I had a peacock, chicken, rabbit, turtle, fish, and a few horses that my brother and I would take care of. I was responsible for feeding the animals, and since I was very young I learned how to choose a good vegetable.

“Every Saturday I would wake up around 5am to visit our family farm in the countryside. I felt lucky when we arrived on time to see the milk being taken from the cows. I can still remember how good it was to receive a glass of it, still warm and creamy. That made me recognise good milk and how it tastes.

“I also cooked for the first time at my family’s farm when I was around six or seven – I had a small but real kitchen with handmade pans in the backyard. My grandparents would bring the Brazilian pine nut, which is two to three inches long, much longer than the one found in the USA and Europe, and I would cook it over a wood fire to serve to my brother and family.”

While Manu’s culinary skills have developed since then to now speak of a chef at the peak of her powers, it is her voice that she hopes carries more weight. She used it during the pandemic, speaking up for the poorest in her community and setting up the Manu Buffara Institute to collect quality food and distribute it to those in need. “I also used it as an opportunity to go beyond simply feeding people to give them good information about what they were eating.

“I will always do my best to make a difference and show that a chef’s voice is even more important outside our kitchens.”

Does she think other chefs in the global limelight are doing enough to turn that light onto the transformative potential of food? “Considering what mankind has done through bad practices in the last few centuries, we will always be late, and it will never be enough. Having said that, I like to look on the bright side of life, it helps me to move forward.

“In Brazil, for example, there is a lot do. But we have accomplished very important changes. In the south of the country there are native bees that produce different kinds of honey. Their hives are much smaller and less productive than the popular bees seen around the world. The honey they produce is more liquid and acidic and ferments faster than the honey everyone knows.

“A law passed last century did not allow producers to sell this kind of honey, as it was considered unsafe. But now we know it is safe and extraordinary. So myself, Alex Atala [the man behind acclaimed restaurant D.O.M. in São Paulo] and other Brazilian chefs started a movement to cook with these fantastic honeys and talk extensively about that now obsolete law. It took us a decade, but now this honey can be produced and sold in Brazil. It changed the lives of thousands of people.

“I have some hives of them in my backyard and in my restaurant’s front wall. I believe, as the bees do, I can change the world doing the best I can. But, just as the bees have a job to do every day so do I. The best way I can do. And I will learn to be a better person in this process. I am not the type of person who likes to complain. I try to find a good way out of every difficult moment, and I have had some very bad moments. But I do not let them take me down.

“I am focused on becoming a better person for me, for the environment, and I think that in this way, I will evolve as well.”

Very much food for thought for us all.