H TSEAT IN THE

Fabio La Pietra, Creative Director, SubAstor, Brazil

You’re an Italian who honed his bartender skills in London before moving to Brazil. How have the three cultures shaped you into the bartender you are now?

All three have shaped my vision and sensibility for service and ingredients. But Great Britain has been the place of cocktail renaissance over the past two decades, and it was Montgomery Place in London that shaped me the most. Classic, history, service… it was amazing to start working there at the age of 19. Brazil was a surprise to me as it was a hard decision to move there. I had great passion for the country and I found real hospitality, so I decided to stay and work at SubAstor as head bartender.

Describe the look and feel of SubAstor and the ethos behind it?

SubAstor is an urban-chic cocktail bar in the basement of Astor, a hybrid barbistro in Vila Madalena, a bohemian neighbourhood in the west of São Paulo. It can host 90 people, there’s a long counter of alabaster quartz and it has a cosy atmosphere. The music is based on Afro-Latin rhythms mixed up with soul, R&B and funk. We want everyone to feel at home and spend the night in a modern space with drinks based on local ingredients. We want people to have fun and come back to us.

Now on to your menu: tell us about some of the native ingredients used… We should start with the very first love I had in Brazil: before coming here, I didn’t know that the cashew nut has a beautiful fruit! It’s super fragrant, delicate and juicy. Then one of my favourites: breu branco. It’s an aromatic resin from trees growing in the Amazon, and it’s used by the locals as a medicinal cleanser for the lungs and for helping with breathing issues.

When did you first become aware of the extensive biodiversity in Brazil? When I moved to São Paulo, I became obsessed with hunting out producers who could logistically supply us. Brazil is a huge country and whether an ingredient is at its best will often depend on how long it travelled before getting to us. I met with Antonia Padvaiskas, who supplies many native ingredients from all over the six biomes of Brazil, and she showed me more than 25 types of ingredients. The new products I tried completely blew my mind! I realised then what the concept of SubAstor was going to be: I had to show everyone the six biomes of Brazil.

You run a project called The Mission. What’s it all about?

The idea for The Mission came in 2017 after a bartender friend, Alex Kratena, visited Ilhéus and Gandú in Bahia, eastern Brazil, one of the most unique microclimates for high-quality cocoa. When I asked Alex about the trip, and about exploring more of the country, we came up with the idea of The Mission. Discovering and championing local ingredients, farmers and producers would give us the opportunity to do something completely different. The idea was to have a meaningful connection with the local biodiversity, learning how to prioritise what we have close to us. That’s what The Mission is all about: educating bartenders from abroad, as well as our own team and also our guests, offering them a whole new lexicon of flavours.

Who has taken part?

The Mission is aimed at the global community of bartending and food and beverage sectors. Since starting in 2018, we’ve hosted seven editions and many friends and colleagues – including Shingo

Tell us about some of the most exciting results…

I think the most exciting result is the way The Mission has inspired many Brazilian bartenders, the new generation of hospitality professionals, as well as many global colleagues. Sometimes bartenders and chefs tend to look at what they can import to make better drinks and better dishes, but they overlook their incredible local produce. The Mission is inspiring them to go local, to meet their people, to know what is native.

What are your future plans?

We want to invite writers, journalists, brand managers… more people who can help us shine a light on local farmers and natives who work and live with their land, and who are often trying to save species that are almost extinct.

What does local and incorporating locality in bars mean to you?

Thanks for this beautiful question! In Brazil specifically, to me it means helping farmers and producers who fight every day to keep their house standing and their land safe. There are too many ‘agrotoxic-based’ mass producers buying out small locals, decimating hectares and hectares of native biomes and creating semi-slavery conditions for the people who work for them. It is a massive problem here, and there are no laws that can prevent it from happening. What we can do is not look away, and teach the new generations of food and beverage creatives that this is where we came from and these local farmers are to be saved. We need to desire less what comes from the US and Europe and appreciate more what we have on our doorstep, and we can do so by supporting locals.