Her full name is Janaina Cecilia Torres do Santos, she is Brazilian from Sao Paulo, born in 1975, and lovers of gastro-almanacs recognize her as the chef of the popular A Casa do Porco Bar (27th in the World's 50Best 2024) and Best Female Chef in the World 2023 for the same institution. But Janaina's story and personality tell much more than dry figures: born in Bràs, a working-class neighborhood in the heart of the Paulista megalopolis, in 2008 she opened Bar da Dona Onça at the foot of the enormous social housing complex of Copan. Onça in Portuguese means "jaguar", the animalistic alter ego of Janaina who, to disambiguate any meaning, has tattooed the typical feline spots along her entire left arm.
The Bar is still a lively place today mixing stories and ingredients from all over Brazil with traditional stews prepared in pressure cooker: it is an extraordinary collection of tables stacked together dripping with Chinese fried chicken sandwiches, strogonoff soups, chicken and rice galinhada and jaguars depicted everywhere. The place soon gained acclaim from the public and national critics so much so that, in 2015, with her ex-husband Jefferson Rueda, she decided to open A Casa do Porco Bar a few steps away, another sparkling place that sanctifies pork. To name a few dishes: the juicy homemade bacon with guava jam, glazed pork belly nigiri, pork tartare temaki and the "All Pork" menu, with fabulous grilled vegetables and vegetarian side dishes.
Beyond every gastronomic meanings, it must be said that over time the two signs change the destinies of a neighborhood, once very infamous, and now on the path of progressive gentrification, precisely because of the example that Janaina begins to dictate. It is a movement to reclaim the central area of the city, an important social inspiration that has given rise to another laudable project, Cozinheiros pela Educação, "cooks for education", a plan that aims to improve the meals of as many as 1,800 Paulista schools (and 2 million students), made up less and less of hyper-processed ingredients and more and more of raw materials that are as natural as possible.
The colonization of the neighborhood continues to the present day with further small openings: Hot Pork (pork sandwich to go), Sorveteria do Centro (a shop window serving ice cream cones with pork cracklings), the informal Merenda da Cidade and the latest addition, À Brasileira, a gastronomic project on Brazilian popular markets. A volcano, a river in flood, Janaina, in the meantime also holder of the American Express Icon Award for the great commitment shown by serving meals to the homeless, in the months of Covid.
Torres embodies a shining example of gastronomy as a social driver, the most interesting innovation in world cuisine of the last 20 years. Also in the fight for gender equality in the kitchen. «I was born in a context of industrialized food and male cuisine», she explained to us in an interview a couple of years ago, «because the rules of our industry were written by Auguste Escoffier, a gentleman who, all things considered, introduced a military model into our kitchens. The theorist of a cuisine that today we clearly see in all its macho scope. An inhumane and toxic cuisine that it's time to overturn with a feminine movement. With an increasingly significant contribution from women, who can promote a catering model that is finally not aggressive but humanised; not individualistic but collective, not alienated but transparent."
A cuisine that takes greater care of human relationships «Because we are born with the womb and through it we build a closer bond with the earth. We generate life and take charge of things. And for this reason we tend to be more respectful in our relationships with people, of all sexes."
