King of the Rainforest: Alex Atala

Alex Atala is an intense guy. “In my kitchen,” he says, “we have three laws: do not run; do not stop; do not talk.” If one were to view only a snapshot of the chef, whose reimagining of Brazilian cuisine has made him a star within the haute food world, these laws might come as a surprise. His tattoos, black jeans, and Converse sneakers suggest a rock and roll past – he is, in fact, a former DJ – and it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine him spray painting a Louvre-worthy mural on the brick wall of an abandoned building. But this would be incorrect. Calm to the point of near meditation, and speaking in a hushed, measured voice that requires one lean in to listen, Atala crackles with the kind of stripped bare creative energy that is at once alarming and alluring.

He devotes that creative energy to food; specifically, his D.O.M. restaurant, recently named No. 6 on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, and his work with ATA, a non-profit he co-founded to explore and protect indigenous Brazilian ingredients and the environments and communities that produce them.

Atala shares his tales from the Amazon freely. One of his favorites is the story of Dona Brasi, a local chef he met when he began working with Brazil’s native people. “She brings out a small black sauce with lots of ants…. I tasted the sauce and it had beautiful flavors, and I asked what herbs she used. She told me ‘Ants.’” Atala says he thought he’d misunderstood, and asked again, noting that the sauce tasted like lemongrass and ginger. Again, Dona Brasi told him “Ants.”

It was an epiphany for Atala, who until then had not fully grasped the notion of cultural relativism. “For me, the ant tastes like lemongrass and ginger. To native people, lemongrass and ginger taste like ants.”

“I was trying to impose my culture,” he admits, “not understand their culture.”

This epiphany is fundamental to Atala’s work as a chef and a philanthropist. In his view, food is culture, and cuisine is a vital instrument in providing social development, inclusion, and sustainability. It’s why he established ATA, whose main objective is “to support and reorganize and give value to all of the food chain.”

“Food is the main crack to human science,” Atala said. “I started to work with anthropologists and others to understand my relationship with the natives. This relationship is very big. We are transforming many lives.”

Next, Atala talks about his past and his future…

His recently published cookbook, D.O.M.: Reinventing Brazilian Ingredients, is an ode to what he’s learned from that relationship. A stunning collection of 65 recipes and 150 photographs of the raw ingredients Atala forages for in Brazil’s rainforest, it is not only a beautifully bound rendering of unique dishes, but a glimpse into Atala’s culinary point of view. “There are lots of new possibilities in [the book]. It’s a way to give value to ingredients that we didn’t use or forgot.”

Atala’s method for giving value is creativity, but he is quick to define the term. “Creativity is not to do something no one has done before,” Atala said. “It is to do something in an unexpected way.”

He adds that being creative requires an understanding of technique, process, and the start of things, three concepts that are vital to understanding the chef himself. “My mise en place starts with the native people in the Amazonas. These ingredients we can’t find in the market… These are not next door. They are thousands of miles away.”

Atala says that while his culinary education, which began at 19 in Belgium’s École Hôtelière de Namur and included stints at Jean Pierre Bruneau’s Michelin 3-star restaurant and the Hotel de la Cote D’Or, where he staged under chef Bernard Loiseau, imparted him with tremendous practical knowledge and prepared him for the rigors of restaurant ownership, it did not teach him the origins of the foods he prepared.

“When you are training to be a chef, your head chef explains things like this,” said Atala. “But sometimes they forget to explain why we are doing this. Why is the question.”

Thus Atala insists on approaching ingredients in a manner that goes far beyond farm to fork. For him, the only way to answer the question of “Why?” is to have a deep, firsthand knowledge of each step that goes into preparing a dish. “Nowadays, there are lots of expectations of cuisine, of a chef, of a kitchen. Innovation is something we are demanding. What can be innovation for a chef? A new dish, a new technique, a new ingredient.”

Next, a look inside D.O.M…

Among the many ingredients Atala uses at D.O.M. are priprioca, a sedge species used in perfumes that complements the flavors of banana and citrus; jambu, a flowering herb that looks like a hybrid of mint and cilantro, tastes like Szechuan peppercorns, and has an electric, slightly numbing quality; and tucupi, fermented manioc juice that requires an entire day’s cooking in order to stanch and release its poisons.

At a recent New York Times Talk, wherein Atala was interviewed alongside Momofuku’s chef David Chang, he told moderator Jeff Gordinier: “We must face the food barriers we have,” to which Chang laughingly replied, “He’s crazy, man.”

But for all of his inventiveness and the accolades bestowed upon him – Atala was also named to Time’s 100 Most Influential list earlier this year, making him the first ever chef to be included in its prestigious ranks – Atala holds fast to his childhood food memories.  

“Mama’s food is always the best,” he says, smiling as he recalls a corn cake his grandma made when he was a boy. “It’s funny how it works in our memories… I grew up and I lost a bit of contact with my Grandma for a few years. Later, I went to visit her and she made this same corn cake. It was good, but…” He pauses, momentarily overcome by what appears to be nostalgia, before returning to his typically hushed manner of speaking.

“Flavor is something we train, that we develop,” said Atala. “As my repertoire grew, that corn cake wasn’t so surprising, but until today, when I taste something that makes me say ‘Wow that is really good,’ I measure it by emotions. That corn cake was my first emotion. It is a parameter forever in my life.”

In recalling this story, the reason for the food world’s obsession with Atala becomes clear. He is simultaneously serious and soft, practical and ideological, energetic and restrained. He is both teacher and student, a combination that, like the dishes he creates, is compelling, inspiring, and above all, intense.