The Brasilian Punk
Alex Atala has a special relationship with the Amazon. He never turned away from this river. His intense lifelong connection to Brazil's massive rainforest—the Amazon is bigger than all of Western Europe—and his ability to navigate its many pitfalls have fundamentally propelled D.O.M.'s success. Having entered the prestigious World's 50 Best Restaurants rankings—sponsored by San Pellegrino and voted on by more than 800 industry insiders—at number 50 in 2006, he now has moved up to sixth place being best Restaurant in South America.
The result is a singular cuisine, one that speaks to both indigenous ways and modern techniques. Dishes at D.O.M. have a way of feeling both out of time and of the moment: contemporary high-end dining with exploitation-free and sustainable Amazonian tribal roots. There are insects on the menu at D.O.M., burnished like jewels. A vibrant yellow sauce called tucupi must be boiled for 20 minutes to eliminate its lingering natural toxicity. One dish features spicy-tart flowers served over ice. "I feel responsible for helping to show what Brazilian ingredients can do," says Atala. And the way he does it is eye-opening, maybe the last, best gastronomic shock on the planet.
When Atala first bought the building that now houses D.O.M., in 1999, people asked if he had lost his mind. The space, a failed Japanese restaurant with 20-foot ceilings, sat on a poorly lit, dead-end side street. Foot traffic was minimal, and the homeless population was high. Even more audacious than his location was his desire to begin developing a haute cuisine based on Brazilian ingredients that had been previously classified as less sophisticated, less important and less interesting—if they were known at all—than the foods from Italy and France that had dominated diners' interests.
Until 1990, you could not really import food into Brazil," says Atala. But then import taxes were slashed dramatically. Free trade was introduced under President Fernando Collor de Mello, the first democratically elected head of state after three decades of military rule. Hyperinflation, often marked by four-digit increases, remained a core issue until the finance minister and future president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, introduced The Real Plan in 1994, establishing the real as a stable currency after the prior seven currencies had failed. "The '90s were booming, all about people going crazy for these foreign ingredients," says Atala. "Brazil became addicted to other cuisines."
True to form, Atala went against the grain. He'd always felt like an outsider, growing up not in the center of São Paulo, but on its fringes, with a Palestinian first and last name—he was born Milad Alexandre Mack Atala—owing to his father's Middle Eastern heritage. Risk was in Atala's blood: His maternal great-grand- father was a British expatriate, a gentleman explorer and businessman named Arthur Claude Brizzard Brink, who was murdered in the Amazon, poisoned after challenging the perpetrator of an embezzlement scheme to a duel. Says Chang: "Whenever I see that Dos Equis commercial—the most interesting man in the world—I always think, No, that's not true. The most interesting man in the world is Alex Atala."
Atala's street-punk style emerged in his teens, when he began sporting a foot-high red Mohawk and crude piercings: needles protruding from his neck, cheeks and ears. He was both an amateur welterweight boxer and a DJ at the seminal São Paulo punk club Rose Bom Bom. "Problems, drugs, fights," says Atala, "I looked like a real junkie—stick thin, punk rock style. We didn't have so much heroin in São Paulo. Cocaine, though, a lot. And it was the time when ecstasy first came out, which was strong."
