Bossa Nova is a colourful cafe in Carlton where owners Gabriel and Gabriela Gebaile are serving up food that will remind people of the food back home in Brazil or introduce people to Brazilian flavours if they haven't tried them before. I wrote about them for Broadsheet when Bossa Nova first opened, and I was happy to hear from Gabriel again telling me about his Friday and Saturday steak nights. I of course talk the opportunity to ask to talk to his chefs, Thays and Suzan. And I am so glad I did. Thays was nervous because of her English, but she had nothing to worry about. Both Thays and Suzan were honest and open with me in what they shared about how hard it is to be a chef, but also how rewarding, what they miss from home in Brazil and there really was a theme of how great potatoes are from Thays. I loved this chat and I am looking forward to going back to Bossa Nova for some lunch or to check out their Friday and Saturday steak nights. They had me at tropical cocktails, Picanha from the Grill and South American wines, but now that I have met Thays and Suzan and caught up with Gabriel again, I was reminded that it feels like a big happy family at Bossa Nova and that makes the whole place feel great and the best kind of vibe to dine in. You can also listen here.
Hello Thays. It sounds as though you are quite busy. You are going to school and you are here and also at another place. Were you a chef in Brazil as well?
Thays: Yes. I graduated in 2015 after two years of study. It is more complete there than here.
Do you cover more things, is that what you mean?
T: Yes. And it is full time, Monday to Friday.
Hi Suzan, how are you? Just to let you both know that I am recording this so that I can use it as a podcast, but also write it up. Don't feel nervous, I am just really interested in chefs and what they do. It's a hard job, but a great one.
Suzan: It is a hard job. At least for me when I started studying back home we had an idea of what it could be because this industry was getting famous at that time, in 2008. We were starting to see chefs on tv and people would see the chefs on tv sprinkling parsley on the plate, you know, the final touches and we all thought that looked really nice. Then you study for two years and you do placements and you have to work and then we realised once we got out that we had to work a lot more than we thought. It is hard and it is stressful. It is hard not only for your mind but for your body. A lot of people I studied with arent working in this industry anymore. They are doing something else.
I think it is a big topic people are talking about now, wellbeing and sustainability of chefs. What are some ways, do you think that chefs can look after themselves so that they can stay in the job for longer?
Suzan: Thats a good question. It is hard to talk about wellbeing in the kitchen. This is a cafe and Gabriel is really concerned that we take breaks. I come from a kitchen where I could work a double and not have breaks at all and here I work normal hours and he tells me I have to have a 30 minute break, so for me it is really hard to stop for 30 minutes. It is something out of my world. Its just the way it is and I understand. My kitchen opens at 12.00 and I start at 8am so from 8am until 12pm we are doing prep and from 12 until we finish at 4pm, we are doing service and so when am I going to stop for a break because the service is busy and the prep is really important, so you dont have that time to take a break. It is a bit complicated talking about wellbeing.
Absolutely and you are on your feet that whole time and you are thinking about it all and it is hot and there are sharp knives. It's tricky. What do you do after work? You are probably so tired you just sit down.
Suzan: After work I just want to get home and not talk to anybody. You need an hour to get back to yourself.
Thays: Watching some tv but not too hard to follow. I used to cook when I got home after work. For me or for my mum or for my boyfriend. But now it's hard with school and work and assessments and a boyfriend. Sometimes I cook and I like it and at home I can cook anything I choose.
Thats pretty good. Its a good skill to have. I like cooking but I dont have the skills that you have to know what will work and what wont work.
Suzan: Sometimes we dont know, sometimes it is just luck. But sometimes it is wrong too. Like the other day you did that thing.
Thays: Oh yeah, I cooked eggplant with miso for my boyfriend. It was so bad and he ate it and said it was good, he was trying hard to get through it.
Ok. I guess what do you like about being a chef?
Thays: I like the reaction of the people when they eat my food, especially Brazilian food when they are not familiar with it. I like thinking about food; thinking about the products, the variants of one product, like potatoes. You can do so many dishes with potato. Coconut, for me is the best one, because you can survive with one coconut. You have the water, the meat, you can get a bowl out of the shell.
True. I had never thought of that.
Suzan: You can do savoury or sweet with it. You can do many things with coconut.
Thays: I love my skill and cooking and gastronomy.
Obviously you really enjoy coking Brazilian food but do you have other cuisines you like to cook or eat?
Thays: Yes, for me it is normal that I love Brazilian food because my mum cooks all those dishes, but I also love Lebanese and Middle Eastern and Italian is super nice.
And what about you, Suzan, what do you like about being a chef?
Suzan: I have been a chef for a long time and I got to a point where I was tired of the kitchen and then I overcame and then I got tired again. But I don't think I know how to do anything else, to be honest, that's the thing. It is going to sound weird, but I like the stress of the kitchen. At the same time I don't like it. I complain about it but if you don't have that stress, you are not really working in a kitchen. I couldn't work in an office. I wouldn't like sitting down in front of a computer for too long. I think I like the end of what we are preparing, I like to see the plate. I like the reaction when people try the first bit and then they are surprised, or not surprised. And I like the environment, for example here we are kind of a family. I like that when you come here, if you are sad, you forget about it because all of them make you laugh and are there with you. The other kitchens I worked in were the same as well.
And you are all Brazilian so you all speak Portuguese? That must be fun too to come into that. It is like a little portal from Carlton to Brazil.
Suzan: For me it is really good. I work in another place as well and I speak English there and the sense of humour is different.
Be prepared for everything. Just do your best and you will get there. Because if you work right and don’t do anything dodgy then the chefs are going to like you and then you will grow in the kitchen and you can leave that kitchen and go to another kitchen and you will get a good reference. So do your best and be nice to everyone. It is rewarding. It is hard but I do like it. I like getting home tired and thinking that is one day down, let’s prepare for the next one. I am a warrior. ~ Suzan Almeida
Now that you are opening on Friday and Saturday evenings, what is the menu going to be like?
Thays: There will be more share plates. In Brazil we have a place called a boteco. It's not a pub, more a bar with small dishes to share, croquettes and chips and beer.
Suzan: I will describe the vibe of the boteco. You get there and normally it is not too big or too small and it is not fancy at all. You get beers and sometimes there is live music; samba or pagoda, groups of maybe seven people playing many instruments and people singing. They might play in the middle of the room and everyone surrounds them drinking and then you ask for a portion of fried chicken or pork belly and they bring it to you. It's an afternoon, night place, it's a mix of bar and pub.
Thays: It is very comfortable.
Suzan: Yes, you can spend hours and not even notice because you are there with your friends listening to music and enjoying drinking and eating an making new friends.
Is that going to happen here?
Suzan: That's what we are trying to bring here but it is a bit complicated to do exactly the same.
Thays: So we will be doing share plates and wine and our focus will be on the meat; the charcoal grilled meat. Because in Brazil barbecue is super important.
Suzan: We have a cut in Brazil called the picanha and all Brazilians love it. It is like a rump cap here. It has a layer of fat and when you cook it, that fat is really important so the meat gets really soft and tasty. We are doing a picanha to share with sides, some of which are very Brazilian like farofa and rice, we really like rice when we have barbecue. We will also have broccolini and lettuce. The sides are a little bit of a mix but it is that very specific piece of meat that Brazilians love. A lot of other people who are notBrazilian who have tried it really love it too.
Does it have certain seasonings or is it just about the cut of meat?
Suzan: It is the cut of meat.
Do you have to ask the butcher particularly for that?
Suzan: We needed to find a specific butcher to do that. Our community here is growing, so it is becoming a little easier to find but at the beginning it was really hard to find a butcher who had that cut.
I came here when Bossa Nova opened in 2020 and Gabriel was saying then that his mum is a chef and so I guess he brings a lot of ideas to the menu as well and then you make it happen? Has the menu changed much from when it opened? Is it still homestyle?
Suzan: Yes it is still homestyle.
Thays: I think what we are trying to do with Gabriel is the more traditional Brazilian food so that people who dont know it get to know about it. I think we don't want to change things around too much because of that.
Suzan: But we bring in different dishes from different regions for our specials.
Thays: Each region has very specific dishes and ingredients.
Suzan: I am from Sao Paolo and if I go to Amazonas, I would think that I am not in Brazil anymore because the ingredients are so different. The fish over there is different to the fish I get in Sao Paolo. Once we know this we are able to reproduce the different dishes here. Try to.
What are some of the specialty dishes from Sao Paolo?
Thays: Sao Paolo is a bit confused.
Suzan: It is a big city. We had, when the city was growing, lots of influence from Japanese, Lebanese,.
Thays: And I think the dishes in Sao Paolo, it is all about specific days for specific meals. Mondays will be one dish, Tuesdays another.
Suzan: Because we are such a mix of different cultures, as she is trying to explain, Monday is Picadinho day, which is slow cooked beef, Wednesday is normally feijoada day, Thursday is pasta day. Although normally pasta is also on Sunday when you are home with your family.
Is it always the same day? How?
Suzan: We don't do it all the time.
Thays: It's not the rule.
Thays and Suzan: But it happens.
Suzan: Especially in the business area where you people leave the office and need a fast lunch.
Thays: There are also Brazilian icons in the city like the Mortadella sandwich and there is the Sao Paolo market too.
When you are finding out about the regions, how do you do that? Do you look up books or look online?
Suzan: At school, we spend one semester on French, Italian and other cuisines and one semester only on Brazilian because of all the different regional food. Because it is so big and there are so many things. But if you are really into Brazilian food, you have to use food and the internet, and travelling. Travelling is the best.
Thalys: Thats true. The ingredients in the north, for example, are so rich and so specific and people, for example, the cassava which is the ancient food. In the north-west there is dende, a strong oil, and all the food uses that. There are also cacao farms up there and cashew farms.
Are there things you miss from home you can't get here.
Thays: Maybe the taste of fruit.
All fruit?
Thays and Suzan: Yes.
Suzan: I would say the peach is a lot better here but mangoes, banana, papaya. All the fruit over there taste so great.
Thays: I miss a particular kind of potato. It is sort of sweet and creamy and super yellow.
How do you cook it?
Thays: The same way as any potato, mash, baked, roasted.
Do you have things you miss, Suzan?
Suzan: I have been here for a little while and I used to miss more when I first came here. But there is one thing that I miss a lot which is my mum's cooking. The only thing I really crave is my mum's food sometimes. But I think a lot of things I would eat over there I can get here. And now it is easier to buy things from Brazil and get them here as well. Obviously not those potatoes.
Thays: I am going to Brazil in December and I have a big list for my mum of all the things I want to eat.
You have to concentrate your focus and your goal and your future so that when the present seems hard, you have those things to hold onto. ~ Thays Zukas
What is Christmas food in Brazil?
Thays and Suzan: Oh my god.
Suzan: It's so big.
Thays: Amazing. We eat a lot of food.
Suzan: We celebrate on the 24that night and we do a supper, but I mean a proper supper. We start eating by midnight, so we all go to bed and we are dead. In a food coma. We have turkey and chicken and meat and pork leg, ham, potato salad. I am saying all of this but it Is not like we say, oh my house will do chicken this year, we do it all. And we do rice with raisins. There is a fight in Brazil between people who hate the rice with raisins and the people who love it then there is farofa and potato salad and there are a lot of desserts.
Thays: Panettone, the Italian one. It is super famous in Brazil.
Suzan: We have a saying in Brazil that the world creates the food but we make it better. So we take the panettone and we take out the middle and put fillings in there so we say, there you go, we made it better.
What sort of fillings?
Suzan: Custard or brigadeiro or ganache or chocolate or ice cream.
Thays: There is a separate dessert table for all the desserts.
Suzan: We have creme caramel, two types of mousse and a trifle and the panettone. So many things.
So you are going to have a great time.
Thays: I will come home 10 kilos heavier.
That'll just be all the potatoes you have stuffed in your pockets. What would your advice be to people who are thinking about becoming chefs?
Suzan: You have to be strong in your mind and in your body. It's not easy but it is satisfying.
Thays: You have to concentrate your focus and your goal and your future so that when the present seems hard, you have those things to hold onto.
Suzan: I would say the same, be prepared, be strong, have in your mind that all you see on tv is not really how it works in the kitchen and that not all kitchens are the same. You will find a lot of people who will be your friend and a lot of people who will hate you for no reason. Be prepared for everything. Just do your best and you will get there. Because if you work right and don't do anything dodgy then the chefs are going to like you and then you will grow in the kitchen and you can leave that kitchen and go to another kitchen and you will get a good reference. So do your best and be nice to everyone. It is rewarding. It is hard but I do like it. I like getting home tired and thinking that is one day down, let's prepare for the next one. I am a warrior.
156 Elgin Street, Carlton