Manu Cookbook Review

Manu: Recipes and Stories From My Brazil

Welcome to a culinary adventure like no other! In this week's restaurant cookbook review, we'll explore Manu Cookbook.

Published this spring, Manu: Recipes and Stories from My Brazil from award-winning Brazilian chef, Manoella Buffara, invites readers to discover her culinary journey and the recipes that made her Latin America's Best Female Chef (2022) in her much-anticipated debut chef monograph.

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Brazilian Heritage

Since establishing her restaurant Manu, Manoella has consistently ranked in Latin America's 50 Best Restaurants Awards. In 2018, she was esteemed as the 'One to Watch' at the World's 50 Best Awards. Furthermore, in 2022, she earned the title of Latin America's Best Female Chef at the World's 50 Best Awards.

In Manu Cookbook, Manoella welcomes readers to glimpse her life, sharing how community, life, family, and land shaped her seasonally-inspired restaurant. Manoella's personal writings span her Brazilian heritage; the people who have had the most significant impact on her career and success; the adversities that came with building her dream; and the guiding principles for her restaurant today.

This book features personal essays, 60 never-before-shared recipes, forewords by revered chefs Dominique Crenn and Alex Atala (her mentor), and a visual narrative of the plated food, land, and sea that drive Manoella's culinary vision.

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A Journey of Flavors

Manu Cookbook recreates a patron's experience and offers an insider's look at Manu's creative food, drinks, and design.

In this book, readers are guided to one of the five tables and are served a fermented drink, possibly made with pineapple, sweet potatoes, coffee, or grapes. The Manu team constantly develops new ferments and guarantees a different drink every day. Then the journey of flavors begins with a menu driven by seasonal, hyperlocal, and sustainable ingredients. The bread is served, followed by ten dishes and two desserts.

Manoella's recipes are presented in complete menu collections, bookended with the restaurant's customary welcome drinks and petit fours that conclude every meal.

Manoella and her team comb the landscape—the forest, ocean, and countryside—for fresh and local products in pursuit of the highest and freshest quality.

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Final Thoughts

Manu: Recipes and Stories from My Brazil is another excellent book from Phaidon that transport readers inside the world's best restaurants.

With forewords by globally acclaimed chefs Dominique Crenn and Alex Atala, this debut cookbook documents Manoella's completed culinary journey, following the deep connection between her life as a chef and the people around her.