Manoella Buffara, also known as “Manu,” has owned and operated her own restaurant, the eponymous Manu, in Curitiba, Brazil, for more than a decade. The restaurant offers an expression of her life and mind in a tasting menu format.
This week, she published a book — "Manu: Recipes and Stories from My Brazil" — that, like the restaurant, is a summation of herself and her cuisine to this point in her journey.
While in New York City to celebrate the book’s launch, Manu sat down with Andrew at the offices of her publisher, Phaidon, to discuss her migration to professional cooking from an original path toward journalism, her formative time at Noma in Copenhagen and the story behind her celebrated restaurant, among many other subjects.
Tune in to hear their discussion.
Andrew Friedman is one of America’s most prolific working chroniclers of chefs, restaurants and America’s food culture. He has authored or co-authored more than 25 books, including the forthcoming “The Dish: The Lives and Labor Behind One Plate of Food.” He is also the host and producer of the popular podcast Andrew Talks to Chefs.
Brooklyn-based Friedman first became fascinated by chefs in 1997, when Chef Alfred Portale asked him to collaborate on the “Gotham Bar and Grill Cookbook.” The book received the IACP/Julia Child Cookbook Award for “Best Chef or Restaurant Cookbook,” and is widely considered a classic in the chef cookbook genre. In 2018, he wrote “Chefs, Drugs and Rock & Roll” chronicling the life and times of 1970s and 80s chefs like Alice Waters and Wolfgang Puck whose influence has shaped our contemporary restaurant scene.
Before becoming a working writer, Friedman developed film and television projects. He is a graduate of Columbia University and the former French Culinary Institute’s “La Technique” program.
This episode of Andrew Talks to Chefs, a fully independent podcast hosted by Andrew Friedman, was published with permission.
