A Casa do Porco

A Casa do Porco is a pork restaurant on Rua Araújo in the República district of central São Paulo, on a corner among graffiti-covered walls. Chefs Janaina and Jefferson Rueda opened it in 2015, and nearly everything on its menu comes from the pig.

Jefferson Rueda worked as a butcher before he became a chef, and he works the pass at the restaurant. Janaina Rueda grew up a few blocks away and began working as a child, and she runs the house with him as co-chef and co-owner. The pair built several other places in the center of the city around it. Jefferson later bought Sítio Rueda, a farm in his hometown of São José do Rio Pardo, which raises the pork and grows vegetables for the kitchen.

The cooking follows the pig from nose to tail, so even the ears and the blood find a place on the menu. The signature is Porco San Zé, pork roasted slowly for six hours. A ceviche of pig's ear comes with raw shrimp and sweet potato, pork chops arrive with a salsa of blood sausage, and pancetta is paired with sweet guava. A raw pork soufflé belongs to the Porco D.O.C. tasting menu, and the house also cooks à la carte and keeps a vegetarian menu.

Cachaça goes into most of the cocktails, which keeps the bar as Brazilian as the kitchen. Inside, the mood is informal and loud, with an open kitchen and tables both inside and on the pavement. La Liste once named it the most creative restaurant in the world, and the World's 50 Best list of 2022 placed it higher than ever before. Its high reputation never pushed the cooking toward luxury: the menu still turns a cheap and humble animal into the main event.