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Acclaimed chef Alex Atala has taken New York City by storm this week. The Brazilian chef is in town promoting his newly released cookbook D.O.M. Rediscovering Brazilian Ingredients and participating in the Food Network's Wine and Food Festival.
But it's not all business for this talented chef who appears on the 2013 Time's 100 list of most influential people in the world. Atala had time to unwind with his pals David Chang and René Redzepi to brainstorm ideas for the MAD4 Symposium which he is co-curating next year. He posted this picture to his Instagram:
Atala also explored Queens with Sophie Brickman from The New Yorker. Together they browsed the aisles of Rio Bonito Brazilian supermarket in Astoria which, not surprisingly, did not carry one of Atala's favorite exotic ingredients: Amazonian saúva ants (which taste like lemongrass).
The chef, whose restaurant D.O.M. in Sao Paulo ranks sixth on the World's 50 Best Restaurants list sponsored by S.Pellergrino and Acqua Panna, also took to a minute to speak to Bloomberg News about the renaissance of South American ingredients. He said he hopes people will discover the beauty of cooking with Amazonian ingredients:
