“In São Paulo, people had no idea about our food — they didn’t value it,” says Thiago Castanho. “They joked that we rode alligators. But things are changing.” The owner of Remanso do Peixe, a restaurant on a quiet street in the heart of Belém — 1,900 miles north of São Paulo — Thiago has become a key figure in the Amazonian city’s rise to culinary prominence. With no cookery schools in Belém, he first had to leave his home town, moving to São Paulo and Portugal in the early 2000s to train as a chef.
Thiago always hoped to return. “Every time I saw a dish from elsewhere, I thought, man, this would be incredible with Amazonian ingredients.” His first restaurant in Belém, Remanso do Bosque, spent four years on Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants list before closing during the pandemic. “That was incredible, because it was the only restaurant outside the Rio-São Paulo axis to get the nod,” he says.
In many ways, Thiago has taken up the baton from Belém native Paulo Martins, a chef many consider responsible for putting Amazonian food on the culinary map. Via his restaurants
