Brazilian bar Sub Astor is known for using unusual foraged ingredients, collected during its twice-yearly Missions. Hamish Smith joined one of this year’s events to see at first hand how they operate.
Tucked under the bright Brazilian bistro Astor in the leafy São Paulo milieu of Vila Madalena lies Sub Astor. A dark room lit by red neon and the glow of a long, pearly-white bar, this basement space is cool in the conventional sense. When you delve a little deeper, it gets cooler. Under the leadership of Fabio La Pietra – who’s been with the bar for 11 of its now 15 years – the drinks here have become a liquid expression of Brazil.
Few bars globally have gone to such lengths to find ingredients. But when you have a pantry that is almost the size of Europe, it makes sense to have a look around.
Which was exactly the direction of La Petra’s thinking when in 2018 he came up with The Mission – a biannual exploration of one of Brazil’s many biomes. To La Pietra there was nothing exciting about being in Brazil and making run-of-the-mill classics with no connection to their constituent parts. With 40,000 known plant species at your disposal, it made sense to explore them and I was among the handful of bartenders and journalists who were lucky enough to join the Sub Astor team, led by La Pietra, on its latest expedition.
Our location was the biome of the Atlantic forest on Brazil’s long east coast, where we trekked through jungle and foraged with the help of local flora expert Jorge Ferreira. We ate local delicacies at traditional restaurants and tasted products born from Projecto A.MAR, a non-profit that works with the Atlantic coastal ecosystem.
The Mission actually had two missions. First to explore the flora and fauna of the biome as inspiration for a cocktail on the next edition of the menu and second, forage for ingredients that guest bartenders Alonso Palomino and Gabriela León from Lady Bee in Peru could make into a welcome drink for their guest shift menu.
They settled on a drink based around two ingredients they foraged – macaco, a sour leaf and stem that produces a gel-like sap, which they made into a soda, and cachaça infused with Atlantic forest long pepper.
I chatted to La Pietra about the bar, the journey and Sub Astor’s latest menu.
Tell us about your approach at Sub Astor.
When I first came here to Brazil, I quickly realised I didn’t have many international bar products. I started to convince importers to offer more variety, but after a while I felt like I wasn’t approaching things naturally. I was putting too much emphasis on what we didn’t have, rather than what we did. From then on I decided to focus on biodiversity. I soon realised the potential of Brazil. This is a country whose ingredients are mainly unknown to locals and, even more, myself. Bosh! That was my spiritual awakening.
What's The Mission? Tell us about your many adventures in Brazil’s biomes.
It’s the sixth edition of the Biomes of Brazil. This year the menu has one drink for each of the six biomes: Amazon, Caatinga, Cerrado, Atlantic Forest, Pampa and Pantanal. Part of the inspiration for the menu is not only the ingredients but the many cultures of Brazil. It’s great to blend indigenous ingredients and practices with influences from Brazil’s multiple cultures.
The most complicated thing is the logistics – Brazil is such a big country – working out how you get the supply of fresh ingredients.
I believe the most significant Mission was the first year; in 2018 we had three editions and probably it's where I started to finalise the concept and logistics for the next editions of the menu and how to work with local producers.
Our latest Mission – the Atlantic Forest biome – will have a drink based on our research too. Of the five biomes I’ve visited in the past 11 years, the one missing is Pantanal: one of the most diverse wetland areas of the world, and also the hardest to reach.
Tell us more about the ingredients you've discovered.
The ingredients that first blew my mind were fresh cashew fruit, bacuri and cupuaçu. They are such unique and singular flavours. But the cocoa mucilage is the ingredient we have managed to create the most results from, by employing different techniques.
Can you give us the low down on some of the drinks on the new menu?
Caatinga represents the biome by the same name in the north east of Brazil. It’s a dry area with a very different biodiversity to most of Brazil– it has medicinal plants, roots and aromatics but not the fruits of the forest. The main ingredient in our Caatinga cocktail is the oil of babacu, which is like a small coconut, quite oily, with a mild palm flavour which gives a great texture to the drink. It’s combined with Jerez, amaro rosato, babacu oil, amaro cola, and blackberry vinegar.
There’s the Pampa, representing the south of Brazil, known for its wine and citrus production, which is made with port, elderflower and cardamom liqueur, bergamontello liqueur and fermented bergamot. The Cerrado has tequila, bacuri, coconut oil and cold brew from the region’s pink bourbon coffee.
The Missions end in the guest bartenders making drinks from foraged ingredients – why do you take this approach
Since the first edition we had structured the whole week of The Mission this way, and customers loved it. I believe, first of all, that by escaping big cities, we give space to ourselves to build a different approach within our community, allowing the creative process to be more natural and effective. Our visiting bartenders are happy to experience nature and make amazing memories.
Having international bartenders interested in our ingredients and traditional products has also shone a light on what we have here. Ten years ago, people here didn’t appreciate the traditional produce of local, poorer communities. They are starting to understand the wealth this country really has.