The 100 Best Restaurants in Brazil

A three-story building in Jardim Paulistano given over entirely to one tasting menu, where the ground floor starts you with canapés and a wine cellar before the open kitchen on the second floor takes over. Chef Ivan Ralston rebuilds the menu each season around São Paulo produce and contemporary technique. Three Michelin stars and a spot on the World's 50 Best list, yet the room feels quieter and more deliberate than those credentials suggest.

Each course at this Pinheiros fine-dining room arrives with an illustration drawn by the chef, which tells you something about how seriously Evvai takes its own story. The tasting menu weaves Italian immigrant heritage into Brazilian cooking, a concept the chef calls Oriundi, and it holds three Michelin stars and a spot on the World's 50 Best. The pastry chef, who is 23, won Latin America's Best Pastry Chef. Save room accordingly.

Ten seats arranged in an L-shaped counter, all of them facing the kitchen, is the whole room at this two-Michelin-star tasting menu restaurant in Humaitá. Chef Rafael Costa e Silva runs the counter himself, working through a 15-course menu built around produce from his own gardens, most of it vegetable-forward in a way that never feels like a compromise. It holds a spot on the World's 50 Best Restaurants list, and booking ahead is non-negotiable.

Alex Atala's two-Michelin-star fine dining room in Jardins runs a single tasting menu named for the jaguar drinking water, a structure that tells you this is not a place you drop into casually. The kitchen pulls from Brazil's remote natural pantry, priprioca root, jambu, tucupi, even ants, then routes those ingredients through a European culinary logic that keeps the whole thing from reading as a nature documentary. Dress accordingly and clear your evening.

A 16-seat U-shaped counter wrapping a live kitchen in a minimalist wood-lined room in Ipanema, this is fine dining in the most focused sense. Thomas Troisgros, grandson of the Pierre Troisgros who invented salmon with sorrel, runs a seven-course tasting menu built on French technique and Brazilian ingredients. The name is a family in-joke that stretches back to 1963. It holds a Michelin star.

A greenhouse-like dining room, all open space and trailing plants, inside the JK Iguatemi mall in Vila Olímpia. Helena Rizzo, whose flagship holds a Michelin star, shapes the creative Brazilian menu here, which pulls from that same kitchen's playbook. The cooking leans on native ingredients, bold technique, and the kind of food that makes you forget you're technically in a shopping mall. Book ahead.

The name means "House of the Pig," and the kitchen takes that mandate seriously, using every part of the animal across a tasting menu and an à la carte that also includes a full vegetarian option. Jefferson Rueda raises the pigs himself on his family farm, and the result lands on Latin America's 50 Best and The World's 50 Best lists. The room is informal, loud, and decorated with an enthusiasm for swine that borders on devotional.

The pistachio-green façade in Pinheiros hides a room of exposed brick and leather banquettes, where chef Tássia Magalhães runs an all-female kitchen. The tasting menu concept at this modern Italian-leaning restaurant lands her at number 12 on Latin America's 50 Best, and she holds the 2025 Latin America's Best Female Chef award. The marble counter overlooking the open kitchen is the seat to ask for.

A wood-fired grill anchors everything at this two-Michelin-star creative restaurant a block from Leblon beach, where the counter seats just four people close enough to watch the kitchen move in near-choreographed sync. Chef Felipe Bronze builds tasting menus around Brazilian regional cooking pushed through serious technique, so something like oysters with guava granita lands as both familiar and strange. The wine pairing, handled with equal care, closes the loop.

Yōshoku, the old Japanese tradition of reinterpreting Western dishes through an Asian lens, is the engine running this compact Pinheiros restaurant. Chef Thiago Bañares runs a single fixed menu that folds Brazilian ingredients into the framework, so tucupi and local mushrooms end up tasting completely inevitable. The cocktail list and sake selection give you a reasonable excuse to stay longer than planned. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

A Pinheiros restaurant where smoking, fermenting, and slow-maturing are the kitchen's native tongue, not a trend it's visiting. Chef Lucas Dante builds a seasonal, contemporary menu around small-scale producers, while the sommelier curates a cellar of biodynamic and organic wines matched to whatever you order. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and appears on Latin America's 50 Best list. The room is comfortable and unhurried, the kind of place that makes technique invisible.

You ring a doorbell to get in, which sets the tone perfectly for a Michelin-starred tasting menu restaurant that started life as an art gallery. The Rio-born chef trained across Europe and brings that back home, layering French technique over Brazilian ingredients in a menu that shifts with the seasons. A master sommelier handles the wine side, tastevin and all, and the whole thing unfolds in a room that still feels more like a private house than a restaurant.

A discreet iron door squeezed between a gym and an ice cream parlour opens onto a steep staircase and one of São Paulo's more intimate tasting-menu rooms, where a Michelin-starred chef runs a single nine-course Italian menu for a full room that starts together, so don't be late. Four counter seats face an open kitchen where the cooking is the décor. Classic Italian instincts, very few ingredients per dish, nothing to hide behind.

A Michelin-starred sushi counter tucked inside a modest shopping centre, easy to walk past and very hard to get into. Chef Keisuke Egashira works alone behind the counter, cutting fish with the kind of focused speed that makes you forget you're in São Paulo rather than a side street in Tokyo. No theatrics, no brigade, just precise knife work and serious ingredients. Book well ahead.

A nine-seat omakase counter where you're asked whether you're right- or left-handed before you ever arrive. KANOE holds a Michelin star and operates more like a private dining club than a restaurant: one seating, one menu, no choices. Chef Tadashi Shiraishi narrates each course, tracing techniques back to his grandmother's kitchen. The room is spare and bright, which keeps the focus exactly where he intends it.

A tasting menu restaurant where the menu is rebuilt around you before you arrive, shaped by a guest profile the team collects in advance. The kitchen moves across Asian territory freely, sushi and nigiri giving way to Peking duck and wagyu, and a drinks pairing threads through each course. It holds a Michelin star, and the room is intimate enough that a loud table would feel genuinely strange.

Binchotan charcoal, the nearly smokeless Japanese hardwood that burns hotter and cleaner than anything you'd find at a hardware store, is the whole point at this Michelin-starred omakase counter near MASP. Ten seats, one menu, seasonal fish, and a punctuality rule enforced whether you're there or not. A Japanese bar sits upstairs for traditional drinks. Reservations go through WhatsApp, which feels chaotic until you consider how rare the seats are.

Rice-paper lamps hang overhead like clouds in this fine-dining room inside the Leblon shopping complex, which is a more elegant situation than it sounds. Claude Troisgros, a French chef who has spent decades in Brazil, runs the kitchen with a collaborator, and the tasting menu moves through French technique, Brazilian ingredients, and quiet nods to Japan. The sauces, in particular, get people talking. One Michelin star.

Inside the Copacabana Palace, Mee is a pan-Asian restaurant that holds a Michelin star and takes its cues from Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, and points between. The chef's São Paulo roots and Japanese family heritage shape a menu that leans heavily toward raw preparations, with an omakase option at the sushi bar and two tasting menus, one of them vegan, for the dining room. The sake list is taken seriously.

The long counter is the room: three segments of it wrapping around the kitchen so every seat faces the chefs. This is a Michelin-starred contemporary Japanese restaurant where the chef, who grew up between Hokkaido and Brazil, makes that double biography feel like a point of view rather than a gimmick. Two tasting menus run the evening, one built around sushi, the other wider, and you choose when you book.

Pasta is the point here, and the kitchen takes that seriously. Picchi is an Italian restaurant in the Jardins neighborhood, where the chef draws on childhood memories to build a menu of classic shapes, gnocchi, tortelli, pappardelle, alongside dishes that quietly fold in Brazilian seasonal ingredients. The room shifts toward candlelit and romantic after dark. It holds a Michelin star.

Jean-Georges Vongerichten runs the room from a distance here, with resident chefs handling the day-to-day at this fine dining restaurant inside the Palácio Tangará hotel, set against a pocket of Atlantic Forest in the middle of the city. The menu moves through caviar, raw preparations, and a vegetarian section before landing on two tasting menus. Precise, international, and very much occasion-ready. It holds a Michelin star.

Passion-fruit aguachile with sashimi and saúva ants tells you exactly where this place is going. Metzi is a sit-down restaurant in Pinheiros where two chefs, one Brazilian and one Mexican, cook the overlap between those two traditions using local ingredients that shift with the season. You can order à la carte or commit to the tasting menu, and the cocktail list is built to keep pace with both.

The 15-course tasting menu here pulls from all five of Bahia's distinct biomes, each one researched firsthand by the chef team who travel the state meeting small producers and absorbing rural traditions. A sleek concrete dining room in Salvador's Pituba neighborhood keeps the decor quiet so the food can talk. Start next door at their speakeasy bar before sitting down. Latin America's 50 Best lists it as a Discovery.

Tucked into a São Paulo shopping complex in a way that sounds unpromising until you're inside, Notiê is a tasting menu restaurant where the kitchen rebuilds itself around a different Brazilian biome each season. Chef Onildo Rocha, from Paraíba, works through indigenous ingredients most menus never touch, in courses that range from a quick five to a proper twelve. It landed on Latin America's 50 Best Restaurants list, which tracks.

Long white tablecloths and deep burgundy chairs set the retro-formal tone at this Italian fine dining room inside the Belmond Copacabana Palace, right on the Atlantic. The chef, Campanian by origin and Brazilian by now, runs tasting menus that fold local ingredients into Italian tradition with real technical precision. 50 Top Italy named it the top Italian restaurant in the world in 2026, and the chef took their Chef of the Year honor too.

The pão de queijo recipe the chef has carried since day one is a good place to start at this casual Brazilian restaurant tucked into the basement of MASP, São Paulo's landmark art museum on Avenida Paulista. The kitchen holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and leans into Bahian and Minas Gerais traditions, with dishes like baião de dois alongside braised meat. Save room: the desserts have a reputation of their own.

A sunlit dining room in Vila Mariana where the seasonal menu reads like someone's food memories got a culinary school education. The casual Brazilian restaurant earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the kitchen backs it up with a fried pastry parcel filled with local Lua Cheia cheese and a pappardelle with braised beef ragù that manages to feel both refined and genuinely comforting. Save room: desserts have their own inventive chef.

Everything here gets made from scratch daily, pastas and sauces and breads and desserts, in the spirit of Emilia-Romagna. This Italian trattoria on Avenida Epitácio Pessoa keeps its focus narrow and its kitchen busy, and the Michelin Bib Gourmand suggests the price-to-effort ratio has not gone unnoticed. Garganello with lamb ragù is the kind of dish that makes the region's case quietly but firmly.

Inside the Instituto Moreira Salles, one of Paulistano cultural life's more serious addresses, Balaio IMS is a casual Brazilian restaurant that earns a Michelin Bib Gourmand by threading ingredients and influences from across the country into a single, coherent menu. Chef Rodrigo Oliveira's dadinhos de tapioca have become something of a calling card, which tracks when the room fills before you've even found your table.

A full-size canoe anchors the dining room, which tells you everything about what's on the plate. This São Paulo restaurant, earning a Michelin Bib Gourmand, is devoted to Amazonian cooking, the kind that rarely travels this far south. Chef Felipe Schaedler works over fire and embers with techniques from Brazil's northwest, running dishes like tacacá broth and saúva ants alongside roasted fish wrapped in banana leaf.

The sfiha here comes open, closed, and folded, which is either a philosophical statement or just a very thorough menu. Either way, this Lebanese restaurant has been an old-school institution in São Paulo for generations, run by the same family that founded it. The Michelin Bib Gourmand recognizes it, the neighborhood already knew. Atayef pancakes stuffed with nuts and finished with lemon syrup close things out properly.

A mansion in Botafogo with a garden out front and red mouldings framing the doors inside, Brota is a vegetarian and vegan restaurant where the food is built for sharing. The kitchen leans inventive, with rice balls and curries doing more interesting work than you might expect. The bar is impressive enough that you won't be nursing sparkling water all night. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, which tracks.

Morena Leite grew up in her family's kitchen in Trancoso, and the comfort food here carries that biography. The restaurant sits inside a handsome old mansion on Faria Lima, with a shaded outdoor garden that makes the city noise feel like someone else's problem. The cooking leans into classic Brazilian ingredients with techniques picked up along the way. The Michelin Guide has given it a Bib Gourmand, and the tapioca ravioli filled with Canastra cheese makes a strong case for why.

Bel Coelho's Vila Madalena spot has the rustic, low-key feel of a bistro where everything on the menu happens to be thoughtfully sourced from small Brazilian producers. The cooking is contemporary Brazilian, designed for sharing, and the prices are kind. Organic ingredients and indigenous fruits like bacuri and jabuticaba show up in dishes that read simply but don't cook that way. The Michelin Guide awards it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks.

Six floors above the Minhocão, this farm-to-table restaurant has a terrace washed in pink light and a short, shareable menu that changes whenever something better comes in. The kitchen leans into Brazilian produce filtered through a South American sensibility, and the crowd treats it like a neighborhood spot even though the address is anything but obvious. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

A seasonal restaurant next to the famous Beco do Batman street-art alley, Corrutela grinds its own corn for the polenta, runs a composting system, and powers itself with solar panels, which is either admirable or a lot to read on a menu. The open kitchen anchors a spare, industrial room, and the short seasonal menu changes as the mood moves the kitchen. A Michelin Bib Gourmand for the kind of cooking that takes its supply chain very seriously.

Bel Coelho's all-day casual restaurant shares its space with a bookshop inside the famous curved Copan building, so you can browse Brazilian literature between bites of pão de queijo or baião de dois. The kitchen leans on native ingredients and indigenous food traditions, and the drinks list runs to organic wines and inventive cocktails. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the crowd of locals treating it like a neighborhood canteen suggests they've known about it longer than you have.

A two-floor bistro in Ipanema where the chef's name is on the door and the cooking lands somewhere between a Paris brasserie and a Rio market, with duck magret alongside grilled octopus and the occasional weekend cassoulet. Natural light floods both levels, the menu covers classic French ground without being precious about it, and a Michelin Bib Gourmand keeps the room honest about what this place is: good food at a sensible price.

Candlelit courtyard tables sit beneath a sprawling jabuticabeira tree on the back patio of an old São Paulo property, with a large wine shop tucked in alongside. The restaurant blends Brazilian, French, and Italian influences, the kind of menu that makes sense once you learn the team met while training in France. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and draws couples who linger long past the last pour.

The whitewashed facade with blue windows is a deliberate signal: this casual restaurant in Pinheiros draws its cooking from the flavors of northeastern Brazil. The all-female team, led by chef Cafira Foz, holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand for dishes like paçoca, shredded sun-dried beef with baião de dois and plantains, that taste like a geography lesson worth taking. The bar program keeps pace, which in São Paulo is saying something.

A house with big windows in Pinheiros, where the open kitchen lets you watch the team turn seasonal ingredients into something that's equal parts Brazilian grandmother and European technique. This sharing-menu restaurant holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the concise menu earns it, with raw fish leaning into umami and slow-cooked pork pulling toward the comfort end. The house cocktails are genuinely their own thing, not an afterthought.

The house specialty is torresmos, gloriously crispy pork crackling, and the cachaça list runs deep, curated from producers across Brazil. Jiquitaia is a Brazilian home-cooking restaurant set inside an old house with warm wood interiors and big photographs on the walls. The kitchen turns out traditional dishes with the kind of care that suggests someone's grandmother is running quality control. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

A short menu of contemporary Korean cooking in São Paulo, where the kimchi bokumbap, rice sautéed with kimchi and draped in a creamy omelette, is the dish regulars tend to order without looking up. The chef moves between traditional Korean recipes and techniques borrowed from further afield, so the range swings from fiery to quietly sweet across just ten savory plates and three desserts. A Michelin Bib Gourmand.

An open kitchen anchors this modern Brazilian restaurant a short walk from Ipanema's Nossa Senhora da Paz park, where the chef built his chops in Lisbon and Copenhagen before turning his attention to live-fire cooking and smoking. Fish and seafood lead the menu, though housemade pasta shows up and earns its keep. The warm, flaky cheesecake with guava and cheese ice cream is the kind of dessert people mention unprompted. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

The casual offshoot of Helena Rizzo's Maní, this Brazilian comfort food spot sits on the third floor of the Iguatemi mall, high ceilings and plant-framed windows making it feel less mall-ish than that sounds. The menu runs through snacks, burgers from the Josper oven, and a signature plate of fillet steak with poached egg and roasted plantain. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, which tracks for a place where the cooking is careful without the room asking anything of you.

Helena Rizzo's name is on the door, but the day-to-day belongs to chef Fernanda Fernandes, who runs this small bistro in Itaim Bibi with the casual ease the format calls for. The menu moves between snacks, pasta, and burgers before pivoting to things like fish cooked in banana leaves with banana purée and black-eyed pea vinaigrette. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand. Dress down and don't overthink it.

Helena Rizzo runs this bright, whitewashed Brazilian restaurant on the third floor of a Jardim Paulistano building, working alongside Belgian chef Willem Vandeven in a collaboration that sounds like a pitch meeting but lands on the plate. The kitchen leans hard on organic local produce and avant-garde technique, with tasting menus that can run through three courses or, for the committed, an entire menu of desserts. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand.

A rustic corner spot in Ipanema, all warm wood and an outdoor terrace, where the cooking draws on ingredients from across Brazil to make a meat-forward menu feel like a geography lesson you'd actually enjoy. The chef earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand for generous, affordable plates that lean into bold cuts and regional combinations. The kind of place where you order too much and have no regrets.

Grandmother's old house in Botafogo, with the retro furniture and exposed brick still intact, is now a casual restaurant where the chef applies French training to Brazilian comfort food. The menu splits between longtime signatures and dishes that rotate with the seasons, all plated with more precision than the cozy, colorful room might lead you to expect. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

The open kitchen fills the room with noise and color, and with no reservations taken, regulars know to show up early. This is a casual Brazilian restaurant from chef Rodrigo Oliveira, built around the northeastern Sertanejo cooking his father passed down, with slow-braised meats and sharing plates as the main event. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and wears it lightly, the way a place does when the food was already the point.

Way out in Vila Medeiros, this casual Sertão restaurant has been drawing São Paulo north since Zé Almeida first ladled out mocotó decades ago. His son, chef Rodrigo Oliveira, now runs the kitchen, keeping the northeastern Brazilian cooking rooted while the menu stretches from bar snacks to slow-grilled carne de sol with bottled butter. The room is deliberately unpretentious, the kind of place that means it. A Michelin Bib Gourmand.

A plant-covered façade on a Vila Madalena street opens into a glass-fronted dining room with an open kitchen, calm tones, and a sommelier who clearly runs the room as much as the cellar does. NOMO is a contemporary restaurant where the cooking takes seasonal combinations in directions you wouldn't quite predict. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks for a place that feels considered without announcing itself.

The dining room sits inside an art supplies shop in Pompeia, which sets the tone for a lunch spot that doesn't take itself too seriously despite the chef's European pedigree. The menu rotates every few weeks and runs to a handful of set options, from vegetarian to fish of the day to Wagyu beef, all built around fresh, organic ingredients. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and only open for lunch.

The large windows facing Praça Nossa Senhora da Paz are plastered with the names of Italian restaurants this trattoria draws from, Osteria Francescana among them, which sets expectations fairly high for a neighborhood spot. The cooking is generous and old-school Italian, portions leaning abundant, jazz photos on the walls and soft music doing their quiet thing. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

The menu divides neatly into Thai categories, skewers over live flame at the center, with a Brazilian pantry running quietly underneath. This is a casual, share-everything Thai bar and grill where the chef spent years cooking in Thailand before landing in Jardins. Smoke, acid, and palm sugar do their usual negotiating, but Brazilian ingredients keep things from feeling like a replica. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and a counter seat with a view of the fire is worth requesting.

The ossobuco braises for twelve hours, which is either obsessive or Italian, and in this case both. Più is a creative Italian restaurant inside Shopping Pátio Higienópolis, where the kitchen leans on Brazilian ingredients to reframe familiar dishes, fresh pasta included. The cocktail list is taken as seriously as the food, which tells you something about the crowd's intentions for the evening. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

A small house in Pinheiros with exposed brick, an open garden, and a kitchen you can watch from your table sets the mood at this Italian restaurant where Brazil keeps interrupting the menu in the best possible, wait, in genuinely interesting ways. Forget that, the lasagne is green pasta with mortadella, and a pear-and-chilli ravioli shows up alongside the classics. Affordable enough that the Michelin Bib Gourmand makes sense.

Fresh pasta made every morning in an open kitchen is the whole premise at this compact Italian pasta spot in Vila Madalena, which holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and a queue that forms accordingly. The two chefs turn out handmade tortelli, tagliatelle, and their kin at prices that don't require a rethink. A small outdoor terrace softens the squeeze inside, and the crowd seems perfectly aware they've found something good.

Wine bottles scrawled with guests' notes line the walls at this relaxed contemporary Italian spot near Morro de São João, where the open kitchen is part of the decor and the cooking quietly rewires Italian classics with Brazilian ingredients. The lasagne with Grana Padano fondue and breadcrumbs is the kind of dish people order twice, and the natural wine list gives you something to argue about while you wait. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

A former furniture shop turned lunch spot, with a small terrace, hanging plants, and tables set with enough care to signal you should slow down. The chef left São Paulo's more prestigious kitchens to run something quieter and more personal, and the menu shows it: classic Brazilian cooking made with good ingredients and a light modern hand. The Bib Gourmand is on the record. Lunch only, Saturdays until six.

The chef behind Tanit trained at El Bulli and El Celler de Can Roca before landing in São Paulo, which tells you something about how seriously this Mediterranean restaurant takes its rice dishes and sharing plates. The fideuá, a Catalan prawn noodle, and the grandmother's cheesecake with green tomato jam have become the kind of things regulars come back to justify. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand.

The grill is the centerpiece at this Brazilian restaurant on Avenida Rebouças, where the team takes local cooking seriously enough to let the feijoada run all Saturday. The room is bright and industrial, with a glass-fronted open kitchen doing most of the decorating. Weekday set lunches keep things accessible; the Michelin Bib Gourmand signals the value is genuine. Focaccia arrives before you've settled in, which is a good sign for what follows.

The Saturday feijoada draws its own kind of devotion at this long-running Brazilian restaurant in Jardins. Chef Mara Salles has spent decades championing regional ingredients from across the country, and the menu moves from Espírito Santo fish stew to creamy prawn bobó as if the whole of Brazil were in the kitchen. A Michelin Bib Gourmand. Leave with a jar of the house pickled chillies; people do.

The name comes from Genoese dialect for Genoa itself, and the rustic room leans into that with the conviction of someone who has actually been there. This Italian trattoria in Jardins is Carlos Bertolazzi's project, and the kitchen turns out fresh homemade pasta and focaccia with generous fillings alongside a mandioc gnocchi that nods at Brazil without making a big speech about it. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

The dining room looks out over the Baía de Todos os Santos, which sets an unfair standard for everywhere else you'll eat in Salvador. Amado is an upscale Brazilian restaurant in the Comércio waterfront, the kind of place couples book when they want low lighting and sweeping marina views to do some of the heavy lifting. The kitchen leans on fresh local produce and Bahian flavors, and the chocolate semifreddo has a way of delaying the check.

Banzeiro is a sit-down restaurant in Manaus built around ingredients most menus have never heard of, sourced through the chef's long relationships with Indigenous producers across Northern Brazil, including Yanomami communities. The cooking reframes Amazonian classics through a distinctly Brazilian lens, and the sourcing is as much the point as the plate. A spot on the World's 50 Best Discovery list has since made the reservation line a little more competitive.

Brazilian flags strung across tiled floors set the scene at Bar do Biu, a no-frills Pinheiros spot built around Northeastern Brazilian cooking. Feijoada, the slow-cooked black bean and pork stew, is the thing people come for, though fried egg-topped picanha and shattered chicharrón with a cold Brahma make a strong case for staying. The 50 Discovery named it, which tracks for a place this earnest about the food.

Porto Alegre runs on churrascarias, so a restaurant quietly building its name on fiercely seasonal cooking from Brazil's far south reads as a quiet act of defiance. The menu starts from familiar ground, then wanders, pairing carpaccio with rhubarb, tucking crab into Creole corn empanadas, and finishing chicken hearts with black garlic emulsion scooped up on flatbread. The 50 Discovery list has taken notice of the chef's work here.

The wood-fired oven at the center of the room sets the temperature for everything else at this Italian restaurant tucked beside Rio's botanical gardens. Fresh handmade pasta is what draws people in, and the set menu moves through sourdough, a starter, a main, and dessert at a pace that feels considered rather than rushed. The neighborhood runs quiet and leafy, which suits the mood just fine.

A glass-fronted Taiwanese restaurant on Vila Mariana's Rua Áurea, which also happens to be home to its sister spot Mapu. The bar greets you first with a list that runs from signature cocktails to Taiwanese-inspired pours. The menu skips the starter-versus-main distinction, nudging you toward sharing, though a solo tasting path exists. Aged fish with ponzu, chilli oil, and black-rice popcorn tells you what kind of kitchen this is.

Dinner here unfolds in the garden of a century-old house, under a barely-there roof and the canopy of old jabuticabeira trees, with a semi-open kitchen visible at the back. The chef runs an Andean Peruvian menu that pulls in Amazonian ingredients and local Brazilian produce, so the flavors land somewhere genuinely unexpected. The crowd tends to arrive curious and leave slightly converted, which is about as good an evening as São Paulo offers.

A terrace strung with plants and Peruvian art sits just outside the Pátio Higienópolis mall, which is a more charming setup than that sentence suggests. This is a Peruvian restaurant where the Lima-born chef weaves Amazon ingredients through traditional technique, so ceviche and causa limeña share the menu with local river fish. The Suspiro Limeño dessert, built around dulce de leche and a quinoa meringue, has a following of its own.

The dining room spills across terraced decks in Santa Teresa, with the kind of hillside canopy view that makes Rio look like it was designed specifically for this moment. It's a full-service Brazilian restaurant where the chef builds the menu around organic and biodynamic ingredients sourced from across the country. The natural wine list is long, the chicken dishes are the thing to order, and the tucupi ceviche with plantain chips does a lot of quiet persuading.

A sushi bar in Pinheiros where the counter seats downstairs put you close enough to watch the chef's hands do the work. The team here trained for years under Jun Sakamoto before going independent, and the menu runs from omakase to à la carte sushi, sashimi, and makimonos, with hot dishes for anyone who wants an exit ramp from raw fish. Upstairs feels a bit more relaxed; downstairs is where the action is.

A quiet stretch of residential Ipanema is home to this Italian-carioca osteria, where the menu grows out of the chef's childhood and her father's table. Handmade pasta anchors the room, including a carbonara riff that swaps the usual formula for soft egg and crispy bacon over tagliolini. The space has the warm clutter of an old neighborhood trattoria, and the crowd treats it accordingly.

The ground floor of Oscar Niemeyer's wave-shaped Edifício Copan is an unlikely home for a packed, no-fuss Brazilian restaurant, yet here we are. Chef Janaína Torres runs a broad, generous menu rooted in the country's interior, all stews, rice dishes, and slow-cooked things your grandmother might recognize. The bar pours strong, refreshing cocktails to the queue waiting outside, because there is always a queue.

Tables fitted with their own grills define the experience at this Korean barbecue restaurant in Liberdade, where a South Korean family has been running the room for three generations. Thin-cut meats go straight onto the fire in front of you, with banchan arriving alongside to fill the gaps. The menu stretches beyond the grill to bibimbap, soups, and Korean fried chicken. Wash it all down with soju in whatever strength you're prepared to commit to.

Tucked at the end of a corridor inside Villa San Pietro on Rua Augusta, this French bistro has the slightly uncanny quality of a Parisian side street that somehow materialized in São Paulo. Chef Alain Poletto runs a classically minded kitchen: charcuterie made in-house, Beef Wellington carved tableside, the kind of cooking that does not need a concept. The room is warm and unhurried, and nobody here is in a rush to get you out.

A Franco-Swiss poet who fell hard for Brazil is an unusual muse for a restaurant, but Blaise Cendrars lends his name and spirit to this dimly lit, cabin-like dining room in a historic São Paulo building. The chef works a genuinely specific brief: French technique, Brazilian ingredients only, with seasonal and regional sourcing taken seriously. Tasting menu or à la carte, both available.

The chef here calls it "Punk Italian," which sounds like a band name but turns out to mean classical technique pushed somewhere unexpected. This casual Italian restaurant in Santa Cecília has an open kitchen you can watch from the counter, walls hung with photographs of everyday Naples, and a menu that changes with the seasons. The crowd dresses like they've heard of the place, which they have.

The rice dishes anchor everything here, from a paella marinera to a duck socarrat with grilled octopus and aioli. This Mediterranean restaurant from the chef behind Jardins favourite Tanit occupies a three-storey townhouse in Itaim Bibi, with a terrace out front, an open kitchen inside, and a counter where cocktails get made alongside dinner. Spanish technique edges toward pasta and a few Asian touches along the way.

A converted bread factory with its original ceiling height intact, Cantaloup is an all-day international restaurant where the dining room opens onto a fountain courtyard shaded by a retractable roof. The menu leans Italian, with risottos and pastas doing most of the heavy lifting, alongside a scallop ceviche that takes a detour through Brazil. The kind of place where a long weekday lunch feels like a reasonable life choice.

The ivy-draped facade on a Pinheiros corner stops people mid-stride, which is a decent way to announce a contemporary Brazilian restaurant where fire is treated as a pantry staple, not a technique. The kitchen leans into embers and smoke across the whole menu, while keeping close ties to the farmers and producers behind the raw ingredients. Fridays bring a set lunch alongside the regular à la carte.

A gastronomic Italian restaurant tucked into a residential pocket of southern São Paulo, Casa Santo Antônio spreads across a handsome property with several dining rooms, a proper bar, and a terrace for when the city cooperates with the weather. Homemade pastas come in portions that make you reconsider ordering a second course, yet the prices suggest the kitchen hasn't noticed how good it is. The glass-fronted kitchen keeps things honest.

The open kitchen anchors the dining room at this hotel restaurant inside the Emiliano, where the menu shifts weekly and pulls from both northern Brazilian pantry staples like tucupi and peach palm and imported ingredients like Cantabrian anchovies and shiso. The chef trained across Europe before a stint at three-Michelin-starred Evvai, and that restlessness shows in the contemporary, produce-led cooking. A seasoned sommelier handles the wine side with matching seriousness.

The black façade and red awning give it away from the street: this is a French bistro, the kind where candles light a terrace sheltered by two large trees and oversized red teddy bears occupy spare chairs without anyone finding it strange. The kitchen leans into classic technique, duck with orange, foie gras, a genuinely theatrical eclair, with enough contemporary restraint to keep it from feeling like a period piece.

The open kitchen sits dead center in the room, so you can watch Claude Troisgros's team compose Modern French dishes from arm's length. This is a sit-down restaurant where the classic menu arrives in sharing bowls, giving the whole thing a relaxed, family-table feel, while the seasonal à la carte leans French with Brazilian ingredients folded in. The kind of place where the cooking is the show, and the room is arranged to prove it.

An open kitchen anchors the dining room at this modern Brazilian restaurant, where the two chefs cut their teeth at Noma and a handful of Michelin-starred kitchens before deciding to do things their own way. The menu runs seasonal and creative, available as a tasting menu or à la carte, with midweek options that make the cooking feel a little less like an occasion and a little more like Tuesday.

The parrilla does the talking at this Uruguayan steakhouse in Itaim Bibi, where serious beef, aged cuts, and short ribs go over open flame the old-school way. Portions scale to the table size, which is a polite way of saying multi-generational families fill most of them. The flan with dulce de leche has its own following. A casual, carnivore-forward room with no pretension about what it is or what you're there for.