I’m unsuspecting to speak (well) of Coco Bambu: I have a visceral antipathy to the Ceará chain of restaurants, related to the gastronomic, aesthetic and political aspects of the brand.
Having said that, it is shameless for Conar (National Council for Advertising Self-Regulation) to admonish Coco Bambu for using the slogan “The best restaurant in Brazil”. The measure was taken from a “complaint” by Outback Steakhouse, said Lauro Jardim’s column on Globo.
Coco Bambu claims to have won awards from TripAdvisor – which is easily manipulated and has already contemplated, in London, a fictional restaurant invented by a rascal journalist. Not necessary.
Seriously, this kind of fudge is the oldest marketing in the restaurant industry. If you falter, the place for Holy Communion called itself “the best tavern in Judea.”
Any stinky pub says it’s the best in the world. And it doesn’t even need a half-assed award from a collaborative site (or the seal of a serious institute like Datafolha, which in 2019 found that São Paulo residents considered Coco Bambu the best restaurant to take the family).
Any infected hole is king of this or that. Any grocery store full of cockroaches is the champion of the economy.
There’s a chain of Portuguese bakeries that thought it was a good idea to adopt the name The Best Chocolate Cake in the World – and the candy they sell isn’t even cake, it’s a pie with layers of meringue.
I particularly prefer establishments that suffer from imposter syndrome. Those who serve “the best pizza in the region” or claim to be “the most upbeat house in Vila Nhocuné”.
In advertising, lying is the rule, not the exception. In restaurants, it is not limited to the general concept of the birosca. We go to certain waterfalls on the menus.
Seasonal fruit? Lie. It’s always pineapple or papaya.
Fish of the day? Lie. It had been frozen since the other week.
Malbec wine sauce? Lie. Don’t even want to know what the wine is…
If the portuguese on the corner sells the best crackling in Brazil and delivers a withered, hairy and greasy hide, I can’t sue the Hague Court for a crime against humanity. Conar, perhaps? I doubt they pay any attention.
Coco Bambu does the same thing that every trade has always done. Change the scale. The point is that there is no objective metric to determine what is the best or the worst in the world. See the highly skewed rankings of fancy restaurants.
If the guys from Coco Bambu need to cite the source of the award in the ads, the Galician from the street above must also include the *(according to Marcão Nogueira) when announcing the coldest beer in the neighborhood*.
I hate Coco Bambu for a number of reasons, but a far worse liar is Outback – an American casual dining chain (pardon the language) that pretends to be Australian. Because the story of the people of Ceará is bravado, only those who are already a fan believe it; in the Outback, meanwhile, Enzos and Valentinas eat fried onions and brown bread with the conviction that they are Australia’s deepest traditions.
What the Ouback does is a crime? Not. Is she nice? Not at all, just as the food at Coco Bambu is not good.
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