The Fall mixes restaurant, bar and nightclub to try to compete with Pinheiros

Whoever walks near the subway Parada Inglesa is faced with a new facade that raises doubts. Depending on the time, the space resembles a restaurant, a bar, sometimes a nightclub. That’s where The Fall works – the fall, in English –, which is a mixture of all that.

The walls of the house, inaugurated three months ago in the north of São Paulo, are marked by a gray that resembles burnt cement, like subway stops. The color appears with the graffiti, which takes one of them. The urban atmosphere is completed by two arcade machines.

Anyone who goes there during the day knows what a restaurant looks like. The kitchen is run by Enzo Medeiros, chef and one of the owners, who prepares dishes based on street foods from around the world.

One of the highlights is the Orange Chicken, fried chicken with orange sauce topped with sesame. A portion costs R$40. There is also a Cuban-inspired sandwich, made with pulled pork belly and pineapple pickles, and the Cordon Bleu, a French-style sandwich with chicken fillet. Both start at R$45

There are also main dishes, such as braised short ribs, feijoada served on Wednesdays and Saturdays, a São Paulo dish that arrives at tables on Fridays and also vegan pasta.

Medeiros plays the house with his wife, Rafaella Hollerbach. Both invited Thiago Goshomoto to create the signature drink menu for The Fall, a bartender with whom the chef worked at Taka Daru, a restaurant in Pinheiros. “Our only requirement was that it be something creative,” he says.

From that request came drinks like the Moskito, inspired by a skater who always appears in the house, made with pomegranate molasses, natural soda made from green grapes, gin and lemon, worth R$35. The Mule, with cambuci shrub and lemongrass foam, costs R$25.

Drinks start to come out more often as the day begins to wane and the night takes over the city. That’s when the restaurant profile begins to give way to the vocation of the house’s nightclub.

On Fridays and Saturdays, from 8pm, The Fall turns into a nightclub and hosts different types of shows, with presentations and DJs until 4am. In the house, mainly trap and rap names are presented, which makes the place consolidate itself as a stronghold for these styles.

“You can see from the rhyming battles themselves. They don’t have a place where they can sing, so we wanted to give that opening”, says the chef.

But one thing does not kill the other. The restaurant continues to function normally, with the public drinking and snacking on portions while standing, freer to enjoy the shows.

“We don’t stop serving a parmigiana at three in the morning”, says Medeiros. This whole mix came about to try to prevent the exodus of residents from the north to other neighborhoods in the city, such as Pinheiros and Vila Madalena.

“There are beautiful restaurants there, with good food and an even better drink list. Here in the north it’s hard to find that”, he says. For him, when a restaurant meets these requirements in the region, it usually presents a menu with much higher prices.

But the process of attracting the public is still slow, confesses the chef. “If you can afford to go to McDonalds, you can eat and drink here too.”