From the notary led by his father, Amadeu Ferraz, in Belo Horizonte, came focus, discipline and a bit of bureaucracy. The one who lent him the sensitivity to explore the tones, colors and flavors of Brazil was his mother, Ângela Ferraz, a dealer in love with the arts.
The parents have already left, but they left this characteristic in their son, Rodrigo Ferraz, 55, a mixture of entrepreneurship and discoveries. The result is a work still under construction regarding Brazilian gastronomic culture.
It was born with the Fartura Gastronomy Expedition project, the embryo of the Fartura Festival, which arrives on the next 19th and 20th at the Jockey Club of São Paulo, preceded by a dinner on the 18th.
Tiradentes, Belo Horizonte, and two other cities in Minas Gerais, Serro and Conceição de Mato Dentro, in addition to Porto Alegre, Fortaleza, Lisbon, Brasília, Belém and Florianópolis have already hosted Fartura.
In all, around 5,000 chefs participated in the events. At least 2 million plates were sold. This year, the festival should receive at least 1 million visitors in its seven editions.
“Here in São Paulo it will be the only Fartura that we will bring chefs from all over Brazil.”
“There will be around 40. One chef indicates another. One producer indicates another producer, the chef indicates another producer. It becomes a community”, he explains. “And the community gave rise to a gigantic platform on Brazilian food, a broad research work that culminates in the event”, he adds.
This collection is the result of his wanderings, which exceed 90,000 kilometers, through all states and the DF.
The result is shared on the website, social networks, videos, books, TV and radio.
Ferraz met at least 630 producers and cooks. At Lajeado do Pai Mateus, in Cabaceiras, Paraíba, for example, he discovered the goat in the hole. In Cruzeiro do Sul, in the Juruá Valley, in Acre, his journey registered producers around cassava flour considered one of the best in Brazil, an ingredient in the chestnut and banana farofa included in these discoveries.
And to think that it was in the late afternoon, with the birds flying from branch to branch, close to the historic center of Tiradentes, that it all began, back in 2008, as Ferraz well remembers.
The businessman was helping at the Tiradentes Gastronomy Festival, when he noticed an orange bicycle, with a small basket in front, approaching in his direction. The delivery man would bring, piled up, about 15 cheeses to a typical Minas Gerais grocery store, one of those small ones, but where you can find everything.
As soon as the boy went in to unload the order, a girl came out with two cheeses. It was an ordinary scene, but it caught the businessman’s attention. “I thought. Wow, this is a productive chain.”
Ferraz owned a carrier. He had ten bars and restaurants and a nightclub in the capital Belo Horizonte.
“Thank God, I sold everything”, he laughs, who has already been known as “the king of Minas Gerais nightlife”. He maintains only Albanos, which was born as a taphouse, in honor of one of the founders of the famous Pinguim taphouse, in Ribeirão Preto, and today works with a line of craft beers.
As a night entrepreneur, he ended up creating an event production company. With her, in August 2008, he went to try to change the Gastronomic Festival of Tiradentes.
“It was watching the festival that I saw the gastronomy production chain as a whole. I realized that gastronomy, in addition to cultural value, has social and economic value, which affects the lives of many people.”
Thus, in 2012, Fartura was born, with the mission of telling stories, discovering new ingredients and, above all, connecting this continental culinary universe that is Brazil.
Graduated in administration and law, with a specialization in financial administration, he commissioned a study that proved the economic importance of the gastronomic production chain. Then he saved up some savings and put the expedition on the road.
What he and the team researched about recipes, ingredients and methods of preparation ended up in festivals.
“In Mato Grosso, I found the alligator guy. From there, I would bring the alligator producer and cook. I visited Ceará. I met the lobster producer and brought the lobster producer and cook to the festival in Tiradentes”, he recalls.
The name Fartura comes from the abundance of food found in a country of continental proportions like ours. “Within this diversity, we don’t have a desert climate, we have an arid climate, but there’s no desert or ice. So Fartura symbolizes this country’s richness.”
When it comes to food diversity, no place compares, of course, to São Paulo. “Here you can find ingredients from all over the country.” The cuisines of Minas and Bahia arouse a special fondness in him. “They manage to unite gastronomic wealth with the gesture of welcoming.”
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