Last toast in honor of Luiz Nozoie stopped traffic with crowd of bar owners

It was scheduled for 6:30 pm on Monday, April 1st, the beginning of the historic drinking party in celebration of Luiz Nozoie, bar owner who left many orphans in the bohemia of São Paulo.

And he puts a lot of people into it.

At 5:02 pm, the gate to Bar do Luiz Nozoie was already erected. A small crowd gathered at the counter and at the tables set up on the sidewalk.

At 6:01 pm, the line to buy food tokens was already half a block long. At 6:45 pm, CET-SP placed cones on Cursino Avenue to reverse the direction of a lane.

The bar’s clientele could no longer fit on the sidewalk and now occupied the bus lane. Luiz’s orphans literally stopped traffic in Saúde, south of São Paulo.

Old Nozoie was honored in a ritual that has fallen into unfair disuse: drinking the dead. Family and friends organized a party that included chefs from 13 restaurants and bars, as well as raw ham that was sliced ​​down to the bone.

Mauro Ferrari, from the Arancino bar, sold risotto dumplings with pork cheek. Rafael Kodato, from Bao Hut, prepared a fragrant Japanese chicken gizzard curry.

I say fragrant because I didn’t wait in the long line to buy the guest chefs’ range. One of them, Lierson Mattenhauer Jr, from Xepa, took pity on me and offered a taste of his pork tartare. Yes, raw pork. It was fantastic.

Dídio, Luiz’s son-in-law, walked around with a bottle of whiskey and a shot glass. Macallan 12 years old? Of course I accept.

Committed, grandson Fábio Nozoie struggled to keep up with the flood of orders from the tables and the crowd standing at the counter. That’s where I leaned while it happened.

I spoke briefly with Márcia, Luiz’s daughter, Fábio’s mother and Dídio’s wife. She is the guardian of the recipes that have made the most selfless bartenders cross the city for six decades.

“Even those who don’t eat it like it,” says Márcia about the jiló pickled in vinegar, with raw onion and pepper. Ask. If you think you don’t like jiló, it’s because you haven’t eaten Márcia’s jiló yet. Word.

After the first pee, I couldn’t get closer to the counter. I went to the asphalt to enjoy the outdoor commotion.

It is now a Nozoie tradition to welcome guest chefs on Mondays. It’s the day of the week when many restaurants don’t open and give their employees the day off. And the cooks take advantage of their time off to work, go figure.

The second chefs fill the bar, mostly, with people who work in gastronomy — other chefs, bar owners, sommeliers, journalists and the like.

Nothing like what we saw when Luiz said goodbye. The party brought veterans of the Japanese-Brazilian community and practically everyone with some sentimental connection to Luiz Nozoie’s Bar to Saúde.

Everyone who was there had memories with the bar and its owner. Some vivid, others unclear, blurred by the alcohol.

The one by journalist Alexandre Carvalho, a former colleague who I met by chance at the party, is the unforgettable kind. “I was drinking there” —he points to a corner of the bar— “when my sister came running to tell us that our father had died.” It was January 22, 2000, a Saturday.

Death, to the surprise of absolutely no one, was a topic in many of the circles. The laughter, abundant, was also melancholic.

No one was there for the food (which ended early) or the drink (obtaining it required herculean effort), much less to enjoy the night in comfort.

Anyone who went to Luiz’s bar on Monday left home knowing that there was a problem included in the program. Something told him it was the right thing to do.

Luiz’s orphans needed to offer him one last toast. And so it was. Long live Luiz Nozoie’s Bar!