From a tiny restaurant on a dead-end street come the enticing aromas of chicken, pork and shrimp as an award-winning chef slowly steams dim sum — the finger food typical of Cantonese cuisine.
This is not Hong Kong but rather Rio de Janeiro. And the cook is a black Brazilian.
“Many people ask me, ‘Where is the Chinese chef?’” Vladimir Reis, 38, says with a chuckle. He opened Dim Sum Rio almost two years ago in Laranjeiras, a wealthy neighborhood of the city.
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“They ask me why I make Asian food and not African or Brazilian food,” said Reis. “But I am free to do what I like, without being restricted by what people think I should do because of the color of my skin or the country I come from.”
Things are going very well for this burly man with thin dreadlocks down to his shoulders. His dim sums are wildly popular and he has been named a winner in a new competition called the Black Gastronomy Prize.
This contest, whose first edition was held in November, honors the best black restaurant industry people in Rio in an array of categories such as waiter, sommelier, sous chef and pastry chef, all in a country where racism is deeply ingrained.
“There are many nice stories, and the time has come to acknowledge all of this talent,” said Breno Cruz, a university professor who created the prizes.
‘White universe’
Best restaurant honors went to Afro Gourmet, run by Dandara Batista, 37, who serves up African dishes in Grajau, a working-class neighborhood of Rio.
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In the small kitchen of the eatery she opened in 2018, she fixes a dish called hauca rice — originally from Nigeria and featuring shrimp, dried meat and a golden sauce that is a blend of coconut milk and palm oil.
The menu also boasts a dish from Senegal called mafe and a South African one called chakalaka. Batista highlights where her creations come from by adorning them with little flags corresponding to the country.
Batista said she always felt a strong connection to the food of the northeastern city of Bahia, where her father’s family comes from.
“But when I did some research I realized there is a strong African influence on Brazilian cuisine in general,” said Batista, who wears her thick hair in braids.
Batista has been cooking since she was a girl but thought of it as a career option only after working for many years as a journalist.
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“Gastronomy was always linked to a white universe, so I did not see myself there,” said Batista.
She switched jobs four years ago after taking a class in gastronomy.
She lamented the fact that there were no courses on African cuisine, so she learned how to make dishes from countries far from Brazil such as Angola, Cape Verde, and Sao Tome and Principe.
‘No reference point’
Like Batista, Reis’s life was also influenced by things not Brazilian, in his case a trip to Singapore. “When I saw dim sum the first time I thought it was marvelous, so delicate. Right away I said to myself, ‘we don’t have this in Rio.’”
Reis, born and raised in Rio, gives a personal touch to his dishes, using cassava and palm oil, which are basic ingredients in Brazilian and African cooking. At Dim Sum Rio, he decorates his dishes with edible flowers and green leaves of cabbage to cover them, like little roofs.
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Reis had worked in several restaurants but never made it all the way to chef. Although he has a strong resume, he says that in job interviews white colleagues with less experience would always beat him out.
“They always wanted me to be a sous chef, or a basic cook,” said Reis, who grew up in a favela, or slum, in central Rio called Santa Teresa.
In Brazil black or mixed-race people account for 54 percent of the population but only 30 percent of leadership positions in companies.
Reis says he would have started his own business earlier if he had seen more black chefs in the news media.
“I only saw black chefs on reality shows from other countries. Here in Brazil I had no reference point. The job market has opened up in the last few years but racism is still very much a part of society.”
The new truce plan in Gaza includes “many demands” from Hamas, according to an Egyptian source
The talks held between delegations from Egypt and Israel in Tel Aviv for a truce in Gaza were “largely positive and successful” and included “many of the demands” of the Islamist movement Hamas, an Egyptian security source familiar with the negotiations and another from Hamas reported to EFE on Sunday.
A delegation from Hamas, headed by the member of the political bureau Khalil al-The Hague, is expected to arrive tomorrow in Cairo, mediator in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group, to deliver its response to the mediators, according to the Egyptian source, which asked not to be identified by the sensitivity of this issue.
This new proposal, on whose content it did not provide details, “overcomes the obstacles that hinder” the declaration of a truce, a ceasefire, the exchange of prisoners and hostages, as well as the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip.
The possible announcement of a truce “will contribute to the approval of a first phase and to the efforts of the entire international community to consolidate this ceasefire and seek to move to a permanent truce instead of a temporary one,” according to the informant.
On the other hand, a source of the Palestinian Islamist movement, which also asked for anonymity, confirmed to EFE that tomorrow a delegation from Hamas will arrive in the Egyptian capital to present its response to the new Israeli proposal.
The informant added that the proposal includes “reducing the minimum number of kidnapped that Hamas will commit to freeing and eliminating divisions in sections of the Gaza Strip.”
Last Friday, an Egyptian mediating delegation traveled to Tel Aviv to discuss this truce with Israel, while the Jewish State has warned that it will not allow the Palestinian group to delay and has once again threatened to invade Rafah, at the southern end of the strip and where more than a million refugees are overcrowded.
Hamas warns the United Kingdom that if it sends soldiers to Gaza they will be a “legitimate” military target
The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas warned the United Kingdom on Sunday that if it deploys military personnel in the Gaza Strip, after information that they could help in the distribution of humanitarian aid, they will be “legitimate targets” of its armed wing.
“We alert Britain, or any other country, against the deployment of forces on land or on the coast of the Gaza Strip and affirm that they will be legitimate targets for our people and their resistance,” Hamas said in a statement.
The armed group charged against any initiative in the Palestinian enclave that does not have its approval.
The Islamist group responded to the information released on Saturday by the British network BBC, according to which the British Armed Forces could deploy troops to deliver humanitarian aid on the ground arriving in Gaza through the new floating dock that is being built by Israel and the United States.
The public broadcaster indicated that the United Kingdom could be the intermediary to which the United States referred when it said that it would not be the American soldiers, but others, who would distribute the food packages sent by ship from Cyprus and then transferred to Gaza.
Yesterday, the Israeli Army assured at a press conference with international media that international organizations would be in charge of the distribution of humanitarian aid, but did not indicate which ones would have agreed to collaborate.
Although the British Government has not confirmed the news, the BBC affirms, according to anonymous sources, that the Ministry of Defense is considering getting involved with ‘wet boots’ on the ground.
The possible role of the British forces would involve driving the trucks with the help from the landing boats on the floating runway, hundreds of meters long, and delivering it to a safe distribution area on dry land, the station explained.
The London Ministry of Defense reported on Friday, in turn, that the British Navy auxiliary ship RFA Cardigan Bay set sail from Cyprus to provide support for the construction of the temporary dock, which is led by the United States.
This ship will provide accommodation for hundreds of American sailors and soldiers, about whom Washington has made it clear that they will not set foot in Gaza territory.
Nancy Pelosi says that Netanyahu “could not have made things worse” in Gaza
Former President of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi said that the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, “could not have made things worse” in the conflict in Gaza, in an interview broadcast this Sunday by the BBC.
Pelosi, who on Thursday participated in an event at the English university of Oxford, told the ‘Laura Kuenssberg Program’ that Netanyahu “was never a peace agent” and admitted that she “is not a great fan of his.”
The congresswoman said that what is happening in the Strip “challenges the conscience of the world” and maintained that the impact of famine on children “is almost unforgivable”, while calling the Hamas attack on Israeli territory on October 7 “barbaric”.
“Israel has the right to defend itself, but the way it is doing it is a challenge because Netanyahu has never been a peace agent,” he said.
“I’m not a great admirer of yours; I couldn’t have done things worse than those tens of thousands, or whatever number it is, of dead people, malnourished children and the uncertainty that exists… and that’s what people are talking about,” he said.
Asked if she understood why young people in the United States used controversial tactics when protesting against the conflict, Pelosi opined that “when they go beyond the campuses and block the Golden Gate Bridge, or something else, for a long time, and people can’t go to the doctor or the hospital or anything urgent in their lives, they don’t get support.”
But he added: “How can demonstrations on (university) campuses be criticized? That’s a way of life in the United States.”
On Thursday, the British police evicted two pro-Palestinian protesters who protested during their speech on populism to students from the University of Oxford, while abroad another group criticized her for her defense of Israel and her position on the movement to support Palestine.
