Alex Atala

Brazil’s superstar chef runs two restaurants in São Paulo, one of which – DOM – is ranked sixth in The World’s 50 Best. He tells Alicia Miller about finding food in the Amazon and gourmet travelling in Japan

As a boy, I travelled throughout Brazil

with my father and grandfather. We went into the Amazon to hunt and fish. We would find wild foods such as cupuaçu – a sort of primitive cacao, but greener, and very intense – from which we would make juice. That was an important moment in my life; it was then that I first enountered the flavours I work with now.

Now in the Amazon you can find great restaurants.

At Remanso do Bosque (restauranteremanso.com.br) in Belém do Pará, brothers Thiago and Felipe Castanho are doing great things. We work together researching the existence of Amazonian mushrooms: and we found some! Before this we were just using foreign mushrooms, but ours are unique in flavour and texture.

São Paulo has the biggest Japanese community

outside of Japan, so the Japanese restaurants here are excellent. At Shinzushi (shin-zushi.com) I’ll have chawanmushi (egg custard) – they make a gourmet version with matsutake mushrooms. As for sushi, Jun Sakamoto (00 55 3088 6019) is the best.

When I want Brazilian food

I go to Mocotó (mocoto.com.br) for mocofava – a kind of stew made with fava beans. You need to drive to the outskirts of the city, where you get amazing views from the hills. The restaurant is very traditional, northeastern Brazilian food. For something more refined, I love Epice (epicerestaurante.com.br) and Maní (manimanioca.com.br). I am friends with the chefs, and each Sunday I usually invite them over to mine and I cook something very simple. It’s so regular, we joke that when I’m away they must have to spend the day without food!

There are wonderful things to eat all over South America.

In Santiago, at the market, I eat picoroco (giant barnacles). Then I go to Boragó (borago.cl) for Chilean fine-dining. In Argentinian Patagonia, one of the most beautiful landscapes, is Villa la Angostura. There’s a very simple bistro called Fleur-de-lys. The beef Milanesa is great; you always have nice meat in Argentina.

The first time I came to London it was the 1980s

and I didn’t have any money – so I ate a lot of fish and chips. Now, every time I visit I need to have it at least once! But I love Roka (rokarestaurant.com). And Claude Bosi’s place, Hibiscus (hibiscusrestaurant.co.uk). Outside London I’m dying to go to Sat Bains’ (restaurantsatbains.com). I’ve known Sat for a long time, he’s a super guy – we’ve cooked together in Australia and Spain and he’s so sensible with flavours. I really respect him.

The more you go to Japan, the more you want to go.

I’ve travelled around the country but next I want to go to Hokkaido, the big island in the north. The food is completely different to the rest of Japan, with things I’ve never seen before.

I’ve loved animals since I was a boy

so I could have been a veterinarian. I have a number of pets, and my three pirarucu fish are quite impressive. They aren’t quite goldfish – the smallest is over a metre long