Cassava changed Vitor Mendes’s life. After his father passed away, the chef returned to his home country of Brazil and decided to travel around the region. That’s where he learned the importance of the indigenous tropical root vegetable and how it’s a crucial foundation of Brazilian cooking, passed down for generations.
Mendes returned to New York as a changed person with a new mission: highlighting those thrilling ingredients. And now he’s opening his own modern Brazilian restaurant, Iara, on the Lower East Side at 205 Allen Street, near East Houston Street, on Friday, October 2.
“I thought that my own culture was rice, beans, and barbecue, as a lot of people might think,” he says, but his explorations taught him otherwise. “And I just came back like a priest, telling all my friends, mentors, and chefs: ‘I saw something down there that nobody has tasted before.’”
Iara’s menu is laced with many Brazilian ingredients and spices, including cassava (of course), tucupi, acai, jambu (a Sichuan pepper-like herb from the Amazon), kupuasu (a cacao sibling that tastes “fruity acidic,” he explains), Brazilian tonka beans, and puxuri, a Brazilian nutmeg.
During a recent trip back to the Amazon, he connected with farmers and purveyors so they could ship him ingredients and also brought back six suitcases of objects to display around the new restaurant.
“I hope to be a reference point for people looking for a Brazilian restaurant for a unique experience,” Mendes says. He knows New York has Brazilian restaurants, but “if they want an experience that they cannot find anywhere else outside of Brazil [where they can] experience the flavors and taste the spices and taste the things they haven’t tasted yet,” he says, they can come to Iara.
Iara’s hours are from 5 to 11 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; book reservations on Resy.
