Hey, I’m Chef Pinto — and food is everything to me.
I grew up in Brazil eating the kind of meals that don’t need a fancy name to be extraordinary. Rice and beans on a weekday. A perfectly seasoned bife. Farofa on the side of everything. Simple, honest, incredibly good food that I completely took for granted — until I was 12 years old and moved to New Zealand.
At first, it was magical. A whole new world of flavors, ingredients I’d never seen, cuisines I couldn’t even pronounce. I was a kid in a culinary candy store.
But then, slowly, something started missing.
I wanted rice and beans. Real ones. Brazilian ones. And they were nowhere to be found. My parents did their best — banana pizza made its way to our table, brigadeiro brought a little taste of home — but true Brazilian feijao? Nearly impossible. (Fun fact: in New Zealand, beans are sweet and eaten at breakfast. Not quite the same thing.)
That’s when I realized what Brazilian food really is. It’s not just fuel. It’s memory. It’s identity. It’s the flavor of home when home is very far away.
That experience never left me.
Years later, I created The Farofa Kitchen with a simple mission: to bring Brazilian home cooking to the world — accessible, fun, and absolutely delicious. No hard-to-find ingredients. No complicated techniques. Just real Brazilian flavors that anyone, anywhere, can make and fall in love with.
Whether you’re Brazilian and missing home, or simply someone who’s never tried feijoada and doesn’t know what they’re missing yet — this kitchen is for you.
Welcome to The Farofa Kitchen. Where every meal tells a story.