Recife, a city in Brazil’s northeast, is located in the heart of the tropics. The waters off the coast are shallow even past the horizon and the lands are flat, perhaps reminding the Dutch who arrived in the sixteenth century of their homeland. The city was built after clearing a forest of mangroves and when the rains fall, there is no escape. Rain pools in the gardens designed to cope with the summer heat, raindrops rippling in the gathering water.

Reteteu is a restaurant in Recife run by Thiago Das Chagas, who visited Japan last year. His grandmother’s home was renovated to create the restaurant where they serve home cooking from Brazil’s northeast. Huge acerola and mango trees grow in the yard providing shade and fruits. In the late afternoon, the restaurant is full, with all the tables and seats in the yard occupied by customers. The premises house two small buildings: the kitchen and an indoor dining area which doesn’t seem to see much use in the summer. However, when winter comes, the tropical Recife enters the rainy season. It isn’t rare for the city’s drainage systems to be unable to keep up with the heavy rains, leading to the whole city flooding. It isn’t rare to see people’s gardens turn into small ponds. That is why the restaurant’s seating area fitted with beautiful Portuguese tiling is indispensable during the wet winter months. It is slightly higher than ground level so makes for a good rain shelter. Visitors stop by the restaurant and sip coffee after coffee as they wait for the rain to let up and the chaos in the city subside. Home cooking requires you to look at both the changing patterns in the sky and the expressions of your family.