In 2017, the Consulate General of Japan in São Paulo estimated that around 887 thousand people from the largest Brazilian state had Japanese ancestry. With a culture rooted in Brazil as a whole, a country to which tens of thousands of Japanese immigrants moved at the beginning of the 20th century, the Japanese have special attention in the city of São Paulo, with the right to even a neighborhood: the Freedomknown for being the birthplace of the best and most traditional Japanese cuisine restaurants in the metropolis.
The large wave of Brazilian immigration to Portugal in recent years has brought with it the influence of Japanese cuisine, which is increasingly gaining ground here too. The most recent example is the After Darkone it will come (Japanese bar) which, by the hands of chef Matheus Martinshas caused something to talk about in the Príncipe Real region, in the heart of Lisbon.
“I already had the idea of it will come a long time ago, and after a trip to Japan we managed to put it into practice this year: basically it was a matter of life and death, after the trip I either stayed there, or opened a it will come here. It ended up that everyone loved the idea and we embarked on this adventure. At first we were open three nights a week, now it’s five“, says the chef in an interview with DN Brazil at After Dark, which, during the day, operates as Boubou’s Sandwich Club, a sandwich shop at the Boubou’s restaurant, where Matheus has worked since 2024.
The concept arose from a conversation with Louise Bourrat, award-winning chef Frenchwoman who runs Boubou’s. A topic between the two for a long time, the idea took shape four months ago, shortly after Matheus returned from his trip to Japan. Since then, the prestigious sandwich shop has been transformed, overnight, into this innovative it will come which brings, in addition to several references from the chef to the East — from the dishes to the counter and the decoration — also a lot of his childhood.
This is because Matheus’ relationship with Japanese cuisine goes back a long way: in fact, it has been with him practically since he was born. “My mother took me to restaurants in Liberdade, when I was very little, a baby. In fact, she tells me a story that at Takô, one of the first sushi restaurants in Liberdade, they made some hossomakis small ones so I could put them whole in my mouth when I was one year old“, he recalls.