The words “restaurant” and “chef” don’t really apply to O Leão Vermelho, a unique and whimsical new dining-meets-art experience in the small town of São João da Boa Vista in São Paulo state, Brazil.
After leaving El Bulli restaurant in Catalonia, aged 19, the now 25-year-old Gabriel Vidolin set up O Leão Vermelho in his grandparents’ old house. He acts as maître d’, waiter, gardener, carpenter, artist, washer-upper, and, oh yes, chef. He makes everything himself, right down to the chairs guests sit on.
The 20-course meal is served in a “sensory sequence” at different spots around the house. Diners begin in the lantern-hung front garden, and are then led through two candle-lit dining rooms, and finally upstairs through a sliding bookcase for coffee and petit fours.
Music matches each course on a playful menu that varies not just with the seasons, but with lunar cycles and Vidolin’s spiritual state, so we’re told. On my visit, I ate delicate, bacon-flavoured meringue birds and bowls of lentil and sausage stew, fluffy chocolate soufflés in miniature cauldrons and sculpted rose-and-hibiscus ice lollies. The food – made almost entirely with local produce – is in turn comforting, intense and exhilarating, with the odd curve ball, like the salty shot glass of “tears” (a homage to Serbian artist Marina Abramović, says Vidolin).
Only four people can dine each night, and there are only two sittings per week. As for the name, which translates as The Red Lion? “You’re going to laugh,” says Vidolin “but I’m a huge Harry Potter fan, so it’s because I’m a Gryffindor.”
• The meal costs R$419 (around £89) per head, including wine, +55 19 3633 3514, leaovermelho.com. Reservations essential
