Translator: Lucia Speed Reviewer: Theresa Ranft
Jimmy McManis: Tell me what you eat and I'll tell you who you are.
We usually say the relationship between man and food
goes way beyond that and way beyond, in time and love, what we could imagine
or what we normally consider on a daily basis.
Almost everything we do today,
and society, as we know it, exists because of food.
Man only built society when he was able to plant food,
when he was able to domesticate animals.
From then on, he began to be sedentary and to create society as we know it today.
A closer example: continents were discovered because of food.
They left Europe,
and thanks to a navigation error, which is why we're here today,
they discovered America,
although they were actually looking for spices.
And this same eternal love and passion for food
which connects the whole world all the time, in kitchens, in things,
was what brought us together in this project,
the premise of which is to prove that everybody can cook,
that to cook is easy.
Not only everybody can, but everybody should cook.
I've known Boris for a long time, a lot more than I wanted, in fact.
(Laughter)
And, of course, as with any good idea, ours started in a bar which he owned.
And during several conversations, we found a common passion for cooking for friends.
I cook since I was 12 with my mother.
I believe he cooks since childhood too.
And we always cooked at college events
for 20, 30, 40 people,
on long trips and such.
What we wanted to do with everyone
was to positively contaminate them with this love we had for food;
to make people want to cook too, to want to receive friends,
to be in the kitchen sharing that smell of buttery caramelized onions -
there's nothing better.
(Laughter)
Man, that's a cool dream. But how do we do it?
That was our first problem.
I said, "To make people want to cook,
we have to prove that cooking is easy."
Genius. A genius idea, and now we have another problem.
How are we going to record this?
No one had equipment, I'm not a photographer, nor is he.
Then along came Betinho,
a friend of mine who used to cook with me at friends' houses,
and he said, "I just bought some new equipment,
I'm doing photography, I'll record the videos."
With that, we managed to tape the first season.
The videos are on our YouTube channel.
You can go and look for them later, please.
But in the meantime, before we started recording, I met Guto,
whom you will see in the photos in a moment.
He's a real character, and there's no way he couldn't be part of the project.
I met him at a bloggers' event called Hot-Dog Vulgar.
Once again, food connecting people.
We talked, and the only thing I asked him
was if he wanted to be part of the project and if he knew how to cook.
He said yes, so I said, "You're in."
I think it was the easiest test anyone ever passed to get a job.
Neves participated during the entire first season taking photos.
Almost all of the beautiful photos you will see in a moment are his.
He always cheered us on, shared the beer with us.
Oh, and we drink loads while recording!
(Laughter)
He shared this time as a partner, as a friend.
And we thought, at the end of this first season,
which was five episodes with four videos each,
"Let's call Neves to join us."
Because he was studying photography and gastronomy,
so I thought it was the fairest decision, but it is a decision I regret to this day.
(Laughter)
I'll let Boris talk to you, and I'll show the photos from back here.
Boris Henningsen: Well, the videos gave us the feedback we expected,
but in a much shorter time than what we imagined.
And with that, our followers started to ask us
to carry out real events.
We decided to really go out, I mean, not go out, but migrate,
to also go out into the real world.
The first event was in my boat, after a normal working night,
around 3 or 4 am.
We started cooking a 20-kg pork leg in the oven,
a process which takes 12 hours,
and the pork leg has to be basted every 30 or 40 minutes.
We didn't sleep, we took an air mattress, separate ones, not double.
(Laughter)
Let that be clear.
Anyway, and there we spent a pleasant night.
Around two in the afternoon, 20 friends arrived.
We four Ogres were tired,
but it was a marvelous afternoon of confraternization, fun,
and everything else that eating involves.
Then we saw we needed to get this little group we had formed,
first on the internet, then among friends, and make it into a cauldron
that would fit whoever wanted to join.
Since then, about 100 invasions -
which is how we call our events -
have happened, most in Rio de Janeiro, some in São Paulo.
It was wonderful.
At first, it was difficult
because we hadn't established the number of portions,
and we'd be stuck in the kitchen.
People would go there wanting to talk to us after eating
and they couldn't
because we'd be at the stove at a temperature of 90 degrees.
So we started to determine the number of portions.
When these portions finished, we'd go to the lounge
to drink, talk, and exchange ideas.
Cooking for oneself is much more than a therapy.
Cooking for oneself is to control what we put inside.
It's to control the glutamates, colorants, and preservatives.
After all, we're seeing here in this enormous number of speeches
how we have the power to change the world,
so why shouldn't we control what enters our body?
Cooking for someone else is a lot more than that,
it's donating a time that doesn't exist today.
We live in a dictatorship of consumerism, of individualism.
We have to earn money, work. We don't have time for anything else,
and to cook for someone else is to donate ourselves a little.
To cook for someone else is exactly that.
What I can say is this:
what motivates us is precisely the heartwarming feedback we receive.
We're even going to mention three stories at the end of the talk.
What I want to say is that here we've heard many marvelous speakers,
neuroscientists, sociologists, scientists,
and here we are talking about the power of the kitchen.
But the good we can do in this life
is to give a little of our knowledge, of our talent and expertise.
Give it to someone else, franchise it.
If all the little drops in the ocean join together,
they will become a tsunami of good will
that will sweep the world with good intentions and knowledge.
Neves, it's over to you.
Marcelo Neves: I wanted to mention something very important that Boris said:
our motivation to cook, what leads us to cook.
Everyone here, since childhood, has been inundated by aromas and flavors.
When we're born, the first thing is our mother's breast.
You recognize the smell of your mother,
You recognize the taste of the milk.
Let's do a quick exercise here.
If everyone closes their eyes,
just five seconds, think about what you liked to eat as a kid.
The smell of your grandmother's house, a dish your mother made,
a snack, a popsicle.
You're able to feel its taste and smell. That is a culinary memory.
It's the culinary identity we have. Each one has formed their own.
Jimmy has his, Boris has his, and I have mine.
Mine was formed by three people in particular:
my mother, an aunt who lived with us,
and the mother of a friend of mine who cooked awesomely.
She would cook huge quantities, and it was very good.
There was no way not to eat it, and it was very good.
My mother and my aunt taught me three things.
I am 42, so you'll understand because it's a bit weird.
"Learn how to send a telegram, to fill out a check,
and to fry a steak and egg."
(Laughter)
They said that by this you'll survive anything
and won't die of hunger.
I've never sent nor received a telegram.
I don't know if anyone here sends, has sent, or received.
If anyone ever has,
you'd better not say because that will kind of reveal your age.
Everyone's filled out a check, and steak and eggs have saved me a lot -
me and a few friends,
because I have friends who are capable of burning water when making coffee.
(Laughter)
And this is important,
it was the first time I got the idea that cooking for someone is good.
You put a smile on people's faces,
you feed people's souls.
Everyone is together eating,
laughing together, quarreling together, like we do.
We spend the whole day talking and thinking of food,
what the menu is for the next event, what we'll do or not do.
We argue all day like that, literally.
Literally no, because thank God each one is at his computer,
or the fight would be ugly, too.
But we spend all the time thinking what to do for the next event,
what we'll cook, how we'll do something better.
This that Boris said about donating a little, giving a little love.
We're putting love in the food, reuniting people - that's important.
Tomorrow there'll be a football game.
In Rio, Flamengo and Vasco; here, I think it's Grêmio and Nacional.
We get people together for a barbecue
and don't realize how important that is.
We go, we eat, drink -
sometimes drink more than eat,
but we don't realize what a social interaction this is.
This develops a collective body which is something impressive.
We do this every day and don't realize it.
We try to show that food shouldn't be trivialized.
We are four abject creatures, every now and then,
but we don't joke around with food; we joke among ourselves, on videos,
but we don't play with food because we like to eat;
we like making food for other people, and this is important.
Boris said we'll be telling some case stories.
I'll tell one that happened to Guto,
even before mine.
We were at an event and Guto was drinking beer
and smoking a cigarette outside, and a car pulled over.
As soon as the car stopped,
the door opened, and there was a woman with a child.
She asked, "Are you one of the Ogres? Is this where your event is happening?"
Guto said, "Yes, can I help you?"
She said, "I came here because of my son.
He's autistic, he loves your videos.
He wanted to have a sandwich here. Can you make one?
I can't take him inside the restaurant
because he doesn't interact very well."
Guto immediately went to fetch a sandwich, and the boy interacted with him.
You've seen Guto, there's no way you can't interact with him.
I say he's like a kiwi: he's all brutish, hairy ... it's absurd.
(Laughter)
But he's soft inside, sweet, so I say he's my kiwi friend.
He doesn't like that very much...
But it was impressive. He was shocked.
He's married to Teresa, who has two kids, and one of them is also autistic
to a degree... I don't even know the term, but...
So when he saw this autistic boy playing and interacting with him,
it was sensational, and because of a sandwich.
A hamburger, which is no big deal,
anyone can get some minced meat, make a hamburger, fry it, and that's it.
So you can see the importance
of getting together and doing something as simple as cooking.
Jimmy is going to start with the case stories.
I think you'll enjoy listening to the stories.
JM: This first story happened recently
and shows the connection issue very well -
these waves,
this ripple effect that happens
when you make an interesting decision due to something you love.
There was a snack bar in Rio de Janeiro called Gordon,
which lasted from 1968 to 1998.
Unfortunately, it closed, due to the owner's personal problems.
But this was a famous snack bar,
it was a place where I could eat at 4 am, back in the '80s.
It had sandwiches with names like Diabolic, Angelic,
it had curry and rosé sauce, which was a special recipe of theirs.
There was pineapple, crepe, and ice cream soda,
which is Coca-Cola with ice cream.
Wonderful!
(Laughter)
And remembering those sandwiches, again, during a chat at a bar,
we had the idea of during a whole month -
we usually invade the restaurant once a week,
we invaded it for a whole month -
each week with one of the sandwiches
that we remembered and liked most from Gordon.
The first event was crowded,
and I was in the kitchen with the other three,
with the wall full of orders, sandwiches to make,
and a waiter comes
and says there's a gentleman wanting to talk to me.
I said, "Ask him to wait, I'm overwhelmed now, I can't go out,
the grill is full of hamburgers."
He came back once, twice, three times, then the waiter said,
"Go and talk to him, because he's not giving up."
I went out there and a grey-haired old man turns to me and says,
"Pleased to meet you. Gordon."
(Laughter)
You have no idea what it is to meet one of the idols
of your adolescence, in person.
We chatted for more than two hours.
The second week, a guy called Ricardo Steele turned up.
Gordon's logo was a kangaroo, the menu was all hand-drawn,
there were drawings and posters on the wall.
Ricardo was Gordon's designer.
He created the kangaroo, drew all the menus,
and he had brought along a folder full of original pencil drawings
and left it with us.
Another connection:
a common friend of ours, by chance, was working
on his final project for his designer degree
about Gordon.
So he said, "You know Gordon, talk to him if you can."
And I said, "I've got something better, I have the original drawings."
He almost cried.
He sent a PDF of his presentation,
his project was fantastic, and he passed with honors at college.
Food allows us to have these connections.
BH: Before I tell my story, I wanted to mention something
about the subject we're talking on.
For two days now, after the events,
we go and eat, drink, and exchange views with the people doing this event,
with those who have just spoken here over these last few hours.
Yesterday we went to sleep at three in the morning,
because we get this hunger to exchange everything around a table.
But let's go quickly to my story.
I was at the computer, on Facebook,
and an inbox pops up from a guy I had never heard of in my life,
saying his six-year-old daughter
was a great fan of our Ogrostronomia programs,
but she was a bit scared of Guto.
(Laughter)
And he sent a drawing she had made of us four,
with Guto in a special position, doing something kind,
showing that she herself was working on not being scared of him.
We became friends. I don't know him personally to this day.
He lives far away, but we became friends, and I found out later in our chats
that he had cancer, had just separated from his wife,
had lost his job and was seeing his daughter very little.
Moving forward, today he works with cookery, his daughter is with him,
living with the ex-wife but was with him, and he is cured of the cancer,
The only thing that's missing for him now is to get a girlfriend.
(Laughter)
Marcelo.
MN: Jimmy and Guto weren’t present on this occasion,
but Boris and I were once at the Rio Gastronomia event.
We were going to participate in a talk about beer and food -
how to harmonize beer and food and how to use beer in food.
We were chatting, and suddenly a young man came up and said,
"You're the Ogres, aren't you?"
We said, "Yes."
"Hey, I dropped college because of you."
(Laughter)
I said, "Hey, brother, don't do that. Because of us?
You see our responsibility. Why did you do that?"
He said he always wanted to study gastronomy
but never had the courage.
He said, "I watch your videos, I've been to an invasion and decided,
I'm done with college."
This was a Sunday.
"Tomorrow I'm starting the gastronomy course."
This is priceless! He's still studying, and I hope he continues.
People think gastronomy is easy, college, all this mise-en-scène.
It's difficult in the kitchen. It's complicated.
Cooking isn't difficult, what's difficult is the daily grind.
To this day, he sends me photos of the dishes he makes.
We became friends, exchange ideas, exchange recipes.
And that's impressive, that is priceless!
Everyone gets moved when we talk about it.
One thing we want to say: go out here, if not today, then tomorrow.
Get people together, the family, a friend, girlfriend,
male or female crush, whatever you want.
Make some food, not to do just a mise-en-scène with the girl,
but make some food, get together, chat.
Jimmy's going to say the final words.
JM: We are hungry for food,
and we are hungry for all these connections it brings us.
And you, what are you hungry for?
MN: Thank you, guys.
(Applause)