Alexandre Staut

Alexandre Staut was born in Pinhal (SP), in 1973. He spent three years in France working as a chef and has a gastronomy blog called Tudo al dente.

He worked as reporter and editor for dailies Folha de S. Paulo, Jornal da Tarde and Gazeta Mercantil. In 2013, Staut founded the São Paulo Review of Books, a prestigious literary magazine which he founded in 2013.

PARIS-BREST

This memoir tells Alexandre Stout’s experience as a cook in France, where he spent three years in the cities of Brest, Tours, and Arromanches-Les-Bains. The narrative follows his discoveries of quality products and courses on traditional French cuisine, but also of music, literature, and history of each of the places where he lived, the official versions and those told by neighbors and other common people. The book is in itself a research on eating habits since the French Middle Age and 58 recipes the author learned from his and mentors friends.

PARIS-BREST is a celebration of love, friendship, life, good mood and pleasures of the table.

Winner of the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards in the Best French Cuisine Book category in 2016.

Publication/Status: By Companhia Editora Nacional (Brazil) in August, 2016. [210 pages]

“The recipes are also there, classic and delicious, but it is through memories, discoveries, and techniques to bring a certain Brazilian touch to the work as an apprentice cook in France that Alexandre Staut will win over the reader in PARIS-BREST. The book is a mix of romance, with travel diary, that will leave you with mouth-water
– Vogue Brazil

“The Gourmand World Cookbook Awards jury is delighted to announce that PARIS-BREST is the winner in its category: Best French Cuisine Book, in 2017. This book subverts what is known as a cuisine book. It is a narrative full of stories about France and the culture and habits of its people.”
– Jury of the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards

“Albert Camus wrote that the cities that taught him the most were precisely those that bored him the most. There are cities for sightseeing and cities for learning. Not always, I would say almost never, do the two types coincide. The thought flickered as I came upon a book called PARIS-BREST, in which the author Alexandre Staut switched from the predictable script of the light city, from where he left, to a city in the middle of nowhere, in an uncertain and enigmatic France”
– Reader’s Digest Brazil

“Journalist and writer, Alexandre Staut gives us a fabulous book, a narrative written with elegance, full with adventure and cultural information. He tells us his three-year experience in France cooking in various places. The description when he arrived in Paris going to Brest, located in the rich Bretagne, is delightful and binds us to continue reading. His first job, an internship in a professional garlic, reminds us about the lack of training of our young professionals. But this is another story. Recipes are provided and explained in an elegant and charming way. We just want to try everything. PARIS-BREST is the book of the year!”
– Prazeres da Mesa Magazine, Brazil/ Portugal

LET’S GO! (AVANTE!)

A first person narrative, this novel has as its main character a librarian at work, and it mixes his day to day routine at a decadent library with his memories from college in the 80’s. While some maintenance workers show up to put anti-moth poison on the shelves, the narrator randomly reads several books at the same time and remembers his teen years. A scene comes to his mind:

the moment when the protagonist discovered the tale “Frederico Paciência”, the only one with a gay theme written by Mário de Andrade, a Brazilian classic author, published after his death in Contos Novos.

Publication/Status: On submission.