Chef Tadashi names this restaurant after his grandmother, who was the first person to support him in his pursuit of cooking and traveling the world. He is Brazilian born chef of Japanese descent, but is fluent in English, Japanese, and Brazilian Portuguese. In addition to his very cultured background, he’s led service at Hiden in Miami, and he has worked with famed chef Nobu Matsuhisa across Europe. Kanoe offers just 8 seatings per night. One of the most respectable and key reasons for this is Chef Tadashi values work and life balance for himself and his employees.

We wanted to try some less authentic Brazilian food, and we received a recommendation from a friend to try out this place. They mentioned they were very impressed by the quality of the fish and felt it would meet our expectations, especially for sushi. This was one of the few Asian-centric restaurants in Natal. We were able to walk in around 7:00 PM here without any reservations. To our surprise, there were plenty of seats.

In our last night in São Paulo, we met up with my partner’s friend at Nakka in Jardim. This was a sushi restaurant close to our hotel that offers Japanese fusion type food. At first glance at the menu, the items look exactly similar to anything and everything in the US. My partner was adamant that Brazilian Japanese food was much different than what I had. The friend made a reservation for 7 PM, so we were able to walk in and get seated.