Manoella Buffara
chef & restaurateur
curitiba, brazil
The year 2023 was special for Chef Manoella Buffara. Her restaurant, Manu, reached the 35th position on the Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants list. Additionally, she received the Caña Sustainable Restaurant Award and climbed two positions in The Best Chef Awards, now occupying the 19th position. As if that weren’t enough, Manu was a judge on the sixth season of the reality show The Taste Brasil.
According to Chef Alex Atala and curator and gastronomic journalist Andrea Petrini, Manu put Curitiba on the world gastronomic map. Opened in January 2011, the Manu restaurant has 6 tables and serves an average of 20 people per night, working exclusively with seasonal, fresh ingredients, and 60% vegetable products. Manu knows all the ingredients she uses in her recipes, as well as who produces them; 80% of her suppliers are located within a 300-kilometer radius of the restaurant.
From November 2022 to November 2023, Manu and her team ran the Fresh in the Garden restaurant at the Soneva Resort in the Maldives.
In 2023, Manu returned to the hotel industry, where she began her career and nurtures a special fondness for hospitality. Her passion for breakfast and brunch reveals a more relaxed Manu in the menus.
Manu took over the management of the Suryaa, a boutique hotel from the Curio Collection by Hilton. The hotel has 25 apartments that combine luxury, comfort, and technology, as well as a restaurant, bar, and event service for guests and the general public. The practicality and sophistication make Suryaa a unique experience in the Curitiba region.
In 2024, Exímia Bar emerged, with the proposal to further enhance the culture of Brazilian bars, without falling into cliché Brazilian stereotypes. The creators and partners, Márcio Silva, a renowned mentor and consultant in the global bar industry, and brothers Nicholas Fullen and Gabriel Fullen, from the Locale group, began collaborating in early 2021. Manu joined the group of partners to create a casual and comfortable atmosphere, bringing a menu with Brazilian influences and influences from her travels around the world.
Since the opening of Manu, the chef has been involved in sustainability actions, such as the preservation of native Brazilian bees, encouraging young producers not to abandon fishing and agriculture areas in Paraná, and Urban Gardens, which stimulate the creation of community gardens on vacant lots in Curitiba. In 2020, the chef launched the Manu Buffara Institute, responsible, among other initiatives, for the Alimenta Curitiba event, which takes place annually, distributing food and promoting education and social inclusion actions in the poorest areas of the city.
Elected in 2022 as the Best Female Chef in Latin America by the 50 Best Academy, Manu has also been a judge at the Basque Prize since 2019, where a group of important chefs from the world of gastronomy gather annually to discuss the future of gastronomy and elect the winner of the prize.
Manu Buffara is married to lawyer Dario Borges, owner of Borges de Liz Specialized Legal Logistics, and is the mother of Helena (9 years old), Maria (8 years old), and the border collie Snow.