A cozinha de quatro estações do Tuju chega ao 16º lugar: a história em inglês, no seu nível

Four seasons on a plate: how Tuju's São Paulo cooking reached 16th place

Most restaurants change their menu when the calendar tells them to. Tuju, in São Paulo, takes its cue from the local climate. On November 4, 2026, Ivan Ralston's restaurant was ranked 16th in The 50 Best Restaurants 2026 and picked up the Highest New Entry Award, a leap from 70th on last year's extended list.

The recognition rests on a distinctly local kitchen. Ralston and researcher Katherina Cordás have built a seasonal São Paulo cuisine drawing on small producers, Brazilian fish, and fruit and vegetables in season. The ten-course tasting menu, priced at R$1,650 per person, is rewritten every three months across four seasons of its own: Umidade, Chuva, Ventania and Seca, or Humidity, Rain, Wind and Dry.

It has not been a straight road: Tuju closed in 2020 and reopened at the end of 2023 at a new address near Avenida Brigadeiro Faria Lima.

The ceremony in Lima also brought a second trophy, the Art of Hospitality Award, which Ralston and Cordás went on stage to receive. Speaking to CNN Brasil, Cordás argued that hospitality starts behind the scenes: if the team is not happy, it does not exist.

That care extends to training, with service sessions twice a week and classes in history, theatre and the history of gastronomy, as well as English and Spanish.

Hospitality and language learning have a lot in common: both start with paying attention to the other person. A kitchen rooted in its own seasons, run by a team that also studies English and Spanish, shows that being local and being open are not opposites.