Janete's Midnight Cabyard Kitchen
It was Janete's Cabyard Kitchen that inspired the Hidden Kitchens series, and a new book, Hidden Kitchens: Stories, Recipes and More, about out-of-the-way, guerilla-style foodmakers who serve fervent patrons. Here's a taste of what first drew us in.
Story Notes: The Cabyard Kitchen
A lot of Kitchen Sisters stories are born in taxicabs. In fact, the Hidden Kitchens series was conceived in the back of a Yellow cab. Davia lives in San Francisco and hates to drive. She started noticing that every time she got into a Yellow cab, the driver was from Brazil. And they weren't just from Brazil; they all seemed to be from the same town: Goiânia. Inevitably, these cab ride conversations turned to music and food.
That's when the story of Janete emerged, a woman from their same hometown, who comes every night to an abandoned industrial street outside a cab dispatch lot to set up a makeshift, rolling night kitchen -- hot salgadinhos, bollinhos, pão de quejo. She cooks the food of home. By dawn, Janete and her blue tarpulin tent are packed up and gone.
One night around midnight, we decided to go in search of Janete's secret cabyard kitchen. A driver had given us a sketchy map and told us to park in the cab lot and walk from there.
"Just look like you know where you're going," he said, assuring us no one would notice we didn't work for the company.
The fact that we weren't drivers seemed pretty obvious, though -- neither of us is from Goiâna, and no other cabbies in sight were wearing headphones and packing 10 pounds of recording equipment. Still, we walked through the fleet of parked cabs, past the graveyard-shift mechanic working on a taxi up on racks, past the checkout point -- an--out onto a street in the middle of nowhere.
There, under a streetlight and a small blue tarp, four drivers were laughing, huddled over big plates of food, eating and talking in Portuguese. Brazilian music spilled out of a parked cab. Janete, shy and smiling, presided -- a vision of what our "hidden kitchen" idea is all about.
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Along the Road: Music in the Air
The Cabyard Kitchen is a great place to eat and hang out. You never know who might be there. There are cab drivers from Goiânia; cousins of cab drivers from Goiâna; cab drivers from Russia, Iran, San Mateo; kids pouring out the nightclubs in the outer Mission; couples from Morgan Hill catching dinner before a movie; and musicians.
And every night, there is music in the air. Sometimes it's Sergio, singing the latest track from a CD he was cutting in a local studio; sometimes Marcello brought a guitar; sometimes a driver would pull up in his yellow cab, park, open the door and crank up his radio so the sound of Gal Costa would fill the street.
When we started asking about the music of Goiânia we were led into a whole new world. Sertaneja is the big thing. It's sort of the Nashville Sound of Brazil. Country, but highly produced, jacked-up pop with driving rhythms. Some of the stars of the Sertaneja sound are Leandro & Leonardo, Rick & Renner, Zezé di Camargo & Luciano, Chitãozinho & Xororó. To hear a sampling of the music, try the Sertaneja Music Internet radio site.
Also, we couldn't resist including a cut from yellow cab driver Sergio Pedroso's CD: Somos Assim. He autographed the cover for us on the street at about 2 in the morning at Janete's kitchen one night when the street was bumping.
While we were searching for the right music for this story we also came across a beautiful Brazilian CD: Brazil Forró: Music for Maids and Taxi Drivers. Forró isn't the sound of Goiânia -- it's from th--Northeast -- but no matte-- it's music we loved discovering and want to pass along.
We're also including a full version of the music that runs under the scene on the street with the musicians at Janete's. It's from Cyro Batista's CD, Vira Loucos: Cyro Baptista Plays the Music of Villa Lobos. We've been sitting on it since we began our Lost & Found Sound project for All Things Considered in 1999. Kazunori Sugiyama and Jim Anderson in New York gave it to us then as one of the more unusual recordings they had been involved in creating. We've loved it ever since and been hoping to use it in a story. Finally, we did.
There is an endless flow between Goiânia and San Francisco -- of--abbies, food, and conversation; of people trying to make enough money here to support their families there. Or make enough here, to go back and make it there.
But they all wait for Janete because she's one of their own -- and the food she cooks keeps them connected to what they left, and to the road ahead.
In San Francisco, Janete is still struggling to go from running an improvised street kitchen to her dream of owning a catering truck and growin her business.
But in the process, she has already made an impact on the way people live. Cab drivers -- not only Brazilians but also people from all over -- have built their nights around the food and the fun Janete's makeshift kitchen provides.
Historian Donna Gabaccia comments on immigrants and their food culture in her book We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans (Harvard Univ. Press):
"I've studied international migration all my scholarly life and I became interested in food as a scholarly project because I was looking for ways to study the fashion by which foreigners and immigrants who had come to the United States have altered the U.S.
"Normally when we think about the immigration story, we think about how immigrants become Americans and how they change and how they are transformed by the encounter with us and with other Americans. But it was always clear to me that the United States has always also changed and Americans and American culture have also changed in response to immigration. And it just occurred to me that food was one area where that transformation of the whole country by the newcomers arriving was particularly obvious."
Produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva) with Laura Folger.
Associate producers: Kate Volkman and Maria Walcutt.
Mixed by Jim McKee.
Translation by Susan Maria Howard.
Maria Janete de Moraes and Pedro Milhomen; all the Yellow Cab drivers from Goiâna Brazil who told us about Janete's Cabyard Kitchen -- in--uding Marcello Ribeiro and Marco Coelho.
All the Brazilians cooking salgados at Mr. Pizza Man who told us about Sertaneja music; Tuca for the music; Mercado Brazil; Kevin North at Sunset Soccer Supply; and photographer Robert Gumpert, all in San Francisco.
"Agepê, Ela Nao Gosta De Mim" from O Samba, compiled by David Byrne.
"Passion in the Basement" and "Ama/Teresinha de Jesus" from Vira Loucos - Cyro Baptista plays the music of Villa Lobos.
"Galos de Briga" by João Bosco.
"Fuló de Junco" From the soundtrack album, Baile Perfumado um filme de Paulo Caldas e lírio Ferreira.
Hidden Kitchens theme music: Excerpted from the group Czokolm's "Eddig Veneg," intertwined with the electric violin of Wieslaw Porgorzelski. Mixed by Jim McKee.
- Vira Loucos: Cyro Baptista Plays the Music of Villa Lobos by Cyro Baptista
- Brazil Forró: Music for Maids and Taxi Drivers by various
Unidentified Speaker: (Unintelligible) drivers, anybody for Market and (unintelligible) Streets, please, Jackson and Franklin --
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
This morning we have another of our Hidden Kitchens chronicles which tracks secret cooking across America. Well, not exactly secret, but certainly out of sight, until the Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva, find them.
(Soundbite of radio)
INSKEEP: In San Francisco the Kitchen Sisters noticed that every time they took a Yellow cab, the driver was from Brazil.
Unidentified Speaker: (Unintelligible) take a cabs or what?
INSKEEP: Not just from Brazil, but from the same town in Brazil--Goiania. Cab ride conversations inevitably turned to music and food.
Unidentified Speaker: Janete, right? Yellow cab? She does a couple of things also, snacks...
INSKEEP: That's when the story of Janete emerged--a woman from the cabbies' hometown who came each evening after dark to the abandoned industrial street outside the cab company and set up a make-shift, rolling night kitchen. The Kitchen Sisters went in search of Janete and have been following the saga of her cab yard kitchen over the past two years.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. SERGIO PEDROSO (Taxicab Driver, Yellow Cab, San Francisco): After midnight, that's when the big crowds come over--taxi drivers, nightclub people, (unintelligible) buyers, this is a spot for everyone--Janete's tent, the blue tent (laughs). We are in front of the garage of the Yellow Cab, San Francisco, close by the sidewalk in the middle of nowhere. My name is Sergio Pedroso. I drive the Yellow cab. She comes here and cook for us.
Ms. MARIA JANETE de MORAES (Cabyard Kitchen Cook): (Through Translator) My name is Janete de Moraes. I make (unintelligible). Is my business. (Foreign language spoken) yellow cabbie. Shish-ko-bob and rice and beans, chicken, this is (unintelligible).
Mr. PEDRO MILHOMEN (Husband of Janete): I am Pedro Milhomen, Janete's husband. I was born in Goiania but I work as a taxi driver daytime. You know, I mean, I help her out a little bit but this is her business.
(Soundbite of music)
Ms. DE MORAES (Foreign language spoken):(Through Translator) When I start working at the Yellow cab yard, everything was really dirty around there. I needed to make the whole area clean. It was full of homeless people and the police was always coming to me and saying be careful, this is a dangerous area. But they looked out for me and other people started looking out for me. And you're not allowed to serve food there but I set up that spot--people felt it was a safe place to be and a safe place to eat.
Mr. MARCOS COELHO (Taxicab Driver, Yellow Cab, San Francisco): Her kitchen, on the beginning started in her car, just little things, and then comes rice and beans and the (unintelligible). My name is Marco Coelho. I'm from Goiania. Now is the truck is coming. We're not gonna have this place anymore. We're gonna a big truck and she gonna park here and put some tables outside and the Brazilian music.
Unidentified Speaker: The tent's not accepted by the Health Department so we have to do away with this tent and get a kitchen truck--legal. You have to legalize it. It's $80,000 which is a big investment for us.
(Soundbite of music)
Unidentified Speaker: In the beginning when she came was the drivers, the cabbies --
Mr. MARCELLO RIBEIRO (Taxicab Driver, Yellow Cab, San Francisco): On the Yellow cab, they like the Brazilian drivers. There's about 386 Brazilian driving a cab. My name is Marcello Ribeiro. When you grow up in Brazil, the thing we love to do is the car racing, and motorcycle racing--and lot of business here like North Beach Pizza, Mr. Pizza Man--all the drivers, they are from Goiania. Janete's the place where we take a break when we are hungry. Then the good word started to spread out and now the whole neighborhood comes here.
Ms. DE MORAES (Foreign language spoken):(Through Translator) Sometimes the people that deliver papers use that street and musicians stop by to eat. They started to play, too, and I put out chairs in the street.
(Soundbite of crowd at game)
Ms. DE MORAES (Foreign language spoken):(Through Translator) Then there was the World Cup and we put out the T.V. set and you know how Brazilians are. We had 500 people there to watch all the games. We were there until 5:30, 6:00 in the morning. It was crazy.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. ERAJ FRATENOU(PH): Last night it was raining so hard. It was pouring and it was so windy and everything was shaking around here but she stayed. Her friend and her husband, they hold the tent and after everybody goes home, then she goes home. My name is Eraj Fratenou and I was born in Persia, Iran. I'm a cab driver. I'm driving. I came here to have dinners. Everything is good she cooks. Persian food is rice and kebab, just like this. I didn't know anything about the Brazilian food before (laughs).
Mr. RIBEIRO: It's very hard to how the races get together like when you go to the airport, we have three parking lots for cabs there and you see cab drivers from all over the world separate in groups--India, Russia, China, Brazil, Italy--they don't get together. Janete is here for so many years and she knows little things about every one of us. She is like our mother. Even when we don't have money, we can eat and pay another day.
(Soundbite of music)
Ms. DE MORAES (Foreign language spoken):(Through Translator) Someone was following me. I had a lot of cash. I was robbed at my apartment. I think that robbery affected me a lot. I think it does affect me to this day. I hear a little noise in the house, I'm always afraid, but I just gave what I have and I came out with my life.
Unidentified speaker: The life is more important than money.
Ms. DE MORAES (Foreign language spoken):(Through Translator) I don't want to work in the streets any more. It's very hard. The truck--I use that truck for 5, 6 months. I decided that it was better if I returned it. It was not something that we would be using any longer.
(Soundbite of music)
Unidentified Speaker: And now she's driving.
Ms. DE MORAES (Foreign language spoken):(Through Translator) Now I'm a driver and I also work inside Kragen Auto parts. I still want to work with food. I want to have my own restaurant. I want to go to culinary school. My blue tent kitchen--I really miss it sometimes. That was a good time. I think I lived for those cabdrivers. The street is a place that everyone goes. It's just a freer place to be.
INSKEEP: Hidden Kitchens is produced by The Kitchen Sisters and Jay Allison. Mixed by Jim McKee. To find out more about Janete's cooking and the new Hidden Kitchens book, visit NPR.org. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.
