Where the Chefs Eat: Ixta Belfrage’s favourite restaurants in Tuscany

In the food world, Ixta Belfrage is a name often associated with flavour. (And, in case you’re wondering, her name is pronounced “Eesta.”) Part of the Ottolenghi tribe, Belfrage co-authored the cookbook Flavour with Ottolenghi in 2020, and is known for being highly articulate in the nuances of spices, herbs and seasoning – a skillset she displayed beautifully in her first solo cookbook, Mezcla (2022). This summer, Belfrage releases her follow-up, Fusão, a love letter to her Brazilian heritage.

“[These are] untraditional recipes inspired by Brazil,” Belfrage tells me when we meet. Her background is a fusion of her father’s English heritage, her mother’s Brazilian heritage, and a childhood spent in Italy. She tells me that “Fusao” means “fusion or union” in Portuguese. “It’s not usually a word associated with food,” Belfrage clarifies. “More so with chemistry or music. It’s a beautiful word, and the meaning is easily understandable even if you don’t speak Portuguese. I love the idea of giving new meaning to it. After all, language, like food, is ever evolving.”

A genealogy test revealed that Belfrage’s lineage includes Brazilian, African, and Portuguese heritage, which inspired her to write her new book. But, she tells me, “I wasn’t surprised by the results, because so much of Brazil is mixed. It’s what I love about the cuisine. There are so many diverse immigrant populations which have contributed to the food culture as we know it.”

“The second biggest diaspora of Italians outside of Italy is in Brazil,” Belfrage continues. “The biggest diaspora of Japanese people is in Brazil. There are more Lebanese people in Brazil than there are in Lebanon today. All of these cuisines have enhanced Brazilian food.” Brazilian food isn’t just about beans and rice or BBQ, Belfrage insists. “It’s such a huge country. It has 26 states, and many of those states are bigger than France. I say quite a few times in the introduction that I’m barely scratching the surface.”

But Belfrage actually grew up far from Brazil’s vast beauty, in an equally inspirational but much smaller area of Tuscany, which she describes as “halfway up a mountain that is in between the village of Acone (at the top of the mountain) and the town of Rufina (at the bottom of the mountain).” She recently celebrated her Italian upbringing by teaming up with Peroni Nastro Azzurro to create five recipes that nod to five different areas of the country, her ‘Journey through Italy.’