“Do you know how many times people knock on my door and ask for jobs every day?” Goncalves asked. In fact, he said, the restaurant industry in New Jersey depends on them. And Goncalves said he does not have any issue with hiring immigrants like himself. “He is an example of the kind of person who will come in here a few times a year asking me to donate to a fundraiser at his synagogue, and of course I do, because if everybody helps one another in this community, we all continue to grow together.” # “He is a rabbi who learned to speak Portuguese in Brazil,” Goncalves said. “People who pass by me in the street here know me as the owner of Samba,” he said.įor example, a customer in his restaurant approached Goncalves and spoke to him in Portuguese, sending love from his family to Goncalves. “We should value our people and help our neighbors whenever we can,” Goncalves said. Goncalves said he sources his farm-to-table ingredients from urban farmers such as Coeur et Sol Urban Farms in East Orange and local purveyors such as Harvest Drop in Hightstown. The people in Montclair, they are looking for those fresh ingredients.” “I try to make my food here exactly the same way we made it at home, where my mother had a small garden in which she would pick whatever she needed for the day,” Goncalves said. It was not difficult, Goncalves said, for the ethnically diverse community of Montclair to learn to love his homestyle Brazilian fare - as long as he remained authentic. “You hear people from Brazil say, ‘This is the food my grandmother used to cook,’ while other people from town say, ‘I never imagined Brazilian food would be this good,’ ” Goncalves said. The local Brazilian population especially comes for the feijoada, a black bean stew slow-cooked with pork sausage, ribs and dried steak, served with orange slices, collard greens and farofa. Goncalves has been in business nearly eight years now, turning tables at Samba three times each weekend in the 32-seat restaurant, with average bills reaching $75 for two. “A neighbor once told me that he had seen people coming and going from this for 30 years, and so would I.” “You know how many people said this place was cursed?” he said. Goncalves immediately opened Samba in 2010 as a small deli offering select Brazilian dishes. “That’s when I realized I always have had a passion for food,” he said. Ultimately, Goncalves said, he began asking himself what it was he really wanted to do here. “In one year, I had to take off from work five or six times, because you need to go to court, but then they push it, and you need to go again,” he said. Then came time for Goncalves to settle his affairs with U.S.
Not only would he find a job, but also a career that he loved, quickly ascending from busing to waiting tables to managing under popular chef and restaurateur Zod Arifai of Blu and Next Door in Montclair. To stay in the United States, however, Goncalves would need to find fast employment. “I said, ‘If I do not do this, I will regret it.’ ” “I told my boss, ‘This is the time for me,’ ” he said. It was not a month later that he would call his former employer. So, Goncalves obtained a six-month visa to tour the United States at the age of 23. “I thought, ‘Why shouldn’t I do something different with my life when I was not happy with it?’ ” I used to imagine it was my kitchen and I was preparing the food for my own restaurant.”īut, as young people often do, Goncalves said he ultimately followed the money instead of his gut instinct, studying computer engineering in Brazil before working in a bank. “I helped her peel potatoes and carrots in the kitchen,” he said. Goncalves grew up in Santa Catarina watching his grandmother and mother, a chef and restaurant owner in the southern state of Brazil, cook. “I quit my whole life by phone,” he said. So, after spending just 28 days in the United States in 2004, Goncalves made his decision. “We built this culture from scratch, like a cake in a kitchen,” he said.īut Goncalves, owner and executive chef of Samba in Montclair, said he would tell anyone the same message: Talk is cheap. It is what immigrants always have done here, Goncalves said. “It was my destiny to come here and open up a restaurant.” “I remember walking down Church Street telling myself that I would live in this city one day. “I fell in love with Montclair,” he said. Ilson Goncalves was traveling from his home in southern Brazil to tour and visit with friends in the United States. For Ilson Goncalves, Samba is the fulfillment of a dream.
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