At Pike Place Market, the Afro Brazilian chef may not find crates of umbu and caju, the South American fruit that produces cashew nuts, but Collins does find plenty of citrus, pungent spices, and a wealth of regional seafood—all of which help recreate the dishes of her heritage at the wildly popular pop up, Baiana Seattle. Whether cooking for an event or testing recipes for her forthcoming cookbook, Collins can be found prepping chicken to make coxinha, a Brazilian croquette; procuring rockfish for moqueca seafood stew; or soaking black beans in preparation for her signature acarajé, black-eyed pea fritters stuffed with a treasure trove of shrimp, vegetables, and peanut sauce.

While Seattleites can’t get enough of Collins’ cooking, Afro Brazilian cuisine is largely underrepresented in American dining—and the West Coast chef and Chopped champion is hoping to change that. “We are taught that [Afro Brazilian] food is bad, that it’s low-level, that it doesn’t deserve to be on a plate at a restaurant,” Collins tells me. “My culture deserves to be seen and acknowledged and put on a pedestal just as much as French cuisine, Italian cuisine, and Asian cuisine.”

Growing up in a predominantly white Seattle neighborhood, the chef initially tried to distance herself from her history, a form of protection to help her fit into a new world. Despite childhood attempts to run from her heritage, she says her parents’ history and her upbringing made it impossible. “I couldn’t run away from my roots at all, as much as I tried,” she says. “It really wasn’t until recently that I started feeling more empowered to be who I am and really embrace it.”

African culture first touched Brazil in the 16th century, when the first of 5 million Africans were kidnapped, brought to ports in Bahia, and forced to work on sugarcane plantations. Exceeding the number of enslaved Africans brought to the United States, Brazil became (and still is) home to the largest Black population in the Americas, as well as one of the largest groups of people of African descent outside of the African continent. The state of Bahia, where Brazil’s largest population of Black people live, has influenced the entire country’s foodways. 

Similar to Black populations forcibly migrated to other parts of the Americas, Afro Brazilians have been vilified and marginalized throughout their history in the Western world. Forced into cycles of poverty and disenfranchisement, they constitute the majority of Brazil’s underserved, impoverished, and crime-ridden favelas, and face ongoing institutional racism often reinforced by bigoted politicians. For generations, white Brazilian culture has been celebrated as the face of the country’s tourism, while the descendants of those integral to Brazil’s foodways, music, and art have been trivialized. Many Afro Brazilian cooks today grew up during a time when their culture was barely acknowledged, especially as it relates to food.

“We lost our connection, our roots, where we came from,” says Bahia native and Seattle resident Sandra Rocha Evanoff. A chef and educator, Evanoff moved to the U.S. in 2007 and immediately sought out Brazilian ingredients and spices to recreate some of her favorite dishes from home. Her search turned into a career, and now she runs Brasil Comes to You, where she offers online cooking classes and hosts private events, lectures, and interactive dinners that allows participants to cook and learn about Bahian history and culture. Like Collins, Evanoff’s connection to Afro Brazilian cuisine is twofold: She is reclaiming the connections to African cooking while also pushing Americans beyond the antiquated, white-washed understanding of Brazilian food. “Our history is African, and our food,” Evanoff says. “Everything about where it came from, where and how it arrived—it is African.”

Bahian food, which Afro Brazilians across Brazil typically grow up enjoying in their home kitchens, is distinguished by its flavor, history, and purpose. Dishes such as acarajé are prepared to feed an otherworldly realm as well as earthly inhabitants. In Brazil, women who sell acarajé and other street foods are known as Baianas de Acarajé, descendants of enslaved women who encourage cultural resilience and preserve African foodways and religious traditions. The Baianas also prepare sacrificial dishes to feed deities of the Candomblé pantheon, a religion that combines elements from African cultures, South American indigenous cultures, and Catholicism. Acarajé is perhaps the most visible demonstration of this practice, a glorious, handheld crustacean-packed fritter made from ingredients central to the Black diaspora: okra, black-eyed peas, and dendê oil—liquid gold in Bahian kitchens.

Today, Bahian food is starting to receive some of the attention it’s long been owed, both in Brazil and the U.S. In Seattle, lines wrap the block for Collins’ creations—moqueca with mussels, clams, and tomato confit; feijoada Baiana; and baked beef empanadas called pastel. While handing out plates, Collins educates patrons on the importance of the dishes and ingredients. During her appearance on Chopped in 2021, the chef prepared kibe, a popular Brazilian street food snack with a different historical anchor: Lebanese and Syrian migrants in the late 19th century. “Cooking gives me an opportunity to teach people about this really rich and extensive history of Brazil that’s lesser told in other parts of the world,” Collins says.

Afro Brazilians, like Black Americans, share a similar history of erasure and underappreciation in the media. “We didn’t have the right references on TV, we didn’t have people talking beautifully about us, and we didn’t have groups that supported us,” says Aline Shaw, who runs the website Brazilian Kitchen Abroad. Originally from Rio de Janeiro and now based in Portugal, she recalls the first 20 years of her life as a multiracial Brazilian during a time when it wasn’t as popular to celebrate Black culture as it is today. But during the last decade or so, she noted, Black people in Brazil have worked to reclaim their culture and foodways and are fighting to share the full African history behind nationally celebrated dishes like moqueca and acarajé. “People are really fighting to get Black stories out,” Shaw says. “People are proud of their Black heritage, they are openly talking about a lot of perspectives, and they’re reshaping, culturally, what it means about all of the parts of being Brazilian.”

Communicating this history in the U.S. has been more challenging. While more than 600,000 Brazilians live in the United States today, there is little research as to what percentage is of Afro Brazilian heritage. The community may be small, but it is certainly mighty: Despite Brazilian cuisine spanning 26 states and a country 2,700 miles wide, Collins, Evanoff, and Shaw have worked tirelessly to shift the American perception of the country’s cuisine beyond all-you-can-eat steakhouses. For them, preparing their traditional foods is always in service of centering Bahia, and honoring their connection to their home—and they know there’s no better way to achieve that than through a good meal.

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