In Bahia, the Afro-Brazilian land of Caetano Veloso, meals are not thought of in terms of starter-main-dessert. The meal revolves around a large shared single dish, rich in red palm oil (dendê), accompanied by rice, manioc flour (farofa) and small spicy sauces placed on the side for everyone to serve themselves. Alongside this, there is a whole street food culture: the tabuleiro, the tray-table that the baiana, dressed all in white, sets up on street corners in Salvador, where you can buy golden fritters and coconut sweets. Fresh fruit drinks from the Northeast complete the picture.

Dendê, oil extracted from the African palm tree acclimated to Brazil, is the orange-red soul of Bahian cuisine. Brought by enslaved Africans, it gives a fiery color, deep aroma and Afro-Brazilian identity to almost all the great dishes of Bahia. For Caetano, the taste of dendê is the taste of childhood and roots.