Chef Thiago Mendes

Growing up around food in São Paulo

Thiago grew up in Limão, in the North Zone of São Paulo, where food was part of everyday family life. His mother ran a restaurant, and some of his earliest experiences in a kitchen came from being beside her, helping wherever he could.

That connection with food followed him as he got older. While studying at UNINOVE university, Thiago started a small food stall outside the campus selling freshly made crepes and juices to help pay his way through university. At the same time, he was working as a bank teller, but food was already becoming much more than a side project.

Those early experiences, from his mother’s restaurant to running his own small food business, gave Thiago his first understanding of what happens beyond the cooking itself: serving people, working under pressure and creating food that brings people back.

Starting again in Sydney

In 2005, Thiago moved from Brazil to Australia. He arrived in Sydney speaking very little English and took his first job as a kitchen hand at Pappa Giovani in Bondi.

What started as an entry-level kitchen job quickly became the beginning of a professional cooking career. Thiago worked his way up to commis chef, learning the rhythm, discipline and techniques of a commercial kitchen from the ground up.

Rather than arriving in Australia as an established chef, he built his career step by step. That experience of starting from the bottom would shape the way he approached kitchens, teams and hospitality throughout the years that followed.

Learning the craft in Sydney kitchens

Thiago’s career soon took him through different parts of Sydney’s hospitality industry. After working at Sydney’s International Airport, he joined Pink Salt in Double Bay, where he completed his apprenticeship under chef Zac Pauling and worked as a chef de partie.

Zac later invited Thiago to join a new fish restaurant opening in Bondi as sous chef, giving him the opportunity to take on greater responsibility in the kitchen and continue developing his craft.

From there, Thiago went on to work alongside Greg Doyle at The Pier and gained further experience in kitchens including ARIA and The Grace Hotel. He later spent several years with Iris Capital Group as an executive chef.

By that point, his career had taken him from kitchen hand to commis chef, chef de partie, sous chef and executive chef. Each kitchen added something different to the way he cooks today, from technique and consistency to leadership, service and understanding what people genuinely enjoy eating.

From Sydney to Bali

Thiago’s cooking career also took him outside Australia. For three consecutive years, he travelled from Sydney to Seminyak, Bali, to cook at a major food event.

Each year the event sold out. Cooking for large crowds in a completely different environment reinforced something that had been part of Thiago’s relationship with food since childhood: the best food experiences are rarely only about what is on the plate. They are about the people, the atmosphere and the experience of sharing food together.

Creating Chachii

After years spent working in restaurants and kitchens created by other people, Thiago eventually decided it was time to build something of his own.

Chachii gave him the opportunity to bring together two important parts of his life: the Brazilian food and flavours he grew up with in São Paulo, and everything he had learned during his years working in Australian hospitality.

That combination still shapes the restaurant today. Brazilian ingredients such as picanha, cassava, farofa, biquinho chilli and Brazilian chorizo sit alongside steaks, BBQ, burgers, slow-cooked meats and wood-fired pizza. Australian produce and local suppliers are used wherever possible, while fire, smoke and slow cooking remain central to Thiago’s approach in the kitchen.

It was never about simply recreating a restaurant from Brazil in Sydney. Chachii developed into something that reflects both places, with Brazilian roots and a distinctly Sydney approach to eating.

Building Chachii through Sydney

Chachii itself has travelled through different parts of Sydney. The restaurant previously operated in Petersham and Wolli Creek, where Thiago and the team built a community of Brazilian customers, local regulars and people discovering Brazilian food for the first time.

Those locations eventually came to an end during the difficult COVID years, but the idea behind Chachii continued.

Today, the restaurant has a new home in Alexandria, with a more relaxed and family-friendly concept. The Brazilian identity remains central, but the restaurant is designed for a much broader Sydney audience, whether someone is coming in for familiar Brazilian flavours or simply looking for steak, pizza, burgers or BBQ.

Brazilian roots. Sydney experience.

Thiago’s cooking today reflects the full journey that came before Chachii: growing up around his mother’s restaurant in São Paulo, selling crepes and juices outside university, arriving in Australia with little English, starting again as a kitchen hand and gradually building a career through Sydney’s hospitality industry.

Chachii brings those experiences together. It is a personal restaurant, but it is also the result of years spent learning how professional kitchens work, how ingredients behave and, most importantly, how food can bring very different people around the same table.

For Thiago, Brazilian food is not only about recreating recipes from home. It is about carrying those flavours forward, combining them with the place he lives now and creating food that feels equally at home in São Paulo and Sydney.

São Paulo roots. Sydney experience. Chachii on the plate.