Paulo Nou, the name behind the NOU Restaurant phenomenon that turns 14

Paulo Nou has a story worthy of motivational movie plot, capable of inspiring anyone. With an appetite to set up gastronomy businesses, he is the strong name behind the group that brings together always crowded houses in São Paulo, such as the restaurant NOU today with three units, and the bar Negroni. More recently, this team has been joined by the nouzin dedicated to sandwiches and brunches, and the hamburger NOU Burger. It does not stop there.

His entrepreneurial streak doesn’t come from today. At the age of 11, restless like any pre-teen and eager to earn a little money, he started to store cars on the streets near an open market. Friendly and polite, he soon gained the trust of the clientele who began to ask him to accompany them shopping at the fair, carrying their bags.

It was then that he thought: “I can’t leave my post as a car guard”. He gathered his friends from the street, offering them a “job” to save his point, while performing the role of a bag carrier. Soon he became friends with the fairgrounds, who asked for his help in setting up and dismantling the stalls.

“This montage started at 3 am and I realized that these guys were hungry and had no open shops. It was then that I had my first experience with food, making natural sandwiches to sell to them”, he recalls.

From the age of 11 to 14, Paulo dedicated himself to this, until he found a formal job at the faculty of the Albert Einstein hospital as a beadle. A born entrepreneur, he started to organize the famous garage parties of the 80s, together with his brother and some friends.

There, there were two large balconies. The first was to sell the events to universities such as PUC, USP and Mackenzie. The second is that, as the parties were clandestine and had no fixed address, he used a light cannon, which shone in the skies of Morumbi, to guide the arrival of the party-goers.

“By the time I was turning 18, the parties had grown so much that I was already selling advance tickets at large CD stores and beverage sponsors were looking for me,” says Paulo.

And it was in a meeting with a whiskey representative, where he observed a relaxed service and full of young people, that turned on that famous light: he wanted to work in a restaurant.

After a training process, he was then hired at a restaurant. So passionate about that area, he soon became manager. But he never stopped thinking that his goal was to have his own business, to organize it the way he believed it would work.

He went through many places, but always with that clinical look, observing what could work and what didn’t work at all. After going through several reputable restaurants at the time, Paulo felt he was ready to open his own business.

“I started looking for partners who wanted to run the kitchen, because I was always much more the person in the living room, the service”, he comments. It was then that, having studied in a public school all his life, he took the Enem, and won – through the Prouni program – a full scholarship at the Senac Santo Amaro gastronomy school and there he met his two partners, one of them still his partner, the chef Amilcar Azevedo 🇧🇷

Once the partners were found, the search began for a place close to gastronomic districts such as Pinheiros, Itaim Bibi and Vila Madalena. Also, it had to be easily accessible and cheap to rent.

When we found the property where the NOU is today, in Ferreira de Araújo, it met all these characteristics. But it was a rundown area, close to Largo da Batata, full of restaurants by the kilo. The only ones that were around here were Pirajá, Bráz and the Dô restaurant. Because of this location, we couldn’t find partners, only Mistral supported us. Everyone thought I was crazy.

Paulo Nou

In a short time, however, the NOU gained notoriety – it was considered the owner of the best Milanese in town (the recipe is exactly the same from the opening). It then began to attract an audience that wanted well-prepared food, without too much frills and at a fair price. “At the time, I remember the media wanting to get the name of bistronomic 🇧🇷

It was then that Paulo launched a movement, that of young people involved with gastronomy, who wanted to open their own businesses and make a difference. Detail: most began to embrace the low pine trees , a term that Paulo says was one of those who coined the reference to Baixo Augusta. (And here’s a parenthesis: while the NOU was in full swing and gaining fans, Paulo was still divided between other activities, such as professional football referee, hip hop clubhouse, Chocolate and the Vegas club, in what was then Baixo Augusta ).

From then on, that’s what everyone already knows: the Ferreira de Araújo has become one of the busiest gastronomic hotspots in Pine trees and that today has every centimeter disputed by investors.

A business that turned into several

When they saw that the tables at the NOU were crowded day and night, the partners opened the Bro – a place that operated for five years on the same street and was premised on sandwiches and fast foods. However, if Paulo was an enterprising guy at 11, this would only increase in adulthood.

the bar design Negroni – also in Baixo Pinheiros, on Rua Padre Carvalho, and which is dedicated to good pizzas and, of course, to drinks – was born when a customer asked for a Negroni, when he was still an employee. Having no idea how the drink was prepared – at the time, caipirinha was the fashion –, he asked this client how to make it. After this “squeezing”, he went to study the history of the Italian classic, knowing that in the future it would be a business. Before he was 20 years old, he had registered the name Negroni.

“The Negroni was born six years ago, also to be a cocktail bar – there were none here. When I thought about putting pizzas in, I didn’t tell my partners because they certainly wouldn’t agree. For years, pizza-bar was considered tacky. But if we look now, how many cool pizza bars have come up?” Today the bar with low lighting and live jazz on Thursdays, sells around 3 thousand Negronis/month.

Subsequently, the NOU opened its second unit in Rua dos Pinheiros , already in the area consolidated by houses such as Le Jazz. The brand’s third address came far from Paulo’s stronghold: Praça Vilaboim, where he believes he played an important role in rescuing the region. And he was right. With a huge balcony on a beautiful corner, the restaurant is always packed, whether for lunch or dinner.

Just to give you an idea, currently the three houses sell an average of 4,000 breaded steaks per month 🇧🇷 The businessman even opened the Satú focused on Brazilian cuisine, along with Flavio Miyamura , Paulo and Amilcar. The restaurant, however, ended up closing its doors because of the pandemic.

After the scare was over – the NOU gained expertise in delivery in recent years and today is still one of the important arms of the business –, Paulo and Amílcar launched the nouzin 🇧🇷 It is a place that carries in its design a little bit of the extinct Mano, but which, in addition to good sandwiches, is dedicated to serving brunch all day – of course, also in Baixo Pinheiros.

“I noticed this growing tendency of São Paulo residents to look for good places to have breakfast, something that was already very successful in the American market. We were simply hugged by the customers and Nouzin is doing very well!”, he enthuses.

It is in the same property that it works – for delivery only – the NOU Burger which was born in the pandemic as a form of business to help the group.

Anyone who thinks that Paul’s business ends there is wrong. He’s still ahead of the Steppe a much more informal bar.

“It’s a project that was born five years ago, in a more hidden area of ​​Pinheiros, but it’s been a blast from day one. Only Brazilian music is played there, all the cocktails also have this vibe and we turned the property into a square. Estepe is really a delight of place, to go without pretense.”

Now it’s time to wait for Paulo’s next steps, who will certainly not stop working in gastronomy.