Fera Palace Hotel

Fera Palace: a fabulous Hotel and trendy happy hour

Fera Palace Hotel. Foto: Assessoria

Impeccable decor, kind and helpful service and sophisticated drinks are putting Fera Palace Hotel on the city’s coolest list. The hotel, in art deco style, had the original architecture preserved after the renovation. If it’s pure charm to those who stay, this icon of Salvador’s Historic Center is also becoming the meeting point for a lively crowd in their happy hours and pool sunsets.

Located on Chile Street – the first street built in Brazil – the hotel has 81 rooms and striking architecture and design, inspired by the 1930s. Among the highlights is the penthouse overlooking the São Marcelo Fort, Mercado Modelo and All Saints Bay. On the 1st floor, the former Casino Hall, immortalized in Jorge Amado’s “Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands”, was transformed into a Ballroom, with a ceiling height of 6m and capacity for 300 people. The hotel also has five multipurpose meeting and conference rooms.

If you visit any of the exhibitions, theaters, or sights in the Historic Center, extend the trip to Fera for a coffee in the lobby bar or lunch at the restaurant. The already famous rooftop lounge bar is renamed Bar de Todos os Santos, with a new menu. The good thing is that the restaurant and the lobby bar are open to bystanders. The rooftop bar is only for guests or for events.

About the restaurant

Chef Fabrício Lemos opens new restaurant at Fera Palace Hotel

Fabrício Lemos. Fera Palace.
Foto: Divulgação

Originating in the Yoruba vocabulary, the word Omí means “water” and refers to the meaning of fertility, generation of life. This is also the name of the new restaurant at the Fera Palace Hotel, which concept was signed by the award-winning duo of Soteropolitan chefs Fabrício Lemos and Lisiane Arouca. The environment underwent a conceptual renovation and started to function for lunch and dinner.

Installed on the traditional Rua Chile, in the Historic Center of Salvador, the Fera Palace already maintained geographic proximity to the All Saints Bay. But now, with the arrival of Omí, this bay that is synonymous with beauty, cultural richness and diversity will be even more present in the daily lives of guests and visitors to the Fera.

“I have this connection with the sea rooted in my trajectory. By training and passion, I chose to pay this tribute to the All Saints Bay. We are going to bring an alignment between simplicity and valuing the inputs from this region, which is enormously rich”, explains chef Fabricio Lemos, who graduated from the traditional and renowned French gastronomy school Le Cordon Bleu and has consistent experience with Mediterranean, Italian, French and Spanish cuisine.

As the name and the concept of Omí suggest, seafood and fish will be the captains of the menu, but there is also space for meat and options for vegetarians and vegans. In preparing the dishes, techniques of Mediterranean cuisine will be applied, which is one of the chef’s specialties.

Menu

To begin, among the starter options, for example, are crispy squid and octopus with paprika aioli or meat croquette with the famous smoked meat from Maragogipe. Then, among the main dishes, there can be a lobster with béarnaise sauce to be shared, accompanied by gnocchi with porcini au gratin. This is an example of a dish that has seafood as a highlight, reinforcing the local tradition, but also bringing elements of Italian and French cuisine.

Also according to chef Fabrício Lemos, part of the restaurant’s concept is to bring what he defines as “the freshness of food straight from the sea to our table”. The sweet final part is signed by chef-pâtissière Lisiane Arouca, who, in addition to being a partner, is chef Fabrício Lemos’ wife. Lisiane, who has already signed the dessert menu in traditional restaurants in the capital of Bahia, is in charge of these delicacies menu at Omí.

From the starter to the main course, Omí has ​​another peculiarity. The ceramics where the dishes will be served were handcrafted by Atelier Buriti, by the ceramist Beatriz Godoy. The pieces were created in line with the restaurant’s concept and will be another element to be appreciated at Omí’s tables.

Fera’s Lobby Bar

The range of renovations also extends to the Fera’s lobby bar. The environment, also under the command of Fabrício Lemos, has the same concept applied in the restaurant and an exclusive menu, with options such as a hamburger made with fish. For the lobby bar, faster food was designed, but not less elaborate. The drinks menu is signed by cachaciere and bartender Isadora Fornari.

Valuing tradition

A large part of the inputs that will give life to Omí’s dishes come from the All Saints Bay itself. One of the main suppliers is the Cooperative of Fishermen and Shellfish Collectors of Vera Cruz, Repescar. Known for a long time by chef Fabrício Lemos, this group of men and women who make the sea their home and source of livelihood are an important part of the newest cuisine at Fera Palace.

Meeting the chefs

Responsible for Omí, Fabrício Lemos has a wide gastronomic experience in Brazil and abroad. In the United States, where he graduated, he worked in restaurants at the luxury hotel chain The Ritz-Carlton-Key Biscayne, Coconut Grove and Amelia Island in Florida. In Salvador, in addition to creating the concept and working in traditional restaurants in the capital of Bahia, he currently runs two of his own projects, the award-winning restaurants Origin and Orí, in which he also maintains a partnership with his partner and wife, chef Lisiane Arouca.

Award-winning, Fabrício already received the title of Chef of the Year by Veja Comer & Beber Salvador magazine, in 2014. The following year, he received the awards for Chef Revelation in Brazil and Best Restaurant in the Northeast to Amado, where he was a chef at the time, by Prazeres da Mesa Magazine. In 2017, he repeated the feat and was once again chosen Chef of the Year by Veja Comer & Beber Salvador.

Also from Salvador, Lisiane Arouca has a degree in Gastronomy from Estácio Bahia and a Chef de Cuisine course at Senac. She was a partner and owner of 4Chef’s, a company specializing in personalized confectionery, for four years. In 2019, she was elected the best chef-pâtissière in Brazil by the Best of the Year award, by the specialized magazine Prazeres da Mesa.

Service

Fera Palace Hotel
Address: Centro Histórico – Rua Chile, 20 – Comércio, Salvador – BA, Brazil
Contact: (71) 3036-9200.
Lina Restaurant Hours:
Breakfast – every day from 7am to 10:30 am;
Lunch – Monday to Friday, from 12pm to 3pm; Saturday, Sunday and holiday from 12pm to 4pm.
Dinner – Sunday to Wednesday, from 7pm to 10:30 pm; Thursday to Saturday from 7pm to 11pm.
Lobby Bar – every day from 12 am to 11 pm.