Before & After: Two Foodies Give a Top-Floor Apartment a Top-Shelf Revamp in São Paulo

If you ask Greg Bosi and Frederico Leonardo Dora what their two sons love to eat, you’ll find it’s not a prototypical kid favorite like mac and cheese. "The recipe that they love the most is one of the first recipes that we cooked for them, a mushroom galette," says Greg, referring to a flaky tart with an assortment of mushrooms and cheese. "They ask for it on a weekly basis."

That’s just a typical dinner in the family’s household in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. Both Greg and Fred’s professional lives revolve around food, and even after they clock out, they love to cook at home. Fred studied the culinary arts in college, but upon realizing that he didn’t want a career confined to a restaurant or hotel kitchen, switched to media studies. He’s been producing food content for the internet ever since, most recently at the YouTube channel Banquete.

After the couple met over a berry smoothie 16 years ago, Greg became enamored with cooking, too. "What got me into cooking was that I met Fred and we fell in love, and I started seeing how he was doing it," says Greg, who worked in marketing up to that point and now produces content for the Brazilian studio of Tastemade, as well as his own Instagram recipe tutorial— and he recently completed a stint on the reality show MasterChef Brasil earlier this year.

Three months before the pandemic, the couple adopted their children, Henrique and Vicente, and soon realized they wanted more space than their current apartment provided, including a bedroom for each child and a dedicated office for Greg. "We wanted to have a separate space with doors because I talk a lot," says Greg, with a laugh. "This way, I wouldn’t interrupt Fred and the kids while they were doing other stuff."

When a two-floor, three-bedroom penthouse became available in a building just fifty meters from where they were living, they went to go see it, but they weren’t impressed. "The kitchen was too small," says Fred. "The apartment was in a building from 1998, so it was not vintage, and not new. It had this weird ’90s vibe."

It wasn’t until the couple brought over architects Rogério Gurgel and Caio D’Alfonso, of the firm Gurgel D’Alfonso Arquitetura, that they started to see the apartment’s potential. And most importantly, that the kitchen could be much, much bigger.

Before: Living Room and Dining Room

After: Living Room and Kitchen