Kwetu takes its name from the Swahili word for "our home" and its cooking from the African culinary inheritance that runs through Northeast Brazilian food: dendê palm oil, okra, dried shrimp, coconut milk, and the blended spice traditions that crossed the Atlantic with enslaved people from West and Central Africa. The menu is not the Bahian version of this cuisine (which most international visitors know through acarajé and moqueca) but rather its Pernambucano expression, which is less widely documented.
Dishes might include calulu (a vegetable and dried fish stew), xinxim de galinha (chicken cooked with ground shrimp and peanuts), and various preparations built around the black-eyed pea, a staple that arrived in Brazil via the slave trade and became foundational across the Northeast. The restaurant also serves caipifrutas made with regional fruits — acerola, umbu, cajá — that rarely appear on menus outside this part of the country. It is a smaller, more personal place than Restaurante Maurício, and the cooking reflects a specific point of view about where Olinda's food actually comes from.