The most renowned Portuguese chef, José Avillez, leads a gastronomic empire (16 restaurants with his signature and as many as an advisor) that feeds more than 2,500 guests every day. His restaurant Belcanto, in Lisbon, is one of the main candidates for the third star in the new Portuguese Michelin Guide that is presented today in the Algarve. With him we talked about his childhood, marked by the absence of his father, about his beginnings in the kitchen of El Bulli or about his vision of the tourist boom in Portugal, which in haute cuisine has been eclipsed by the recognition of Spanish chefs. We interviewed him in Cascais, where he was born in 1979, and where he has just opened the fish and seafood restaurant Maré, in front of the coast where he played as a child.
Was the Cascais in which you grew up very different from today?
I was born in 1979 and it was much less urbanized. My grandparents had a small farm and I grew up with a garden, chickens, rabbits, very close to the sea.
An inspiring environment for the kitchen.
When you have the opportunity to be so close to the ingredients you establish a relationship that helps you better understand the pantry. We lived in an old house, my mother worked outside and we had a fantastic cook, Laura, whom I adored and with whom I spent a lot of time when I came home from school. My father died young, at 36, when I was 7 years old.
He remembers?
One of the few memories I have of him is of a day, when I was five years old, when he took me hunting. It was the first time we spent a day together without the rest of the family and it was magical. I had a garden and friends who were fishermen, so there was always a little bit of everything to cook at home. He would bring a rabbit, a partridge, and prepare a pâté or a terrine. I started cooking very young but without thinking that he would be a cook because I dreamed of being an architect.
Like many great chefs. There seems to be some relationship between those two disciplines.
I have no doubt that there is. I studied arts until the end of school and then I made a change and ended up enrolling in communication and marketing. But while I went to university I liked cooking more and more and I practiced it a lot for friends and family. One day I decided to take a wine tasting course and I won a bottle of a very good generous wine from Setúbal. I celebrated by preparing a dinner for friends, and ended up spending three days locked in the kitchen.
Is that how you discovered your profession would be?
It helped me believe that I could dedicate myself to doing something related to cooking, but I didn’t know anyone who was dedicated to that, and I didn’t really know where to go. The trigger was my final degree thesis: I decided to do an image and identity study related to Portuguese cuisine.
What did it consist of?
I interviewed 100 people dedicated to gastronomy, half foreigners who were in Portugal, and the other half Portuguese. I wanted to analyze the perception of our cuisine. My thesis director was María de Lourdes Modesto, a cook and student of our traditional cuisine. she that she would be my inspiration and my friend. I called her grandmother until her death a couple of years ago.
What did you learn from her?
Respect for tradition. María Lourdes died at the age of 90, and she had the basis of all traditional cuisine, but she knew that tradition had to be accompanied by evolution. It is wonderful that someone so old has that very clear and has been able to transmit it. She was a wise woman who was very respectful of the recipe book and she liked that when we made something different we changed the name, so that people would not confuse it with the original dish.
Any conclusions from that thesis that she supervised?
I was inspired by a study that a well-known brand had developed and applied it to gastronomy. We tried to imagine the assumption that the Portuguese cuisine was a person and find out what personality traits it would have. The Portuguese saw her as an older, beautiful woman; They analyzed it with absolute affection. But foreigners perceived her as a man with a certain rudeness. For us, cooking has been passed down from mothers and grandmothers, and we see it as feminine.
What did foreigners perceive?
They were cooks, food journalists, wine people… The fact that some dishes seem heavy is what made them see it as masculine and tasty but ugly. That made me reflect and encouraged me to try to lighten some preparations and look for more beautiful plating to contribute to this necessary and respectful evolution of traditional cuisine.
You grew up surrounded by women.
My father’s death marked the dynamics of our childhood and adolescence. At 12 years old I felt much older than my friends because I had to mature before them. I stayed with my sister and my mother, who had to work hard because the only thing my father left behind were some debts. A difficult stage of our lives came. I became very close to my sister and we grew up together. My mother worked in Lisbon and returned home every day, but we were very lucky because her family was very large, she was always present and our maternal grandparents gave us all the love and helped us a lot.
Do you think you would be a cook today, if you hadn’t lost your father so soon?
I don’t think so. He had a construction company and other projects, and I might have ended up working with him. Having to help at home conditioned me and at 10 years old I sold cakes to family and friends. My father had also had a relationship with restaurants and had once opened one of the first pizzerias in Portugal. But my mother didn’t want me to follow that path because he drank.
But does one want to explore those paths of the absent father?
Yes, and I ended up being attracted to things that attracted him, like gastronomy or hunting. A few years ago I started hunting because I felt that it was something that was part of my nature and the experiences shared with my father; something my grandfather and great-grandfather had already done. And I felt that it was a world very linked to cooking.
Hunting has many detractors.
So many that you can’t say out loud that you like to hunt because people can misinterpret it. But with hunting, as with fishing, you realize that from the point of view of the ingredients for a kitchen everything is connected.
Veganism grows. You yourself have a very interesting vegan restaurant.
The stimulus of creating vegan dishes is growing and the stimulus of creating vegan dishes is fantastic. If you are vegan you are, but if you eat meat it is the same as eating a cow or eating a partridge or a chicken. And there’s nothing wrong with practicing respectful hunting, like I do.
He has said at some point that he was lucky to be in the right place at the right time. Does he feel indebted to some of his predecessors for becoming Portugal’s most renowned chef?
I know that the important thing is the work and that things are never easy, but there is a lot of effort behind it. But luck has to do with the moment in which you live, because before I arrived, in Portugal there have been very important chefs who did not manage to stand out as much internationally or even within the country.
Because?
There was not yet tourism with purchasing power or that clientele of haute cuisine restaurants that we have today. Even in France, haute cuisine needs foreign customers who occupy most of its tables. And that has changed a lot in Portugal.
Tourism has skyrocketed and infrastructure has improved dramatically. They are an example of success that will have to be managed very well.
In 2014 we had 10 million tourists and in 2023 we will reach 30 million. Furthermore, consumption has increased by around 30 percent per person. Now there is a tourist who spends more. Before, many Spaniards came for Easter with a reduced budget and spent a few nights and now there are American tourists who dedicate ten days to their vacation and spend a lot. We are talking about more visitors for longer and with greater spending.
Did the sale of TAP to the United States have an influence?
Yes, and now there are many direct flights. And we are talking about a huge potential population. For six months a year, 60% of my clients at Belcanto are Americans who book well in advance. There are also many Brazilians who feel comfortable in Portugal and for whom sharing the language is an incentive. In my case, the fact of having participated in a TV program in Brazil with 30 million viewers contributed to my becoming known.
Before Belcanto he was a cook in Tavares, where classic cuisine was made. Did that young Avillez who arrived from El Bulli have to curb his creativity?
It was 2007 and when I returned to my country they offered me to cook at Tavares, which was the oldest restaurant in Portugal. And people were very afraid that I was coming to change Portuguese cuisine. They knew me because I collaborated by writing columns in a newspaper and the first months I raised many doubts and there were those who accused me of using those products that Ferran Adrià was said to use, as if they were harmful, an accusation that generated the famous controversy with Santi Santamaria. After the first six months they began to trust and began to say that the food in Tavares was very good.
Was it time to be more creative?
We started the modern Portuguese haute cuisine movement from Tavares, and after three years working as a chef there we considered buying the restaurant but in the end it was complicated and the opportunity arose to acquire Belcanto in 2011. We did the renovation and opened the following year. The first months were a success, but once the novelty effect had passed, it became a journey through the desert.
Because?
It was an old place and the clientele was looking for something more classic. Until Frank Bruni, critic for the New York Times, came in to eat. I remember that that day there were four tables, and he wrote a double-page article in which he praised a stingray dish of mine inspired by the work of Jackson Pollock. He said that he had made the best meal that year in Belcanto. That marked a before and after. And two months later the Michelin star arrived. Since then, it has been a success.
You usually give as an example of the importance of the effort the visit of a Spanish critic, Carlos Maribona, from ABC.
He tried my cuisine at Tavares and gave us a very complimentary review. I didn’t know him but I remember it was a late Saturday night and we were very tired. It seemed to me that the mullet that they were about to serve him was not at its optimal cooking point and I wanted it not to be served and we should start the dish again. What he praised most in his article was that cooking point. It is an anecdote that I usually remind young people who begin to work with me to convey that message of effort. You always have to do your best and you can always give a little more. If what you are looking for is excellence in cuisine and service.
There will also have been bad reviews.
There are articles by Portuguese journalists claiming that José Avillez has destroyed two restaurants, Tavares and Belcanto. You are exposed and there are always opinions for all tastes.
In the last 20 years you have been the most relevant chef in your country.
It is true that I have been at an international level, but we have a small country and it is difficult to shine being so close to such great figures as Andoni Luis Aduriz, the chefs of Enjoy, Dabiz Muñoz, Quique Dacosta, Albert Adrià…
Have they not been given the attention they deserve?
People are much more restrained when talking about us. In Spain there are great cuisines and there has been a Ferran Adrià who changed the way people would eat around the world. We have not made a revolution, but rather an evolution of our traditional cuisine. And now we have a very interesting cuisine that continues to advance with respect for its identity.
For me it has been very important to have Spain close to us and all the influence I have had, not only for having worked with Adrià but for the proximity and influence of those great colleagues. But it is always difficult to compare yourself with a country that has a dozen restaurants at the top of the world.
Has Spain eclipsed Portugal, also in Michelin, where until this year they shared the same guide in which they were a bit of poor relations?
In a way it is true that he has eclipsed us. But it is also true that although I am excited that Portugal has its own guide and its own gala to present the new stars, I will miss sharing those moments with my colleagues from Spain with whom we have experienced many things and there is a lot of appreciation.
Has there been complicity between Portuguese chefs?
There was a time when we were all finding our way and trying to carve out a space for ourselves, but the pie was small and there was little to share. When tourism has increased and things have started to go well, complicity has increased. Before, if you helped promote your neighbor’s restaurant, the customer would stop going to your house to go to theirs. Now there is room for everyone, we meet more and we promote our products and our cuisine together.
Do you have to do self-criticism?
For us, haute cuisine was first French, then Spanish, then Nordic. It was difficult for us to create our own identity, to believe in our recipe book, our pantry and our landscape. And as I said, it was difficult for us to get together and work in the same direction. We looked askance at each other but we didn’t get together. Right now there is teamwork and we try to promote the producers, we talk about cooking, about clients, about recipes. Because when there are clients for everyone everything goes well.
You have been able to give visibility to your work.
If you don’t communicate you don’t exist. We had the capacity, the possibility and the luck to disseminate information. Go to conferences, appear on the 50 Best list, on Michelin, on Best Chefs. I had Bourdain in Lisbon and I helped him do his tour. I participated in the show Everybody Feeds Phil, on Netflix… We had to move. And today when people travel and look for chefs from Portugal, my name immediately appears.
Was it difficult to dare to touch the recipe book?
Ferran Adrià himself told me that his first creative step was to change parsley for cilantro in a recipe, which I think is a very good idea. That has happened to us a bit. And also for a long time it was difficult for him to believe that it was possible to make profitable haute cuisine. There have been very good restaurants that disappeared.
Has there been much strategy to become the great restaurant businessman that he is today?
Remember that when I was 10 years old I was already making cakes to sell. They weren’t meant to be eaten, and that germ of the businessman was already there. We opened Belcanto and I knew that with few places it couldn’t be a very profitable business. And we opened Cantinho de Avillez very close by. In 2012, after the crisis in Lisbon, there were many places available and cheap because many restaurants had closed.
The tourism boom had not yet exploded.
We didn’t have any tourists yet. But I have always believed that Lisbon and Portugal would go further. That the potential was enormous. The truth is that I did not imagine that we would get this far but I was certain that tourism would grow. I knew that the Lisbon brand was very powerful and I convinced my partners to invest and I created business concepts that worked. In Cantinho a more informal offering, in Belcanto haute cuisine, in Minibar something different, the more traditional Café Lisboa…
And a very ambitious project, Bairro do Avillez.
It is a very large space and it could have succeeded or failed, but it has turned out to be the former. There are 160 people working and we serve 1,300 people a day there in a location that houses four kitchen concepts. It was a private house that I really liked and I thought it would be a dream to create something there. I am excited about the conceptualization of spaces.
Does your vocation as an architect also appear there?
Yes, I can spend hours and days thinking about spaces and concepts. I have also spent hours and hours drawing the house we opened a while ago in Alentejo, Casa Nossa. It is pure vocation.
Could Lisbon die of success with so much tourism?
It is an excellent time for tourism but inflation has made it more expensive today than many cities in Spain and it is cheaper to spend the summer in Spain than here. But at the same time that has brought more select tourism. Now many people are leaving the center and leaving their homes for tourism, which is in a consolidation phase. I think we are going to grow until 2025 and we have to promote tourism from the rest of the country. Portugal can be traveled from north to south in six hours. I think Americans are understanding this idea and move from one part of the country to another during their vacations, which allows them to enjoy completely different landscapes. For an American, 6 hours of driving are nothing.
He advocates that Spain and Portugal join forces to sell themselves as a tourist and gastronomic destination.
I am convinced that there is a magnificent opportunity and that we are not taking advantage of it: selling a joint route that encompasses Portugal and Spain. The Iberian Peninsula tourist destination is something unique in the world: you have the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the Cantabrian Sea. Different types of cuisine, different communities with different cultures and a wonderful and very attractive pantry for an American, an Australian or a Mexican. We are not selling it because an Iberian Peninsula destination has not been planned and it is the great pending issue.
