Chef José Avillez, one of the most important culinary figures in Portugal, exudes warmth and tenderness. His gaze is direct and his voice transmits love for the terroir that he brings to the table with honesty and humility, even though he has four Michelin stars.
He will turn 44 in October and grew up in Cascais, near the sea and surrounded by pine trees. He went through several kitchens, but one of the ones that marked him the most was that of Ferran Adria (El Bulli). Today the Avillez group has 15 restaurants, including Belcanto (2 Michelin stars), Encanto (one star), Bairro do Avillez, Cantinho de Avillez and MiniBar in Lisbon; also Maré (Cascais) or Tasca (Dubai, one Michelin star), among others.
Now he has just inaugurated another gastronomic chapter at the recently opened The Karl Lagerfel hotel in Macau, where he signs the gastronomic proposal for the Mesa restaurant. There he offers contemporary Portuguese cuisine, cocktails with flavors of the East and the West and a magnificent selection of Portuguese wines.
How does it feel in Mesa?
It is a spectacular dining room, it has that richness of Karl Lagerfeld but with a Chinese touch. I love it, with those blacks and golds, with that chic greenhouse look. It’s not what I wanted for myself every day because I’m a very minimalist person, but it’s amazing. Here we offer a more relaxed cuisine than fine dining.
And your star dish?
A vacuum-cooked sea bass with mussel water, seaweed and a touch of lemon. We served it for 12 years at Belcanto and they wouldn’t let us take it off the menu. At Mesa I love the bacalhau à Bras that we make with spherified olives but with a taste of Portuguese olives that are very different from those of Ferran Adrià. Also the tempura. I like calm dishes: good ingredients and well prepared.
How much do the four Michelin stars weigh?
I have 900 people working with me. Before the covid we were 1,100 and from one day to the next everything closed and that was my great responsibility towards them and their families. We closed some restaurants and kept the others and we managed to overcome everything. A lot of people, a lot of responsibility… The stars attract the public, but then they were the least of it. The truth is that the stars are important to me and when I was younger I received them with great enthusiasm, but right now we want to do the best we can and that the clients leave happy.
At some point, does the role of entrepreneur weigh more than that of chef?
Yes, in my case there has always been a balance, because for me it has always been very important to control all costs, to be able to pay. I don’t really believe in projects that are not paid for because after a while nobody wants to be investing all the time. Ferran Adrià did very well, but I didn’t have the courage to do it. All the chefs thank him, because he has helped us all a lot.
Did your time at El Bulli change your way of understanding cooking?
Yes, a lot, it was a spectacular experience, I could feel all Ferran’s passion and he taught me that it is possible to do whatever you want in the kitchen, because we all came from French cooking methods and he dismantled them and started with a new creativity. More than 50 chefs from all over the world passed through there and I became good friends with some of them. It was like a vacation camp with people you don’t know but who share a passion with you. With Diego Muñoz I had a Peruvian restaurant in Lisbon. Then there is Aitor Zabala, Fernando Navas… it was a lot of fun.
Did you study cooking?
I wanted to be an architect, I studied Arts and ended up in the Communication and Marketing department. My final degree thesis was on the brand identity of Portuguese cuisine. I had to interview 100 people from the gastronomy area and that’s when I started to fall in love and cook.
Who are your references in Portuguese cuisine?
Joaquín Figueredo, Víctor Sobrado, Luis Baena… Some continue, others have already changed their lives, because this is a very hard life. You work long hours, with many people around you who have many good things but also many problems. But I was interviewing cooks and gourmets and cookery writers and young or very old people and it was a lot of fun. Then I did an internship at Antoine Westermann’s Fortaleza de Guincho, in Strasbourg, which had three Michelin stars, and won another in Lisbon when I was there… I studied at night and worked all day in the kitchen. I remember when I first walked into the kitchen my heart started to pound and I knew what I wanted to do.
Some chefs are almost like rock stars.
Too much. Some chefs think they can do it all. This is a job that, more than an artist, needs great affection and care for the people on your team and for all those who come to eat. And some think that they are something more important than they are. At some point, author’s cuisine, chef’s cuisine, is almost lost due to arrogance. Lancis Robinson used to say that the best restaurants in the world were the disciples of Ferran Adrià and the worst restaurants were also the disciples of Ferran. You could learn by watching how he did it, but then you didn’t know how to do it the same way. Many people who think that Ferran’s cooking was not good is because they have tried things from people who were with him and never learned. Not everyone understood that break. If you make a ball that doesn’t taste like anything, it’s absurd.
What point does not want to transfer?
I cook for the diners, I don’t cook for myself. For me I cook at home. In the restaurant I cook so that people enjoy the food, so that they can discover some concept, but the truth is that I am not doing an exercise in techniques or trying to convey an idea, but I thank those who know how to do it. You have to be very good to achieve something different without offending the people who come to your house. I am a pure artisan, I am not an artist, I cook for people to enjoy. It’s like talking about Karl Lagerfeld, haute cuisine and haute couture: you need a team to help you and be a bit of a soldier in both fields. Someone has to wear and someone has to eat, it’s not a picture you paint for people to look at. When I am creating a dish I always think a lot about the diner. I amuse myself by thinking that cooks are alchemists, but we are not very different from the rest of the people.
Is it possible to make Portuguese cuisine in China?
It’s not fusion, it’s contemporary Portuguese cuisine. Because the problem when you cook traditional cuisine and make a dish that is very similar to what is produced locally, people will always notice differences because the water does not taste the same, because the salt is different, but in Macao we have fish and shellfish that come from Portugal and everything is a little easier. Here we are a little more careful with salt, because the Chinese like sweet, spicy.
At what point is the Portuguese cuisine?
I think he is at his best. But the revolution that Ferran or Andoni made in the Basque Country, or René Redzepi in the Noma in Copenhagen does not seem to me to happen in Portugal. Firstly, because we have Spain next door, which has already done so and is more complicated, and then because gastronomy is in a much more mature phase, now haute cuisine is either done as an Alkimia-type experience or has an approach to the healthy, plant-based world (its Encanto restaurant is the first with a star to appear in the guide to Spain and Portugal in which animal protein is not served). I don’t think there is going to be someone who is going to change cooking techniques again. There have been two revolutions in the kitchen in 30 years, the nouvelle cuisine in France and later with Ferran.
Will Brás cod be recognized worldwide as Spanish paella?
I believe that the only way there is to have more Portuguese in the world making Portuguese cuisine. And basic Portuguese cuisine not haute cuisine. This is what has happened with Italian cuisine, for better and for worse. In China we have pastéis de nata, which are horrible, like a quiche, but people stand in line and they know it’s Portuguese. It is a product with a lot of travel capacity, but there are others that do not travel well. A paella travels better than our soupy rice, which people don’t understand very well. Like clams with coriander, a herb that in Europe is only eaten in Granada and the Canary Islands and that they hate in France.
You had television programs in Portugal and Brazil, what do these programs contribute? Do they teach cooking or do they teach more to appreciate cooking?
I think more to appreciate and have less preconceptions and they give you more of the world. And when they are from chefs with Michelin stars, you open a path for people to visit you. You see it on Instagram, with a James Oliver with millions of followers and you have a Ducasse with half a million, because haute cuisine is always a niche and TV is a loudspeaker. But then there is the Masterchef from Australia, for example, that you would be foolish watching what the children did, but the truth is that they had training a month before.
Do you have a motto?
(Shows his forearm under his chef’s jacket): “Everything you imagine is real”, Picasso said. I got it tattooed six or seven years ago, at a very difficult time when you think you’ve achieved it, because right now I have 15 restaurants with my name and 15 more without my name, with a lot of people working, with trips, cookbooks, on TV, I did a radio program for two years with cooking tricks… sometimes people don’t know me by face and if I speak it’s incredible, it’s incredible because they recognize me by voice.
Who has given you the best advice?
When I finished Marketing, they suggested that I work at Tavares, the oldest restaurant in Portugal, and many people advised me not to go. But my mother, who didn’t want me to be a cook but a doctor, told me: “If you think you should go, go”. And she won the first star and it changed my life. Then I went to El Bulli and Ferran hired me to be one of the cooks for the COCO Book (Phaidon), about 10 chefs of the future. It seems that it was in another life, but it was 15 years ago. Then I started my own projects with my partners and it’s a soufflé that grows and grows.
What ingredient is not missing in your kitchen?
The salt. Even the freshest fish, if you don’t add a bit of salt, doesn’t taste like anything. The most important thing is the taste. You can do it very well, but if it’s bland… Taste, temperature and cooking point, only after many other things.
What dish do you not like?
I eat everything, although I have stopped eating a lot of gluten or dairy because they hurt me due to stress because they are inflammatory, but I dream of bread.
An unlikely combination that will work.
Cod with grapes, something of the traditional cuisine of the Alentejo, which at harvest time combines cod soup, bread and coriander with grapes. I started making grapes with cockles, grapes with cod and they go together really well. And one day I discovered that this already existed, the truth is that many of the things have already been invented. We chefs create because we want to discover new things, but the great creations of the kitchen have been made out of necessity. People did not have refrigerators and they pickled, salted, smoked or cured. They did not always have the same ingredients and they changed the herbs. Ferran told me that his first creation was to substitute coriander for parsley.
What do you do when you want to discharge energy?
I usually go to the field. I love the sea and the beach, but I am very fond of walking in the countryside. I download energy and at the same time I recharge myself because I reconnect with nature. We have a project in Alentejo near Lake Alqueva and I love being alone with the pigs, with the sheep, connecting with nature.
