Yeah. I’m also working on the wine program at Garrincha. Every two or three weeks, we update the wine list. We have around 150 wines, mostly natural wines from all over the world. I’m always looking for more interesting wines from more obscure regions, just to keep it interesting.

First of all, we have a daily-changing menu. We mostly work with vegetables, fish and seafood. It’s really about the quality of the product, and a lot of the work is actually logistical work—sourcing the best products we possibly can. And we do it in a very calm, unassuming setting. You see the restaurant—it’s super simple. We kept it more or less as it was when we got it, and we really try to make more interesting things happen on the plate.

There are a lot of vegetables, fish and seafood, a lot of raw fish. And I guess we work in a more traditional way. We don’t use sous-vide or more modern techniques. It’s really about the product and how to express it in a natural, pure way, without fussing around too much.

I think a lot of what we make, and a lot of the style of the restaurant, is really about flavour. Things can look rustic, for example.

Right now, we serve a clafoutis that is very much French-grandma style. It doesn’t look like a showstopper, but it’s really about the flavours. We serve the clafoutis with homemade ice cream that we make here, coconut and a little bit of rhubarb compote.

So it’s really this homey feeling—homey food with some intelligent twist that we try to keep a little undercover. For example, the rhubarb compote has long peppercorns cooked with it.

We always try to do something interesting, but it has to really contribute to the dish while still keeping this rustic feel.

I think the style of the restaurant is mostly Mediterranean, not necessarily Portuguese. We have a lot of influence from southern Italy, for example.

When we deal with raw fish, it’s very important to me that it’s super clean-cut and looks very good. But we still have things that are more generous, more about the flavour and less about all the fuss around it.

I think Garrincha can be for everything. You can sit at the bar, have a dish and a glass of wine, and be full for less than €30.

Or you can come here to explore amazing wines and have a real culinary experience. You can really have both.

You can make it a special occasion if you want a very interesting experience, because we have an amazing wine list with around 150 wines. We also have interesting sake, interesting vermouth—we have a lot of interesting things.

I think it depends on how you want to experience it.

We write a menu every day.

We change the menu daily.

For me, it was clear that when you work with suppliers and you’re looking for the best ingredients you can find, it naturally goes this way. You have to change the menu.

Let’s say I order sardines because I want to make a dish, but then I see the sardines and they’re not what I’m looking for. They cannot go on the menu. I don’t want to run a place where I’m obliged to follow a menu.

I always try to have vegetable dishes, raw dishes, something cured, one deep-fried dish, and one or two fresh pasta dishes that we make ourselves.

I try to keep the format more or less consistent, but within this format, I try to find the best dishes I can make with what I have that day.

We’ve had days when I looked at the menu at the end of the day and thought, “This wasn’t balanced at all.” Maybe it was too heavy or whatever. We’ve made mistakes along the way.

But after three years—we’re actually celebrating three years this week—you also gain experience.

Now I always try to keep it tighter and lighter. In the past, we used to have a bit more batter and things like that. Now I try to keep it really lightweight, vegetable-forward, with raw fish and things that I want to eat myself.

One dish I really love from my childhood—it was my favourite dish as a child—is something we don’t really do at Garrincha.

I’m from Israel, and my mom is originally from Iraq. There is an Iraqi Jewish dish called kubbeh. There are many versions across the Middle East, but basically it’s semolina with meat inside, cooked in soup.

One of the most famous versions is made with beetroot. It’s sweet and sour, with very delicious flavours, and you eat it with rice.

It’s not really food that works in a restaurant setting—rice with soup. But this one is really part of me.

Once, a few months ago, I made a version of it at Garrincha for a few days. It was with pumpkin, also sweet and sour.

For me, it’s a dish I probably ate a million times as a child. It’s something I miss—something my mom makes.

I think the philosophy of Garrincha has never changed. It’s really about the food, about the ingredients, and about not becoming commercial.

There are things that are important to me. I want it to stay low-key and not try to be something we’re not. It’s really about the food and about the cooks.

I put a lot, a lot, a lot of effort into the cooks. The cooks I have are super talented. To really be a cook at Garrincha, you have to be passionate about the art and about food. Otherwise, you cannot succeed here. It really needs to come from within. You have to love food.

So I don’t feel that Garrincha has changed from the initial purpose of the restaurant.

I feel they appreciate it more and more.

The guests who love Garrincha — I feel they really love Garrincha. I have many regulars who I know love the restaurant very much and really appreciate it.

I think we’re a bit niche because it’s a restaurant for people who are really looking for food, and who understand why we’re not looking for formality in the service. We’re looking for something more authentic, much more low-key in the way we serve.

So it’s not for everybody.

For me personally, this is what I love. It’s really what I love as a guest when I go somewhere.

Because we’ve changed the menu every day since the beginning of the restaurant, we’ve had a huge repertoire of dishes.

But I think I would actually choose one of our desserts. It’s a labneh sorbet that we make here at the restaurant and serve with really good olive oil—the same olive oil we use for everything—and savory.

The inspiration came from a dish I saw in Paris a few years ago, and it immediately took me to the way you traditionally serve labneh, usually with olive oil and fresh za’atar.

At the restaurant, we turned that idea into a dessert. We get really good yogurt, make labneh from it, and then make the sorbet.

For me, this dish is absolutely perfect. It’s light, a little savoury, and has this perfume from the savory. Even after three years, I still have to eat it. We also have many customers who come back specifically for this dish.

It’s absolutely delicious and light, but it still has this connection to the traditional way of serving labneh.

For me, it really tells the story of Garrincha — talking about comfort food and taking something familiar and presenting it in a slightly different way.

My inspiration comes from several places. It comes from my experience—I worked in Paris for a few years, in Berlin, and in Israel.

I also travelled a lot. Through most of my twenties and thirties, I travelled across Europe and Southeast Asia—to Thailand, India, Sri Lanka. I spent a lot of time abroad.

And finally, inspiration comes from the product itself. I speak with my suppliers, I see what they have, I see what we get, and then we think about what we can do with it.

So every week, it happens very naturally.