Guarda-Mór.

Well, it’s the name of the street, but technically it means you’re guarding a river, because this is one of the oldest streets of Lisbon. So, this is near the river.

I love the question. I’ll say the disco came first. We wanted to find a place where people could have fun and enjoy food. It was always about the food, but mostly about the atmosphere. So the disco came first. And then the chicken comes second because it’s my favorite food in the world.

Exactly. And it’s the only protein we have. It’s the only meat we have. We don’t have fish. We don’t have anything else. It’s all around the chicken. We have the eggs, the rillette, which is from my hometown. We have the croquette, we have the chicken, we have the cordon bleu, and it’s all around the chicken. And how to not lose any bit of it, because with roasted chicken you lose so many bits of food. So it’s all about using the entire chicken.

Yeah, let’s start at the end. I started cooking when I was around 18, 19, mostly for my friends and I, because I was doing school and we couldn’t afford going to restaurants every night. So we were hosting dinners with my roommates. It kind of started like that, and then I got into it, really liked it, loved hosting. I lived in Hong Kong before, and I was doing some pop-ups with a friend where we were cooking in restaurants during COVID. And that started like that, and here we are now.

We’re three in the kitchen, plus me.

So I’m the creative chef, and then I teach my team some recipes. We adapt them because I’m not good at scaling. I’m good at cooking for two or three people, not 50. So then we scale it together. We redo the recipes if we need, and then we go.

I don’t think I want it to be a chain, but I’d love to have kind of a group of restaurants around the idea of partying and having fun and sharing, you know, a nice meal together. I think Guarda-Mór can only be here because of the room, because of the street. But then I can have another concept doing a similar vibe without the chicken. But I don’t want it to be a chain, right?

Not necessarily. Not necessarily. I’m open.

That’s a great question. I think it’s one of my moods. It’s one of my party-sharing moods. I’m also a very quiet and chill-by-the-beach person. But this is, I’d say, 80% of my mood.

We have a lot of private parties, actually. That’s what we do the most, to be fair. I love hosting little dinners or regular nights like the time we came. But, for instance, Saturday we have a private party. They rent the whole place. They put their music. We have the food and stuff. So we do private parties a lot.

Yes, you can dance on the table, actually. They’re very solid.

I’ll say a fairly healthy half. We have a lot of tourists in the summer and in the winter. Midseasons are mostly locals, and we have a lot of locals. Our main stream is locals because you’ll come once with your friend, you see the big table, you want to come for your birthday. And so we’ll have repetitive customers, like maybe three, four times easily. So mostly the ones in Lisbon.

The chicken. For sure, it would be like a piece of lamb, some very — because we have a big family, so she was looking for, like, you know, roasted pork, lamb, loads of salads, lots of flowers. She was giving you loads of flowers. I don’t ever think I ever had a chicken from her. Tarte Tatin. Tatin, for sure. That would be on the menu, no doubt. Chocolate mousse as well, but Tarte Tatin for sure. I think it would be lamb. A meaty restaurant. Probably more meaty than chicken, let’s say.

Thank you.

So, I worked with Ellis and Joel. They’re the videographer and creator of the videos. They came up with the idea. I wanted them to advertise the food without being a food video. So I didn’t want it to be focused on, like, the chicken, the carrots, the Tatin. And it’s a story restaurant. Like, we love storytelling. There are many things happening here. So I told them I would love to turn around the food with humor. And they came up with The Office kind of vibe, which is what you see with, like, the fourth wall being broken.

And then the script, it depends. I’d say the first half is from them, and then we either redo it because it’s a bit too — I don’t know. Then we just, like, work together into the final script. But, like, the grandmother story is mine. They can’t make that up.

I would love to.

I want to say it’s kind of a mix of all. For me, here, what works the best is the kind of dish that you want to go back to immediately, like the addictiveness of the dish. So it’s mostly through the sauce.

That would go through me going to a restaurant and liking something, asking the chef how he did it, or seeing something on Instagram, or remembering something I did before, and trying to mix it with fresh products, easiness to do, and scaling up, because we often have 60-person tables. So, like, you can’t just do it by the plate. Like, you could, but we’re not good enough to do it by the plates.

And then the inspiration comes and goes. Like, I’m just back from France and I’ve tried amazing things, so I want to change a few things on the menu. So this week will be about that. And it’s just, like, a mix of good food, great memories, addictive — like, addictive point and stuff.

Thank you.