Vasco: Okay, first of all, hello, my name is Vasco. The concept we’re trying to do is, first of all, great food. What we want is to bring a little bit of our northern style. The idea is to bring a little bit of this concept of northern cooking, enjoying the food in the middle of the table and sharing. That’s our priority.

And we love to cook the whole animal—not just meat, but fish, vegetables, everything. So part of how we cook is that we use everything from the animal and try not to have any waste.

It’s part of the process, not the concept. The concept is a little bit about—not traditional food, but food inspired by good food, good soul and a northern vibe. I think it’s a little bit like that.

Inês: Yeah. More than just a flavour. I think from the beginning to the end of the menu, we try to have the least waste possible. And like Vasco said, from animal protein to vegetables and fruits, we try to have a circular menu and we try to use everything.

This is a little bit what we try to do: to give attention and value from the beginning to the end of the meal, in the same way as when we produce the menu and the food.

Vasco: We’re just not thinking from that perspective. We’re not focused on the system. It’s just part of our process that we use a little bit of everything and try not to have waste.

We try to be seasonal with ingredients and source locally. So if that’s part of the responsibility, I think we are on that.

But we don’t do Portuguese food—I mean traditional food. What was traditional 100 years ago is not what is traditional now. I think it’s changing a little bit. What we want is to use local and good products and good farms, and adapt our menu to those.

But the way we cook here, we use the same feelings and the same style as our grandmothers. So it gives you these notes and the feeling of traditional style. That’s what we want.

It’s like the oxtail or the cod pasta. Those are dishes that are like Sunday lunch with the family. So that’s something we want.

Vasco: It is a Portuguese restaurant. We’re not trying to do traditional recipes; we are adapting them. That’s part of even my focus in the north when I cook in my restaurants—we don’t do traditional recipes.

We cannot say it’s not Portuguese. It still is, but it’s not focused on books or traditions. It’s Portuguese. We are using Portuguese ingredients and Portuguese—I don’t know—soul.

Inês: But of course, I think we try to bring everything we’ve learned until now: the restaurants we’ve been to and all the countries where we’ve worked. I think it’s important to bring everything we’ve learned until now.

So somehow we do a mix of what we are, because we need to be loyal to what we know and what we like to cook.

Inês: You get some knowledge from both. You grow as a person, so you also need to bring what you’ve built until that moment.

Chef Vasco, with all the amazing trips that he does and all the chefs that he meets, also, I think, cannot avoid learning from them and bringing that into the food.

Vasco: Not just chefs. Everything—the cultures, the people you meet. There’s inspiration all over.

Even with our own chefs, it’s not just references you have from other chefs. Sometimes you learn much more from the chefs who are more in the field. In the end, having seven or eight projects, I’m cooking less. So I need these people to help me see what’s going on.

You travel so much, but then you’re just cooking less. So sometimes it’s good to have a reference and you just share everything.

I think that’s the beauty: when you put it all together—all these trips, all these references and all the Portuguese hearts.

And then people who help you in the field. In Slovenia, for example, Inês worked a lot with this style of using responsibility and trying not to have waste. So she teaches us a lot of new techniques and new ways to prevent this. All this mix, for me, is where we want to be.

Inês: I don’t think we argue. I think we’re aligned with the things we do. But it’s a mix of ideas and recipes, and at the moment of trying them, we can fix something or it’s already good.

I think when we work together, we manage to do something good. But I think it’s honest and very good food.

Inês: I think it’s important that you make food that you like to eat, or at least that people around you like to eat.

When you cook for your family or your friends, you should cook the same way for your guests, because in the end, it’s just about making people happy with the food.

And this is honest food, because I don’t think I could do something that I would not like to eat. So that’s honest food.

Vasco: You like everything?

Inês: Most of all, yes. I think it’s about education at home. You are educated to eat everything, so I don’t have a weird taste.

Inês: More or less. I think they are open, but it’s also important that we have a menu that can reach everyone.

Of course, not everyone can eat it, and we have to understand that. That’s why we work with fish, vegetables and some other things. But we try to use everything from those as well.

Vasco: So it’s not just the offal from the animals. We don’t want to have this mark on top of us, like we just serve offal. It’s not that. As we said, it’s part of the process.

When you have those animals and you have these parts, you don’t throw them away. You use them. But it’s not the menu itself.

Inês: Also because I think people in the north are more used to this type of food. If we are in Lisbon, we need to adapt to the moment and to the people we have.

We try to have a very versatile menu so we can reach everyone, from younger to older people, and we don’t leave anybody behind.

Inês: Yes.

Inês: It brings a beautiful flavour.

Vasco: Yeah, especially the flavour, the way it cooks, and when you present it to people—the smell, the beautiful caramelisation. I think cooking with fire is something very unique.

Inês: We do 90% of the menu on fire.

Vasco: Especially for finalising what we serve directly to the guests.

Vasco: It’s more like your go-to place on a weekly basis. For example, we have lunch as well. You can come every day.

It’s a cool place where you can eat a nice grilled fish, and another day you can eat oxtail rice. You have this versatility on the menu, so even in the same week you can come both times and have very different dishes.

I think it’s not just for a special occasion.

Inês: You can come in for an hour, grab some lunch and have a quick meal, or you can come for a date on Tuesday night or Saturday night. I think it’s a place for everyone and for all occasions.

Inês: It’s a difficult question. Should we talk about the new dishes?

Vasco: Yeah, whatever. What’s your favourite?

Inês: I like the pig ear. Maybe it’s very unusual, but it’s a dish that shows the old style and also brings some modern twists and techniques.

Inês: And what is your favourite dish right now?

Vasco: I’ll keep it with the oxtail rice. I love rice. I think it’s part of my DNA. I can eat rice every day.

And oxtail reminds me a lot of my grandmother. She used to cook a lot of oxtail for us. So combining both together for me is like heaven. So yeah, I’ll keep that.

Inês: We always have small changes because of seasonal products. But now we have a big change because the weather and the season are changing. We need something more autumn style, and we’re doing some new dishes that we’re really excited about.

Vasco: It’s fun. It’s always good to change.

Vasco: Not all at the same time. We don’t like these big changes. We change maybe three or four dishes a week so the staff can adapt as well, and so we can explain them to the guests rather than just making one big change.

So from the month of October, every week we’ll change a couple of them.

Inês: And we always have some specials. It’s a tradition that we’ve made here in the restaurant. Every day, we can have something different that you’ll eat today and probably won’t eat again next week.

If a supplier sends us some nice products, we’ll just do a few portions of a special dish. For example, we have the fish head. Once a week, when we get this 23-kilo fish, we use the head. We oven-roast it.

It’s really nice and fun for the guests.

Inês: Yes, come! We only have one per week. It’s nice to know those things. You put it on a table of six and people share it, and it’s very cool to see.

Vasco: Sometimes it’s the most difficult.

When you cook simple—I mean, what is simple, right? When it comes to a dish and it looks simple, it can still be so difficult. Even preparing the fish, curing or ageing, or whatever.

Sometimes when something looks simple just because it has one or two ingredients, it can still be difficult.

Inês: To make simple dishes can be hard. Even our oxtail rice—you need consistency. Every time, the rice needs to be on point and the meat needs to come off the bone.

So it’s a simple dish, but it really takes a lot of time. Sometimes the technique, along with the time, can be very complex, but in the end it looks like a simple dish.

As a good chef, I think you need to be able to do simple food but also complex food.

Vasco: I remember yesterday I was serving aletria. It’s a traditional dessert, and there was a guest from Romania. She was like, “Oh, we have this dish. My grandmother used to cook it. I haven’t eaten it for 20 years.”

It was so simple, and she was saying she used to have it at Christmas.

Sometimes simple can be challenging. We have this challenge every night because sometimes it’s just cooking pasta, you know? But with a simple dish, the challenge is keeping it perfect because we have this obsession with serving things perfectly—the temperatures, the cooking, even the pasta.

With simplicity, you have this difficulty because we keep pushing ourselves to do it better and to keep the consistency. So I think it’s the pressure you put on yourself with simplicity.

Inês: I think we focus on the product most of all and what we can do with it.

Sometimes we can do a lot of different things with the same product, and I think that’s how we work. Also because if we are using everything, we sometimes need to apply different techniques to the same ingredient or to different parts of the ingredient.

Vasco: On this new menu, we have one dish that is a little bit about that. It’s squid. Nowadays, you see so many restaurants doing squid—just squid and a good sauce. That’s it. And it’s good and it’s fun.

But we wanted to do something different, so we came up with this... How do you call it in English?

Inês: Skewer.

Vasco: Skewer, yeah. Skewer.

Just to make it a little bit more fun and different.

Sometimes we think about the product because it’s in season, and then you start thinking about how you’re cooking it. Okay, we’re going with fire, but let’s add something—or less—and then the idea comes.

That part of creativity is about making beautiful things.

Inês: I don’t know. Some things we really need to change because of the season.

We’ve already thought sometimes about taking the oxtail rice off the menu, but we realised that it’s a must-have.

But I think especially it’s seasonal. For example, it’s pointless to have chicken if now we have these amazing birds because it’s hunting season. So we’ll change the chicken for quail and partridge.

We need to adapt to the time.

Inês: Yeah.

Vasco: But sometimes it’s nice that in summer you have amazing things and Inês likes to preserve them.

For example, if you have an amazing product in summer, normally we like to preserve it and serve it a little bit later. I think when you have an amazing thing and you can preserve it and serve it later, it’s fun for the guest to think, “How is it possible to have strawberries or tomatoes in winter?”

So it’s part of the creativity in summer or spring to create some things for winter.

Here in Portugal, we have a lot of products, but if you go north, winter is super aggressive. I think it’s even more fun.

Inês: I don’t think we think like that.

It’s not just for the menu or one dish. Sometimes it’s just to add it as a garnish or for flavours.

Sometimes you have such a beautiful product and it’s like, “Okay, maybe we can keep this until winter. How can we do it?”

We can do some fermentation or preserve it, and we can use it in a different way.

I think this is all about history. People were preserving so they could have more food or different types of ingredients in winter. Nowadays we can access everything, but I think we can follow the same ideas.

Vasco: When I come to Lisbon, I eat in some places. I see a lot of different concepts opening, and I think it’s good.

As we have good tourism, I think chefs are more focused on consistency and doing good food. It’s amazing for a city to have so many options and different options. I would love to have more of that in Porto as well.

And even culturally, with food — not just Portuguese food, or not just any Japanese sushi with cheese — we’re doing better and better, and people keep it more in traditional styles. So that’s a good thing.

Inês: For now, I think we still have a lot of locals.

Vasco: I think the area where we are in Lisbon, it’s important to have a lot of locals. Slowly, we’re having our tourists.

Tourists are always good to have as something extra, not as a backup. But if you build a house with locals, it’s very important.

Vasco: What?

Inês: Yes. I think it’s important, at least to know if people are enjoying it. And if they’re not, what can we do to help the situation?

Sometimes people, for different reasons, may not be satisfied. I think it’s important that, as a team and as a restaurant, we can do something and make a different experience so people can come back.

Vasco & Inês: Thank you so much.