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Lusa - Business News - Portugal: Chefs surprised with new Michelin star restaurants
Toledo, Spain, Nov.23,2022(Lusa)- The chefs of the five new Portuguese restaurants awarded a star in the Michelin Guide in 2023 describe the award as a surprise, an honour oreward and highlight the use of national products. The Portuguese restaurants Encanto (José Avillez and Diogo Formiga), Kabuki Lisboa (Paulo Alves), Kanazawa (Paulo Morais) - in Lisbon -, Euskalduna Studio (Vasco Coelho Santos) and Le Monument (Julien Montbabut), both in Porto, have won a star ("high-level cuisine, it pays to stop") in the Michelin Spain and Portugal Guide 2023, the publication announced on Tuesday evening at a ceremony in Toledo. José Avillez saw his Lisbon restaurant Encanto receive its first Michelin star ("high-level cuisine, it pays to stop") nine months after opening. It is the first vegetarian eatery to feature in the guide on the Iberian Peninsula. "A risky project" that forced "a journey" to "remove from the palette of flavours and textures more than half of the usual ingredients" and a "reinvention in the vegetable world", he told Lusa. "I felt I made history," said Avillez, who accumulates the distinction of Encanto with the two stars ("excellent cuisine, worth a detour") of Belcanto (Lisbon) and with a star at Tasca (Dubai). The chef described the option for vegetarian cuisine as "a path" and acknowledged that, initially, he thought it would be impossible to make a menu without animal protein. "But we thought: either it is or it isn't. And it has been an incredible experience", he commented. Paulo Morais received the distinction for Kanazawa as something "unexpected", even by the characteristics of the restaurant. "We only have eight seats. We serve only eight people [per meal]. We're very careful with what we serve. We pay a lot of attention to our customers. We don't have a classic room service," the Portuguese chef told Lusa, who relates the award to "the excellence of the food and the quality of the products." "If there is a country in the world to do sushi with quality, Japanese cuisine with quality, it is Portugal because we have incredible fish and seafood," he commented. Also in Lisbon and of Japanese cuisine, Kabuki won its first star less than a year after opening. Chef Paulo Alves pointed out that the restaurant has "a 20-year structure behind it" in Spain and explained that it combines Japanese and Mediterranean cuisine. "We didn't expect [the distinction]. We worked for it, but you never expect it so soon. Now it becomes a greater responsibility, that is, we already had a lot of responsibility about our work, and now it will grow even more because we work every day to be the best," he stressed. For Vasco Coelho Santos, chef of Euskalduna, the distinction is "an honour" but "deserved" after a year of "much sacrifice". The Porto restaurant's cuisine is marked by national products and the concern with "the producers' well-being", said Coelho Santos, who also described it as "multicultural and creative". The distinction, he said, is "an added responsibility". For Frenchman Julien Montbabut, receiving a Michelin star is nothing new - he had already done so in 2016 with his restaurant in Paris - but this distinction has a special flavour because it meant leaving everything behind and "leaving the comfort zone". In his restaurant in Porto, he practises French-rooted cuisine but uses national products after having travelled the north of the country to find small producers. In the 2023 guide, Portugal has a total of 31 restaurants with one star ("high-level cuisine, worth a stop) and seven with two stars ("excellent cuisine, worth a detour"). In Spain, two restaurants achieved three stars ("unique cuisine, worth a journey"), Átrio and Cocina Hermanos Torres, and there are now 13 establishments with this classification, while three others achieved two stars and 29 received their first star. The 2023 guide brings together 1,401 restaurants in Spain, Portugal and Andorra, including 13 with three stars, 41 with two stars and 235 with one star, and 831 recommended for their quality (135 new, 15 in Portugal). The Michelin Guide inspectors, who work anonymously, value the quality of the products, the mastery of cooking points and textures, the balance and harmony of flavours, and the cuisine's personality and regularity. Created at the beginning of the 20th century to help travellers on their journeys, the Michelin Guide is today considered a world reference in restaurant qualifications and is present in 40 countries. Portugal entered the route in 1910. *** The Lusa agency travelled at the invitation of the Michelin Guide *** JH/ADB // ADB. Lusa Agency : LUSA Date : 2022-11-24 00:13:00
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