Two key elements at the heart of Portuguese eating culture are couvert and pastry. A couvert, comprising bread, butter, pickled or garlic carrots, cheese and fish pate (often sardine), comes as standard at every Portuguese restaurant and family dinner table alike, as it does at our restaurant Luso, where our fish paste is an ode to this way of dining.
The use of egg whites to starch religious garments in the early eighteenth century was the catalyst for what is now one of Portugal's most famous dishes. That practice led to a surplus of egg yolks, and to avoid waste, monks and nuns invented rich, egg-yolk-based desserts and pastries. The famous custard tart baked in a crispy pastry shell was created at the Jeronimos Monastery in Belem, Lisbon, and the pasteis de nata were initially sold to help support the monastery.
Chef George Mendes, whose former NYC restaurant Aldea earned a Michelin star, is bringing two concepts to Boston, starting with a tasting menu at Agosto that will blend Mendes' Portuguese roots with his experiences as a chef in New York, France, and Spain, Boston magazine reports. Baby Sister will be a bakery-cafe that will serve bread, breakfast sandwiches, and Portugal's beloved pastry, the Pastéis de nata.
One of the most exciting new openings in Porto is the 1638 Restaurant & Wine Bar, which is helmed by three-Michelin-Star chef Nacho Manzano and is purposefully cultivating an air of mystery around its 11-course Sensory Menu. Another is Kaigi, the Japanese-Portuguese restaurant from the respected chef Vasco Coelho Santos and his Euskalduna hospitality group. Meanwhile, chef Vitor Matos has not one but two Michelin Star restaurants in the city now, Blind and Antiqvvm.