Not a scripture, but it could. It was, in almost biblical terms, the light on Saturday nights of this boy's (me) generation. Little money, big appetite, and it were Chop Soy with plenty of it. Chinese restaurants were our home. Today it is not easy to find one of these classics. They became sushi buffets. Demand dictated it. Because there are also mo- das in the kitchen. Some stay on the edge of the plate. Others persist and become immortal.
Not a scripture, but it could. It was, in almost biblical terms, the light on Saturday nights of this boy's (me) generation. Little money, big appetite, and it were Chop Soy with plenty of it. Chinese restaurants were our home. Today it is not easy to find one of these classics. They became sushi buffets. Demand dictated it. Because there are also mo- das in the kitchen. Some stay on the edge of the plate. Others persist and become immortal.
I fear I have not been descriptive enough. And for us to understand what has changed in the last 20 years, not only in our eating habits but also in our preferences in terms of restaurants, we need to take a look back that may eventually work as an exercise in nostalgia... The generation of the 70's/80's achieved the longed-for financial independence in the mid-'90s, which was perhaps one of the most fruitful (if only because I lived in it). Long before we thought the world was going to end at the turn of the millennium, we were living in what was conventionally called "the time of the fat cows." Money had come pouring in from the European Union (or EEC, if you prefer), and before we came to the brilliant conclusion that it would eventually have to be returned, we spent it. Our first job was better paid in escudos than today the Euro can cover the expenses of the overwhelming majority of people with 30 or more years of career. A degree meant a certain job, even if it was in the communications center of some bank selling credit to incautious people intoxicated with the new-risk spirit seen in the movies and which was, at last, possible. Later, the heavy bill would be paid. As it was paid. But while the fuss lasted, it was a villainous binge. Trips, cars, designer clothes, Bairro Alto until the morning, Bica until I went to Lux, and, of course, good food. My time of the fat cows was made of beef, yes, but with oyster sauce. After a crepe. Or fried won ton. Or swallow's nest soup. It depended on the mood. Once the starter was consumed, the bottle of Mateus Rosé was already half gone, sometimes it was chao min de gambas, other times chicken with almonds (beware, do not confuse this, which is sautéed, with fried chicken with almonds, which is a breaded dish) and, of course, the great classics Pecking duck, sweet and sour pork, prawns on a hot plate, and happy family, all arranged on that revolving plate in the center of the table so that everyone could taste a little bit of everything. Even before ordering coffee, always accompanied by a brandy whose bottle contained one or two lizards "preserved" in alcohol and, at Christmas time, accompanied by a legendary coffee offered by the house, the dessert was banana fa-si, hot ice cream, or lychees. We were deceived. Not only with the lychees, which were in syrup and came out of a can that today can be found in any department store. This "Chinese Cuisine", practiced from Braga to Portimão in restaurants where the furniture and decoration were identical was, after all, "Cuisine For Portuguese Who Think They Like Chinese Cuisine."
I had already realized it when, by luck (or monetary impossibility to sit in a Brasserie Kronenbourg for an oyster or two) in Paris, I was forced to consume in a Restaurant Chinois where the dishes could not have been more disparate. The truth came 20 years later, with the emergence of the Clandestine Restaurants around Martim Moniz. It was "the people's home" (I was served by Mrs. Ling, who had her months-old son on her back during the whole "service"), where the bathroom had the toothbrushes and, in the poly-bowl, a bowl of boiled chicken legs that would serve as a starter after the nails were cut. On the menu, there was tongue salad, caramelized pork intestines, duck tongues, and duck legs, and long before the "fad" for dumplings, they already had pork wontons and chives or mushrooms, but we called them "pillows." Also, these spaces, before they started serving the same portions of spicy prawns and spicy sour soup as everyone else, were where we exercised freedom. We smoked at the table "like in the good old days," we went to the fridge to get our beers, and the bill (which came in a yellow Post-It), was always late, because the owners of the "apartment," after asking if we needed anything else from the kitchen, would also come for dinner, at the table closest to the TV, where a soap opera with mandarins with thin mustaches was playing. We learned a lot in these establishments. Like, for example, that food preparation is always in the hands of men. That the term "Chinese Cuisine" is too reductive when a country is so giant that its typical cuisine is distributed discordantly across the provinces of Shandong, Guangdong, Sichuan (the spiciest in the world), Hunan, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, and Anhui. And you'd also find out who, after all these years, still had the old prejudice "I don't eat meat in those restaurants because it might be dog meat." Those were such epic times that today when most Chinese restaurants have been turned into All You Can Eat Sushi, where there are rolls with Philadelphia cheese and strawberry jam, we already know how to eat with chopsticks. I have never been to El Bulli. And it is with deep regret that I report it. I have been very close, at Casa de Dalí, in Port Ligat, there, almost at the northern border of Spain (Catalonia) with the view of the Pyrenees' peaks still snowed over, in April. Only this "place" was only open for the fixed season, which was from June 15 to December 20. Reservations for the following year's season were all taken on a single day, December 21, and although there was a capacity for 8,000 seats per season, requests amounted to 2 million. When it all began in 1963 in a small beach bar - a little shack built by Dr. Schilling and his wife Marketa - called El Bulli because that was the term the locals used to refer to the couple's French bulldogs, no one could have imagined that it would get its first Michelin Star in 1976. Ferran Adrià, the chef who would turn this space into a legend, did not take over the kitchen until ten years later. In 1990 the restaurant got its second star, and in 1997 it got its third. In a kitchen where 42 chefs worked daily, experimentation reached unprecedented levels through processes that then became a current, called Molecular Cuisine, which changed the texture of flavors. The great chefs around the world have, in their incredible restaurants (but not as much as El Bulli), echoed Spherification, Gelling, Emulsification, and Thickening, and in 2008, just to surprise again, an epic shot of... Melon with ham. It was the ultimate refinement of another current that had been born in 1970, the Nouvelle Cuisine Française, in which lightness and delicacy of dishes were the law and presentation its epitome. Even today it is inconceivable that a restaurant commonly called "gourmet" would not put at least half of its emphasis on the preparation. And its "inventor", Paul Bocuse, is considered the most influential person in this small but demanding world of haute cuisine. So much so that for any chef, the most coveted award is not one or two, or three Michelin stars, but the Bocuse d'Or, established in 1987. Bocuse, in turn, followed to the letter in his teachings the rules of Auguste Escoffier, who renewed the traditional methods of French cuisine, simplifying them. It was he who created the system of "Brigades" in the kitchen (a chef at each post) and raised the profession to a position of respect that still holds true today. And as the kitchen continues its perpetual transformation, which is reflected in our preferences and, therefore, in the fashions that do exist, what will have happened in recent years?
There is nothing worse for a child or teenager than forcing him/her to a tour of clothing stores in search of an outfit that will make him/her suffer horrors on that fateful day when someone in the family will get married. Since the bride and groom, these picky people, have a habit of wanting everything to go well and are terrified of a wet wedding (even though the ancients say it is blessed this way), they insist on scheduling the party for the summer. This invariably results in a hellish heat that no one can stand in that outfit they picked out when, going from store to store, they still had "a little knit around their shoulders." I hated weddings. They were a bore during which, on top of that, I had to stand in my cardigan and papillon in endless lines to take pictures that I never saw again, much less shared on social networks because, as all fashions are transient until they become fashionable again, I'll have to wait until the mullet is in again. The truth is that the worst was far from being that. I started going to weddings in the '80s and, for Bocuse's sake, I couldn't stand Bacalhau à Brás. Nor, in the '90s, could I stand Bacalhau com Natas. And the Pork Loin with Turkish Rice. And the Shrimp Cascade. What kind of fetish was this, shared by all spaces and farms? Why did they trick us and call a Chicken Soup that didn't even have those little eggs? Of course, with age, everything changes. Who gets married now are the friends. And there's gin and tonic, Setúbal muscatel, dates with bacon, and the freedom (once again, the most important thing in the world) to remove our ties after the third glass of red wine and, at the table, to delight ourselves with roasted pumpkin puree, tuna tartar, sea bass rolls with miso and ginger, veal steak and a lemon and mint sorbet as a palate-cutter. Then there are the old liquors and the Armagnac, and I don't even care about the suckling pig and the seafood and the "caldo verde" (green broth) for the "snack" because I am all about acrobatic dances on the dance floor, with a tie tied on my head, looking forward to the Whistle Train and the absence of stop operations all the way home. Yes, age is pure status. Twenty years ago, the time when Italian cuisine went crazy as if olive oil, garlic, tomatoes, and basil didn't exist here and someone had the pioneering idea of putting them together, I never thought it would be possible to see La Gondola restaurant in Praça de Espanha close. Nor that we would have to wait until 2013 for someone to declare Mediterranean Cuisine as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. In the meantime, someone thought it would be logical to open restaurants with Indian and Italian menus, which have sprung up in Lisbon and have since spread throughout the country, which is logical considering how many times I have invited people to restaurants with subcontinent cuisine and they respond with their very own limited definition of it: "I don't like spicy." This is where Italian food comes in, which appeals to everyone without exception. Meanwhile, Japanese gastronomy is no longer limited to Rua da Rosa, Bairro Alto, and Alcân- tara, where the oldest restaurant was (and which survived until the pandemic). Nowadays it is easier to find restaurants that call themselves Japanese (if the use of salmon allows them that definition) than Cozido à Portuguesa on Wednesdays. If a Japanese person went into any of them he would have a breakdown. But that doesn't matter. That's how the Tuga likes his sushi, and don't come to him with fubu or non-packaged ramen. What about ceviches, which have arrived to take over our fish species, especially croakers? And what about the Korean barbecues, which almost already compete with the Sabores Mineiros, only without cat meat, as in South Korea?
I also don't know at what point we started to think that a gourmet hamburger, even with arugula and onions caramelized in port wine and Dijon mustard and homemade brioche bun would not be as unhealthy as half a McChicken. Then came the vegetarians (who we take to try the best açorda or tomato soup or egg bean stew and then hear the excruciating "Oh, I didn't know Comida Alentejana had so much for vegetarians"), the vegans and celiacs and the catering had to readapt almost as fast as when the pandemic forced take-away. Which coincided with the time when we started to like cold food because we order it from a restaurant 10 km away and it is delivered 45 minutes later by people on slow bicycles. Which in turn coincided with the time when we were all bakers using the mother dough. And speaking of natural fermentation, it seems that beer, as long as it is homemade, is not as harmful as the other evil one, as is everything organic, and woe betides anything that is not. Including bread, that precious thing that in the last 20 years went from being an essential item on our table to an ingrate that could only be consumed until 4 pm and today, as the Universal Church of the Paleo Kingdom dictates, is persona non grata of the untouchables caste. And while we have all been playing with manias, something that has afflicted us since time immemorial, Rui Paula, Henrique Sá Pessoa, José Avillez, Ricardo Costa, Luís Brito, Louis Anjos, Pedro Pena Bastos, Carlos Teixeira, Arnaldo Azevedo, Ljubomir Stanisic, Diogo Rocha, Vincent Farges, Rui Silvestre, António Loureiro, Vitor Matos, José Lopes, Tiago Bonito, Joachim Koerper, João Rodrigues, Gil Fernandes, Óscar Gonçalves, Heinz Beck, Sergi Arola, Alexandre Silva, Pedro Almeida, Pedro Lemos, João Oliveira, and Luís Pestana did the most incredible. .. They put Portugal on the map, with their Michelin stars. Yes, in the last 20 years the Portuguese gastronomic genesis has survived some nonsense. We already knew that this was the best place in the world to eat. Now the world also knows. And it knows that it is not because of the hamburgers. The only thing missing now is the Portuguese ones.
Translated from the original on The 20th anniversary issue, published November 2022.Full story and credits in the print version.
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