Portuguese chef has cooked for presidents and popes – 10/23/2023 – Food

Owner of seven locations between Brazil and Portugal, Portuguese chef Vitor Sobral has worked for more than three decades as a kind of ambassador for his country’s cuisine. The task earned him the opportunity to serve a roster of 15 presidents and two popes.

On the most recent occasion, Sobral, 56, cooked for Francis during the flight back to Rome from Lisbon, where the pope was less than three months ago for World Youth Day. For R$349, the chef served the same menu last week at Tasca da Esquina, a restaurant he runs alongside partner Edrey Momo in Jardins, west of São Paulo.

Without cod, the menu included black pork ham and cheese from Serra da Estrela; veal with Port wine and almond puree and grouper with tomato cream.

“I realized, at the beginning of my career, that the only thing they knew from Portugal were sardines and cod. So, I made a book with 500 cod recipes to put an end to that story”, he jokes.

“We have a surreal diversity of fish and seafood. You can’t think that we only eat that”, adds he, who has published 24 books.

The only requirement made by Francisco, who served on a flight operated by TAP, was that the portions were small to avoid waste. The current pontiff is very empathetic, says Sobral.

“But I realized that the two [religiosos] they don’t have the same profile at all”, says the chef, who had more time to talk to the then Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger (1927-2022), during his visit to Portugal in 2010. Ratzinger, says Sobral, spoke Portuguese well and knew details of ingredients and even Portuguese geography.

“The menu had a group of fish from the Azores. So, he started asking me about the islands. He knew what was eaten there, that there was a very famous cheese on the island of São Jorge, which other [ilha] there was a great influence of spices, because of the discoveries”, he says.

Between official trips to represent the Portuguese government and invitations to participate in events, Sobral traveled to more than 40 countries — including places such as Macau, a special administrative region of China and a former Portuguese colony, Angola, India and São Tomé and Príncipe.

“Taking Portuguese cuisine abroad has to do with the lack of knowledge of what Portugal was. At one point in the world, the Portuguese and Spanish were very important in the formation of what gastronomy is today. Without what they took and brought [da Europa para a América]the kitchen would hardly be what it is”, he says.

Once, in Algeria, when he cooked for the country’s president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika (1937-2021), he wanted to go and see the local food market — a custom he still maintains on his trips today. “They sent me with an escort, but I ran away. I wouldn’t be able to really see anything with guards by my side”, he says.

Eating meals with the kitchen staff is another habit that he tries to follow when he goes to other countries for work — which often means getting to know different origins of typical food. This earned him a trip to the Philippines, at the invitation of cooks from that country who worked in Macau during one of the 14 visits he made to the territory.

Among the 15 presidents for whom he cooked are the Russian Vladimir Putin and the Brazilian Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT).

Brazil, in fact, is the country that stood out the most in Sobral’s career, who arrived here for the first time 30 years ago — by his count, he estimates having returned at least a hundred times in that time.

“One of the reasons that made me want to open a Portuguese restaurant here was to show São Paulo residents what Portuguese cuisine was. And, in some way, create an even greater bond with Brazil.”

Sobral says that, 12 years ago, when Tasca da Esquina opened, it was common for customers to ask for changes to the dishes. He, however, never gave in.

“I didn’t come here to make tropicalized cuisine, which uses cream or condensed milk”, says the chef, who, in Brazil, is in charge of Tasca da Esquina, a restaurant with the same name as the house in Portugal — where he also has two other restaurants , Lota da Esquina and Taberna da Esquina, as well as three bakeries.

For Sobral, Brazil has been waking up to the value of its products for ten years. “But Brazil still doesn’t know Brazil. Many cooks have never been to Belém do Pará. I went 12 times, because of the cuisine”, he says.

Despite the effort to promote Portuguese cuisine in recent decades, Sobral defines the cuisine he practices as Lusophone, which incorporated ingredients and techniques from Portuguese-speaking territories or which were influenced by that country.

This can be seen on the shelves of his restaurants in Portugal, where there is a corner for bottles of cachaça and, in the recipes on the menu, where there is often space for a farofinha.