49away from Boi Cavalo, that tart green mango
juice often accompanies oysters in Goa.
Jesus Lee Fernandes—an Indian born in Goa to a
Catholic mother and a martial arts–loving father—
opened the slip of a restaurant three years ago. At
the end of the tiny space, where brightly painted
Hindu icons leap across the walls, an altar to Bruce
Lee presides over Goan food gone highlighter-
bright with Portuguese ingredients: fresh pink
shrimp folded into a biryani, stews dotted with
green okra. I devoured a plate of golden chickpea
fritters served alongside a wildly f lavorful paste of
finely ground cilantro, coconut, green chile, and
tamarind. When there were no more fritters left, I
scooped the paste straight from the bowl with my
hands. As I licked my fingers, Fernandes described
a tasting menu he was cooking up that included
fresh clam samosas and oyster curry: Portuguese
ingredients, Goan-ized.I
n a country that’s long been deeply tra-
ditional in the kitchen, even the subtlest
tweak to an old standby is exciting, a
sign of a shift in the way cooks are cook-
ing, and diners responding. At Leopold,
an intimate, experimental restaurant in
Mouraria, chewy soy-pickled kombu seaweed inten-
sified the tenderness of a slab of seared beef from the
Azores; at Taberna da Rua das Flores, I tried a
feijoada de lulas that swapped out the pork and beans
in the usually black stew for squid, simmered in a
hearty red chorizo broth until butter-soft. And one
Wednesday afternoon, at Rosa da Rua, a small res-
taurant in the hip Bairro Alto neighborhood, Brito
took me to eat a riff on cozido à portuguesa from
Africa’s Cape Verde islands.
The quintessential Portuguese stew is often made
with beef shin, pork sausages, blood sausage, and a
fermented, smoked kind known as farinheira. But
to the customary cozido medley, the chef, Maria
Pina, added stewed pear and quince. She supple-
mented the usual white beans with meaty chickpeas
and stewed cabbage. She snuck in pumpkin, cauli-
f lower, and sweet potato—hearty elements found
in a traditional Cape Verdean stew, cachupa. The
combination of pungent f lavors, rich textures, and
bright colors was surprising. It captivated Brito. The
pumpkin, that quince, the restaurant replete with a
wine-glass-tinkling lunch crowd—all exciting indi-
cations, to those who were paying attention, of the
new potential of the Portuguese plate. tion of the expected and deliciously strange.
Brito likes to take beloved Portuguese ingredi-
ents—mackerel, lupine beans, and graham crackers,
a favorite childhood snack—and give them twists
from countries thousands of miles from home.
“The question I always ask,” he said, “is am I adding
something to it or not?”
He often finds inspiration deep in Lisbon’s
immigrant-heavy neighborhoods—Mouraria, liter-
ally the Moorish quarter, and Alfama now abound
with residents from across Africa and Asia. He
encountered palm oil in Angolan, Bissau-Guinean,
and Mozambican restaurants, and it proved to
be the perfect, missing ingredient in a dish of
pomegranate-marinated hake, buttery graham
cracker croutons, and pumpkin purée. And he
decided to dress a cockle dish with slices of unripe
green mango after learning at Jesus é Goês, a hillEven the subtlest tweak
to a traditional dish is
exciting, a sign of a shift in
the way cooks are cooking,
and diners responding.