Sergi Arola Instagram – Although it’s becoming common for gourmet restaurants to serve in more than one space, it’s not as common to pass through a part while standing. On the 1st floor of LAB, the initial snacks are served to customers with great intimacy: around a table, small proposals are presented successively by the team, supported by a finishing kitchen, breaking the inevitable protocol in the Michelin context. The interesting part is that these snacks are presented on a map of Portugal drawn on this large table, being carefully placed under the regions that inspired them. Essentially, Sergi and Vladmir recreate the typical Spanish tapas in a Portuguese context, based on our products and recipes. Algarve prawns, Alentejo migas, Bairrada suckling pig, or Trás-os-Montes smoked meats are some of the mini-proposals, fun, tasty, and rigorous.
We move on to the table for a menu that, being one of the two annual menus, must maintain Lab’s classics under penalty of rebellion from regulars: the sweetbread (photo 1), the Mirandese beef (photo 8), or the traveling sardine (photo 10), even if, here and there, they appear touched up.
Both the sweetbread and the Mirandese beef, for the quality of the product on one hand, and for the consistency of several years of perfecting on the other, are category dishes: hot, spiced, and smoked, with very perceptible and clean flavors. I would say comfort dishes, but their presentation doesn’t lead us to that sofa imagery… Note for the “Quinta da Penha Longa,” based on local products from the Quinta and the Serra, with the caviar beautifully cheating the conceptualism of the dish. Concept and respect appear in the sea bass, in a tribute from Vladmir to his native country, Cape Verde, served in a “farse” that replicates the traditional cloths of that archipelago. Remarkable in point, emotional in purpose.
The desserts don’t leave the fame of Penha Longa’s pastry chef, Francisco Siopa, in the hands of others, both in the raspberry, which brought impeccable freshness after a sequence of more immersive dishes, and in the traveling sardine, betting on denser and stronger flavors (coffee, chocolate, goat cheese, cardamom, and salted caramel).
Post 2/3 | Posted on 09/May/2024 16:40:42
