Two stars over the Tagus

By Flavia Tomaello, https://flaviatomaello.blog/, Instagram @flavia.tomaello

In March of this year, Rui Silvestre added the second Michelin star to Fifty Seconds, the restaurant he runs in the Vasco da Gama Tower in Lisbon, and with that he finished consolidating a journey that began much earlier, when he was still a chef in his early twenties receiving his first distinction. That contrast between the young chef and the chef of today is, perhaps, the best gateway to understanding how the kitchen thinks today. «At just over twenty years old we feel a feverish urge to demonstrate everything we know how to do in a single dish, which sometimes gives rise to an excess of elements. Today, with maturity, with the consolidation of our identity and with the enormous happiness of having won two Michelin stars in March of this year, I would tell you that true sophistication lies in simplicity and the ability to eliminate the superfluous. Precision does not need to make noise,» summarizes the chef.

This maturation process did not imply, however, any break with the project he inherited. Fifty Seconds already had history and recognition when Silvestre took over the kitchen, something many chefs would describe as an added pressure. He lives it differently. «There was never a moment of rupture or a specific dish, because I felt this restaurant was mine from the very first day I entered here. I never felt the weight of the past as a shadow from which I had to free myself, on the contrary, I felt immense pride in being able to continue such a prestigious legacy, but applying, from the first minute, my own vision.» That vision, he clarifies, is not limited to what he puts on the plate, but includes hospitality, the warmth of human contact and the energy of the entire team.

The stage where that second star is held has its own particularity. Fifty Seconds operates at a height of one hundred and twenty meters, inside the tallest building in Portugal, and is accessed via an elevator that takes fifty seconds, the same time that gives the restaurant its name. Silvestre understands this journey as part of the ritual, but he is careful not to take center stage from the food. «The elevator ride is a necessary moment of transition, it serves for the customer to disconnect from the hustle and bustle below and enter our world. But the real impact has to occur at the table. The height and views become simply a magnificent backdrop, because the real spectacle is the precision of the flavor and our hospitality.»

What’s behind every star, night after night

Maintaining two Michelin stars requires, above all, consistency, and that is where Silvestre focuses on his team. With Leandro Lopes as right-hand man and Soraia Neves as sous-chef, each day closes with a detailed debriefing of everything that happened in the service. «The secret lies in the rigor of the transmission of information and in daily coordination. We analyze customer comments, adjust times and prepare the physical and mental mise en place for the next day. Consistency and excellence are born from this discipline and this daily demand.» This same logic of collective work extends to the room, where Marc Pinto and Teresa Grilo choose the wines in permanent dialogue with the kitchen, analyzing the acidity, fat or citrus notes of each dish before adding a label to the menu.

The identity that brought Fifty Seconds to those two stars is also supported by a very personal idea of ​​Portuguese cuisine. Silvestre works with seafood and fish from the Lisbon coast, but combines them with spices from his own family heritage, with roots in Mozambique and India. Far from treating it as an exotic whim, he describes it as the very heart of his identity, a crossover that also defines his position in the debate between hyperlocalism and the search for the best possible product, regardless of its origin. «The absolute priority is always the exceptional quality of the product. Intelligent luxury consists of knowing how to combine the purity of the local ingredient with global excellence, without dogmas that limit the gastronomic experience.»

That same criterion is transferred to the construction of the tasting menu, thought, in his own words, like a score, with a rhythm of temperatures, textures and intensities that seeks to ensure that the diner arrives at the dessert with the same energy with which he started. It is also reflected in his look at the new trends in haute cuisine, between the extreme maturation of fish and the use of artificial intelligence in culinary creativity, two phenomena that he considers passing fads compared to extraction and conservation techniques that are here to stay. «Great cuisine is based on human sensitivity, touch, the chef’s intuition and emotional memory. The human factor is, and will always remain, irreplaceable.»

With two Michelin stars already achieved, Silvestre does not speak of a ceiling reached but of a base on which to continue polishing details. Its own definition of sophistication, that of a kitchen that eliminates the superfluous instead of adding layers, works as a road map as clear as the one offered by the Vasco da Gama Tower from its one hundred and twenty meters high, a wide panorama, but with a single point of focus, the table. That same synthesis, from a chef who today weighs each element before adding it to the dish, is what distinguishes Silvestre from this second star from the one who, more than a decade ago, received the first with the anxiety typical of someone who still needs to prove something.

What is clear, after going through each of their answers, is that this jump from one star to two did not respond to a coup d’état or a flag dish designed to impress the jury. It was, rather, the consequence of maintaining for years the same daily demand, the same meticulous review of each service, and the same conviction that Portuguese cuisine, as he understands it, was always a cuisine open to the world, capable of bringing spices from Mozambique and India to a dish built, at its base, with fish and seafood freshly taken from the Atlantic.

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