The Gonçalves family brought from Trás-os-Montes all the products needed to make the six meals that they will serve, for three days – from the 1st to the 3rd of March – at the Grill D. Fernando restaurant at the Altis Grand Hotel, on Rua Castilho . This is how the famous restaurant from Bragança, O Geadas, presents itself in Lisbon, inaugurating the Gastronomic Weeks that Altis will organize throughout the year.
“All the products? Even the potatoes?” Óscar Geadas, who is not here representing his restaurant, G, with a Michelin star, but just accompanying his parents, lending a hand in the kitchen, and a few fingers of conversation in the living room, smiles at the question. Yes, of course, also the potatoes that accompany the very traditional dish of butelo with chasubles. “Farland potatoes are completely different”, he explains, and, in fact, with less water than others, they concentrate all the flavor.
What you can find during the three days at Grill D. Fernando, located on the 12th floor of the Altis and with an exceptional view over the city, is exactly the comfort of home cooking that you can experience at Geadas. And each of the meals will have a different menu, so that you can try several of the dishes from the restaurant by Iracema and Adérito Gonçalves.
Geadas’ goat stew
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The lunch at which Fugas was present had repolgas with chorizo and croutons of bread. Virgílio Gomes, from Trás-os-Montes, gastronomy scholar and ambassador for this first edition of the Gastronomic Weeks, framed what was being served, explaining that repolgas is the name given to pleurotus mushrooms, the most consumed in the region.
A partridge broth with vegetables followed. And, as the main dish, butelo was served with the chasubles which, Virgílio Gomes recounted, in his childhood was a Shrovetide meal, but now it has gained greater popularity and is served throughout the winter, valuing the sausage that uses the meat together with the spine bone of the bisaro pig.
Finally, an almond pudding with candied figs. “They are confided by my mother”, said Óscar, proud, while Iracema smiled, shy but satisfied. O chef explained that in this pudding they use almonds when the fruit is still being formed and is milky, “which gives it more acidity”, and reveals the care and attention placed in every detail of the kitchen.
On the 1st, at dinner, the dish served on the tables was wild boar stew with chestnuts, accompanied by a turnip broth with ham and, for dessert, bacon.
This Thursday, the second day of the event, the Geadas (the family name is Gonçalves, but they became known like this because of a first establishment they had in Vinhais and where a customer said to Óscar’s father that the prices ” burned like frost”), they present, for lunch, sour chorizo with turnip greens, chestnut soup, stew with bísaro pork meat and toasted crème brûlée. And for dinner, Trás-os-Montes cusco with Bísaro pork ribs, pigeon soup, Mirandese meat with mashed potatoes and, at the end, bean pudding.
On the third and last day there will be roasted alheira and sabino chorizo for lunch, green broth, oven-roasted kid with roasted potatoes and giblets rice, and chestnut pudding with chestnuts in syrup. At the dinner that closes the event, it will be possible to taste corn with sausage, pea cream, rooster stewed in a pot with boiled potatoes and toasted bread and, to finish, chickpea pie.
Meals cost 50 euros and are accompanied by Casa do Joa wines and Arvolea olive oil. The next Gastronomic Week will take place at the end of the month and will bring the O Gaveto restaurant to Grill D. Fernando, which will travel from Matosinhos to Lisbon and to the 12th floor of the Altis.