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Belcanto Restaurant Lisbon + José Avillez

When the Hallelujah Chorus Sang

Rt Hon Jacqui Smith and Tessa Jowell © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

“I’ll eat when I’m dead,” quipped Daphne Guinness, heiress-turned-chanteuse. We haven’t cooked since the war but we’ve certainly dined out on that. Quo vadis? Quo Vadis. Hello Kitty Fisher’s. Blue Fin seafood. Annabel’s. The incredibly Social Eating House. Intertwining wining and dining otherwise known as ‘spending the nephew’s inheritance’. First there was the Astrid Bray hosted Christmas party at Daphne’s. Next came the Launceston Place midsummer soirée with good stock (company and gravy) and theatrical staff. Epigram anyone? Yep, both Princess Diana haunts. We’re following in her footsteps, even photographing Prince CharlesLe Caprice to go. Completely up our own rue.

Belcanto Lisbon Exterior © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Provenance matters, whether antiques or antipasti, dated or stated or possibly slated. So it was good to indulge in whipped Elveden beets at the MABA (Middle Aged British Artists) adorned Hix Soho. The farm shop on the Guinnesses’ Elveden Estate is a destination in itself. For the carnivorously inclined, Glenarm Estate produce pops up several times on Hix’s menu. The walled garden at Glenarm Castle is a destination in itself.

Belcanto Tuna Tartar Cone © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Escaping what Lord James Bethell called “the chilling effect of the referendum on social calendars” at Westbourne’s groovy fifth inaugural garden party, waving goodbye to The Right Honourables Tessa and Jacqui, we’re off to hot hot hot Lisbon. Well, not before stopping for nocturnal wanderings in the Royal College of Surgeons’ Hunterian Museum. It’s not every night we get to enjoy noirish canapés next to the mesentery of a sheep with several globular cysts attached to the tissue by long pedicles.

Belcanto Amuse Bouche © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

With the rhetorical daring of Mrs Merton’s interrogation of the millionaire Paul Daniel’s wife Debbie Magee, what first attracted us to the lovely Belcanto? Answer: wherever there’s a Michelin star there’s Lavender’s Blue. Make that two and we’re there with bells on ding-a-ling. Belcanto is the first restaurant in Lisbon to receive two Michelin stars. José Avillez is the first Portuguese chef to achieve this accolade. The hot to trot 36 year old has created a paradise for pescatarians with sophisticated palates. He does, after all, have over 1,000 miles of coastline to explore. Piscean provenance ain’t ever a problem. In his own words:

Belcanto Starter © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

“My life is cooking. Because of that, many of my memories are tied to tastes. I was born and raised in Cascais, near the sea. The memory of being that close to the sea is very strong and is really a part of me – it defines me. I truly love cooking fish and seafood. Let me say I believe that in Portugal we have the best the sea has to offer in the world. I love creating dishes with the taste of the sea. At Belcanto, we use algae codium which has a very strong taste of the sea. I loved eating it on the beach at Guincho.” Such joy, joy, joy.

Dip in the Sea Belcanto © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Belcanto Sea Bass © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Belcanto The Garden of the Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Belcanto is in Chiado, Lisbon’s most exhilarating neighbourhood. Chiado is a cultural mix of the old and new, the traditional and the adventurous, a distillation of the best. Easily a metaphor for José’s cooking. Outside may be sweating 30 degrees but inside a coolly slick gastronomic and sensory performance is underway. There are just 10 tables for the chef to impress with his pedigree. Table to tableau. Thank goodness for the high waiter to customer ratio as we eat more courses on the tasting menu than Henryk Sienkiewicz’s novel Quo Vadis has had film versions. The bill comes to €759.50. Say bon. Not exactly cheap as frites, but it’s a special occasion, a Lisbon treaty.

Belanto Red Mullet © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Behind an unassuming white exterior lies the understated white interior. A blank canvas. It’s the food that delivers the colour | shock | humour | art. Palette to palate. An exploding olive, “a tribute to the great chef Ferran Adrià” explains our waiter, sets the scene. José trained at elBulli, Ferran’s legendary triple Michelin starred Catalonian restaurant. Said olive is served in a 2cm diameter frying pan. Similarly, caviar topped edible stones crack open in a flow of volcanic lava. Textures and tastes and experiences and expectations are reinvented. Foraging in flowers for tuna tartar cones for starters. “You tell me!” smiles our waiter when asked what the indefinable taste is in the pudding. “How is your mushroom?” he later laughs. Rosemary ash butter tastes like fag butt ends. This is haute haute haute cuisine. And we’re loving it. All 3.5 hours.

Belcanto Pumpkin © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Belcanto Pudding © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Birthplace of fashion designer Cruz Bueno, it’s good to see the cool cool cool citizenry of Lisbon that have hung around in the sizzling heat live up to our soignée sartorial expectations. And there’s not a pickled dead sheep in sight. There’s more art in simply eating. Portugal is having a fashion moment according to Knightsbridge’s top kitchenware store Divertimenti. This Christmas’s essential stocking filler is a cabbage bowl designed by Portuguese artist Bordallo Pinheiro. Caldo Verde, cabbage soup, is a national dish. Our Divertimenti bowl is purely ornamental, unused of course. Bathos to pathos.

Belcanto Mandarin Sorbet © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Categories
Architects Architecture Country Houses People

Kings of Leinster + Borris House Carlow

The Lines of Beauty

Borris House Estate © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Staggered up a hillside, an architectural beauty parade of picturesque cottages clinging to the gradient, a Georgian house doubling as a petrol station, a boutique hotel boasting a celebrated chef, and an improbably vast château like a granite mirage on the horizon, Borris in County Carlow is a cut above the average Irish village. With a County population of 50,000, one third that of the smallest London Boroughs, driving around Carlow is a breeze.

Borris House Carlow © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

  • Borris House is a mostly 1830s Richard and William Vitruvius Morrison confection: neoclassical innards under a Tudoresque skin. The original Georgian box swallowing up an older castle is decorated outside with battlements, finials, cupolas and hood mouldings, some ogee shaped.
  • Morrison masterpieces stretch the length of the country from Glenarm Castle in the north, Ballyfin in the midlands and Fota to the south. Glenarm is the closest in looks.
  • Borris is the seat of the MacMorrough Kavanaghs, High Kings of Leinster. Their pedigree is traceable back to the dawn of Irish history. Art Mór Mac Murchadha Caomhánach was a particularly feisty ancestor. Reining for 42 years before his demise in 1416, he revived the royal family’s power and land. He spent a lot of time warring with Richard II.
  • On the 650 acre walled estate stands Ireland’s tallest broadleaf tree. It’s a 144 foot high hybrid black American poplar down by the River Barrow. The estate once covered 35,000 acres before being broken up in 1907.
  • Current owner Morgan MacMurrough Kavanagh says, “A two storey wing with a walkway over the kitchens used to connect the main house to the estate chapel so that the family could enter straight into their first floor gallery seating. My grandmother demolished that wing. Anglican church services are still held in the chapel every other Sunday.”
  • Songstress Mrs Alexander, forever extolling the combined merits of Christianity and country life, donated an organ to the chapel. Her son married Eva Kavanagh, daughter of a mid 19th century owner of Borris.
  • In 1778, Eleanor Charlotte Butler, the sister-in-law of Thomas Kavanagh fled from Borris House where she was staying and eloped with Sarah Ponsonby of nearby Woodstock, Inistioge. Eventually escaping and setting up home together in Plas Newydd, Llangollen, they were two ladies who allegedly did more than lunch together. A recently discovered 18th century letter in the library of the house refers to the pair as “Sapphos”.

Borris House Main Fronts © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Borris House Side Elevation © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Borris House Portico © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Borris House Plasterwork © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley