José Diogo Costa was on a business trip to the United States when his name rang out in Porto at the Michelin Portugal gala. He had won the Young Chef of the Year award. I was in a cab, with my mobile data connected, watching the broadcast.
“I was expecting to win last year,” he told Essential, but it was good to have won, after all ‘I'm not going anywhere new’. But being honoured is special. “I was thrilled and immediately thought of our team and called my parents.”
The Executive Creative Chef at Reid's Palace, a Belmond Hotel, also has on his CV the fact that he is maintaining the star of the William restaurant in the Michelin Guide.
Born in Madeira, with roots in Porto Moniz, he left the island at an early age. When he decided to take up cooking, he also thought about gaining experience around the world. This explains why, in around eleven years, he has worked on several continents. The aim was to “try to understand why things happened in those places and to absorb as much information as possible”, and then to “consolidate those experiences”.
The average was “one year in each place”. At the age of 28 (29 in June), Reid's Palace allows him to put these experiences into practice. “I think it was gold over blue, because I came back to my homeland.” So, the traveling is over for now. There's work to be done in the hotel's various restaurants and at William.
The starred restaurant's latest challenge is a pairing based on non-alcoholic drinks, i.e. fruit fermentations, which accompany the restaurant's menus, which have also been revamped.
With the non-alcoholic pairing, José Diogo Costa says he wants to “be inclusive” and have options for people who want to consume less alcohol, or who simply don't consume alcohol. The fermentations, which take about two weeks to produce, are colourful mixtures that can involve fruits like melon or vegetables like beet, to name but a few. They are served in different glasses and accompany the meal. All of this represents a sustainable option, because of the use made of the products. The pairings offer a mix of complementary and contrasting dishes.
In the two new menus, one of the options is called the “William Menu”, with five courses, which is the signature menu, whose new name is a tribute to the hotel's founder. The other option is called the “Discovery Menu”. It has four courses and seeks to explore Madeira's gastronomic diversity.
With these proposals, José Diogo Costa wants to respond to customer demand for gastronomic experiences wherever they travel. “People can have an excellent meal here as well as in Lisbon and Porto,” he says. The difference will be “in our identity”, so that customers who follow the gastronomic itineraries have something new.
The chef believes that, with three Michelin-starred restaurants, Madeira is well served, as well as eight recommended. But there is room for more, “with time”. José Diogo Costa believes that “we can't be too impatient. This is the second year of the Portuguese Michelin Guide.”
Along the way, he has the unconditional support of Inês, his partner, who has traveled with him and accompanied him on William's adventure as head chef and whom he considers “an inspirational pillar”.
He has his sights set on the future: consolidating the star, looking towards the second, but first achieving the green star, the symbol of sustainability. “We have the capacity for that”.
“I'm talking about a hotel with more than 120 rooms in which there is a lot of production” and also ‘a margin of waste’. That's why the challenge has been to “manage waste in order to get the most out of the product”. It's a way of preventing the product from going to waste, thus creating “custom that nobody else has”.
