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Chaparro Alentejano: there's a New Restaurant in Beja
Miguel Rocha Vieira doesn't stop with his latest new project - Chaparro Alentejano - which opened on August 19, in Beja, and wants to taste the essence of the region with local products. The Alentejo landscapes and hills are designed around chaparros, or cork oaks, as most Portuguese people know them. It is one of the symbols of the region and is now the name of the new restaurant with a menu signed by chef Miguel Rocha Vieira. Chaparro Alentejano wants to be a business card in this area of the country and combines the region's products with signature cuisine.
The restaurant as part of the Holiday Inn Beja Hotel. The project is part of Ace Hospitality Management's (AHM) ambitious plan to rethink the restaurant spaces and gastronomic concepts of all hotels. The Portuguese chef was challenged to have a consultant role in the company. And although she has never been in this role, she admits that she is loving the challenge. "I went from my cloister, inside a kitchen, to always be from one place to the other meeting new people. It's been challenging, but incredible", he reveals.
But this more hectic life does not scare the Portuguese chef who has already had three Michelin-starred restaurants under his orders — at the same time. "Although he is a very restless person who likes challenges, there are many things to deal with. When a proposal like this comes up, coming from a company that wants to change things... There will certainly be a before and after in Portugal, especially in the way of looking at the business."
One of the first projects to get off the ground with Miguel Rocha Vieira's consultancy was the Chaparro Alentejano restaurant, in Beja. The restaurant bets on the traditional gastronomy of the region, investing in quality local products. "My job at AHM is to assemble the concepts, create the cards together with the team, and help with the launch. The idea here was to make a typical Alentejo cuisine, a little more careful, in the choice of products and in the way we cook."
After a tour of the locality, Rocha Vieira made an overview of the typical dishes of the region and thought about how he could modernize it. Then he worked together with the team to come up with a menu that he wanted to show to all who visit Beja, "the best of the region". "The Alentejo has lost a little of its essence and we don't want that to go ahead. We want to recover the typical cuisine of the region. It is important to recover traditions," he says.
The pillars on which the idea of the new space was based are outlined in the starters with suggestions such as the tomato and pennyroyal soup, the Xara head with marinated vegetables from the garden, and the Alentejo açorda with cod shavings. In the main courses, the highlights are the old-fashioned octopus à Lagareiro, dogfish rice with coriander (€15), black pork bowl with bata migas, and wild boar stew with herbs of the mountain. To finish the meal, there is the famous cottage cheese pie with tomato jam, camel drool with almonds, sweet migas with Portalegre apple, or the traditional sericaia with Elvas plum. The restaurant, although it is within the walls, has a door to the street. It is not yet open to the general public, this will only happen after "smoothing out some rough edges".
"It is a strategic decision within the organization. We have hotels, but we believe that restaurants also have to have an important weight. We want to create other concepts, a service, an experience that is very different from what you usually have in a hotel. If it is, the experience lived in the hotel does not have to be the same as in the restaurant", says the chef, whose strategy is mainly to break the usual barrier created around restaurant spaces inside hotels. Blurring the idea that they are places for guests, more inaccessible.
As he had already explained to NiT when he made this new phase known, Rocha Vieira wants to make hotel restaurants a place that everyone sees as a good option to dine in the city. The restaurant has 62 seats and a décor reminiscent of an Alentejo house. This marks the pioneering presence in Alentejo of the Holiday Inn brand, whose management is ensured by the company AHM, which is part of the Mercan Properties Group. The chain has been present in Portugal since 2015 and currently has 32 developments throughout the country.
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