From Geranium to gourmet with a €90 menu: leave the big stars to make haute cuisine affordable

Vibe's two tasting menus in Lisbon are authentic sensory adventures, where each course is meticulously prepared, from the selected local products to the accompanying glasses of wine. Each of the dishes along the route tells a story, enhanced by unforgettable flavors discovered during numerous travels abroad. From great European experiences to gourmet on his own, Mattia Stanchieri's new adventure.

As I read about yet another crisis in fine dining and very creative proposals aimed at applying the same scheme of changing airline ticket prices to catering, I take back my notes and memories of the two days I spent in Lisbon, almost in symbiosis with Mattia Stanchieri, an itinerant Monzese who opened his restaurant in Lisbon a few months ago: Vibe in the Chiado district. Chiado is the Lisbon of the great Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. Café A Brasileira was the poet's favorite. The city honored him with a bronze statue depicting him sitting at a small table in front of this café. With an empty chair next to him, as if waiting for someone. You can imagine what a photo opportunity it became.

The chef

Mattia Stanchieri is the chef who refused to make a burger for Kanye West while working as a private chef for VIPs and entrepreneurs in the Bahamas. "I'm Italian, I don't make burgers." That was the opening line of an Instagram Reel that certainly helped put Mattia and his restaurant on the map of Lisbon's hot spots. A sharp attitude, the personal telling of his own story with a separately recorded voice-over and rhythmic editing. Nothing flashy, a cheap production, but so effective. The Bahamas. From a professional point of view, I don't think they opened Mattia's eyes much more.

Life as a private chef in such a paradise is more about constantly satisfying whims. Cooking for bored people can lead to boredom. Then there was the covid that did not allow him to "escape". Confined to the Bahamas, it could have been worse for him. So he began to create menus dedicated to different cultures, inspired by the traditions of many different countries. It was on the islands that Mattia realized he was not an island. It was there that he met Camila Brugger, a Uruguayan entrepreneur who became his wife a few years later. Camila literally pulled Mattia out of the clouds. Only then did Mattia's dreams begin to have substance.

"When we started dating, he showed me Chef's Table. Mattia is obsessed with cooking. Once he was looking at the horizon and I wondered what he was thinking, what deep thoughts he was lost in. Then he turned and asked me if it was better to do a tasting menu or a la carte. When you meet a person who is so passionate about something, you become passionate about his dreams. I've been in his world for more than three years now."

When Camila tells this story, Mattia smiles. He looks at his wife and his eyes have a new horizon. I don't know if Mattia thinks about the vastness of the world, the inevitability of fate, the presence of other life forms beyond the galaxy. Surely he thinks that the best thing he could have done was to take a step back from himself and a step forward toward his wife.

The restaurant

The big question, the focus of their discussions, always came back to one thing: where to open the restaurant. Back in Europe from the Bahamas, Mattia started working at Geranium. How did he get there? With a rather shameless and pandering move. Imagine sending the same email to all the chefs in the 50Best, saying that the chef is your inspirational mentor. Lo and behold, that is what happened, and Rasmus Kofoed's restaurant responded. However, Copenhagen is not the ideal place if you prefer to live in a mild climate, a desire of both Camila and Mattia. Their eyes fall on Lisbon. Mattia enters the kitchens of Belcanto, Camila continues her career as a recruiter. Meanwhile, Lisbon is scanned for the best job. Best never means chosen from the gut, best is the one that "is not destined to fail immediately".

Camila does not come from the restaurant business, but she knows that every business has a formula. She derived it by looking at the numbers and statistics involved in fine dining. Data on food costs, personnel costs, rent, equipment costs. It is necessary to stay true to the line drawn, to the formula established. Only in this way can a new restaurateur be sure of his project. "I spoke a language that Mattia was not used to hearing, it took time and 'fights' to be on the same page. Now, when he comes back, he tells me that others don't know anything about business. I stop, look him in the eye and tell him, teasingly, that he didn't know anything either until a few months ago."

You're just starting out and you want to rock the world. Impress. Creativity must run wild. All you care about is the food, the execution, the taste. Never mind the equipment you need, the staff you need, the rehearsals you need. You want it all now. Wait: such a structure is heavy just to think about; it is a train destined to run aground at the first hurdle.

"I remember when he came to me with this quotation of 6,000 euros for a Pacojet. I didn't even know what it was. It didn't matter to me that other good people had it. I told him no. Mattia then added 3 Ninjas and what he was doing was fine."

The philosophy

Vibe does not have an a la carte menu. There are two tasting courses, at 75 and 90 euros. A choice always dictated by "survival", by the certainty of soon returning the initial investment, removing a clear complication in the service and, on the contrary, dressing up with a salvific daily planning. Mattia has given a lot of thought to this (and to the horizon).

"Lisbon is super hot right now. I call it the gentle Naples. There are a lot of people from all over the world who not only come to visit, but to live. They want things to entertain them. The food scene they want is more like what we have in London, New York or Copenhagen. We took a risk, but it was a great decision for us. We knew the public was ready for it. Now we have a real average turnover, which we cover well with the brigade we have. Our tasting prices are then very competitive for fine dining in the area we are in."

Such an approach is certainly not the easiest to retain. It's not easy to stick with a tasting menu, especially when it lasts for three months. That's why digital marketing was a priority for the opening and beyond. Something that affected the numbers, that anticipated the goals. Credit to the human side expressed, to the empathy that resonated, even if at the tip of the finger. Social, like it or not, are the new restaurant guides, the ones where everyone can give their advice, share their discoveries. Social is the veneer of your image, the foothold for a smart generation that still wants to stop, sometimes for vanity, sometimes for knowledge.

"If we hadn't made it a priority when we opened, we would have had 3-4 people a night. Especially when one of the reels went viral, we were booked for three months. I always go back to the stats. Normally, the turnaround for an average restaurant is about 3-5 years. With the numbers we're doing now, we'll probably be under 2. For a restaurant like ours, it takes 5-6 months just to break even. We did it in 2. And that's because we were very rational with our costs. And on social media, we brought out the human side a lot."

Vibe's social media strategy is a small case. Something that works. There is a fine dining restaurant in Lisbon that needs to attract customers from all over the world to live their dream. They just do it. Even someone like Mattia plays along. Because he knows that his voice on Instagram, combined with a well-done edit, is a key ingredient for his cooking.

The dishes

You don't have to be Daniel Humm to realize that a fine dining restaurant doesn't just sell and serve food, it sells an experience, an entertainment. Mattia and Camila are convinced of this without making too many proclamations. They have "fought", but they have made a clear choice.

The story of each Vibe menu will be a compelling narrative for Vibe's customers before they even sit down at the table. It will start with social media, the chef's teasing, and his tastings, which will be inspired by Mattia's own and Mattia's and Mattia's experiences as a wandering gentleman who has observed, absorbed, and studied.

The summer menu draws on a tradition that is very distant for an Italian. The Creole and Cajun cuisine of Louisiana and West Africa. This cuisine is in itself a melting pot of recipes derived from the overlapping of French, Spanish, English and African cuisines due to the trade and slave trade that took place between the Old and New Worlds. The recipes evoke a palatial blues in which the clash of European and indigenous cultures first merge and then integrate. These gastro-historical evocations are the contents of the small wooden box on which the eye rests even before the mise en place. You open it and find as many colored cards as there are courses. And one dedicated to you, which you can keep as a souvenir. The little box is another good idea to keep the spark of the show on the table.

Of all the appetizers, gumbo is the one with the most history and the most passion for telling it. The slave trade on the Atlantic route made this "sticky" vegetable spread, first in America and then in Europe. Mattia makes a risotto with carolino rice, similar to carnaroli, and cooks it in the broth of crayfish from the Alentejo. A kind of crayfish arancino that represents the discovery of French cuisine by Africans in Louisiana. The breading is black bread combined with cuttlefish black. The arancino is fried and served with a sauce made with a very garlicky homemade sausage, alheira, a fried shrimp, and pickled okra-which is nothing more than another name for gumbo. The oyster Rockefeller is something to behold. The result is umami-like. Watercress, São Jorge cheese-a Portuguese cheese similar in texture to our Parmesan, made exclusively in the Azores-and oysters. Green is supposed to represent the American dollar, an exaggerated lifestyle; here it speaks instead of a sustainable dream. The watercress retains the earthiness, but with a mustardy twist. The oyster is au gratin, some dehydrated to a powder that doesn't make you forget too much of its salty edge. It is served on a wonderful plate that resembles the cast of an oyster shell. A regeneration of Rockefeller, where balance and depth dominate.

The next dish is another homage. In New Orleans, Egg Sardou is a recipe as famous as the person who inspired it, the French playwright Victorien Sardou, who visited the city in the late 1800s with the diva Sarah Bernhardt and became famous for his art. The egg and the artichoke are the original elements that have been retained for a dish that is so popular that it even ends up in brunches. Mattia cooks the egg sous vide and places it on a creamy topinambur and roasted artichokes. It's a fluffy egg from Angolan chickens, cooked but not overcooked, which enhances the comfort food stage, the sta' senza pensier style. The egg is then covered with a siphon dutch made with honey vinegar. The crunchiness comes from a flour tempura with the addition of sardine garum and freshly blanched peas. The tiramisu effect comes from a sprinkling of charred leek. Call it ruffianata. You are as right as the chef who serves it and all the customers who enjoy it.

The third chapter of the story is Fish&Grit, a typical combination in African cuisine, which in the shrimp&grit version is usually eaten in South Carolina. The grit is cornmeal. Mattia uses maize from the Azores, brought from Canada by a family who moved there. The maize and the haricot beans from the Monte Silvao farm are Portuguese ingredients. Mattia will always pay tribute to the richness and quality of Portuguese ingredients, which also give a territorial identity to the seasonal concepts developed at Vibe.

Layers of polenta, beans cooked like risotto and French pan-seared zander are reminiscent of winter days and whiplash. This is why there is a hint of dill on top, adding balsamicity and freshness. The key to Vibe's game - and the key is the magical, adventurous element in the restaurant's logo - is to agree to be told a story. A story that is consumed on the tongue and perhaps therefore more easily remembered.

The last time we heard from Matthias, he had just returned from a morning of foraging in a park a few miles from Lisbon. He and James Walsh, his second in command, were gathering everything they would need for the autumn and winter. Months in which - spoiler alert - a menu paying homage to northern Italy will be staged with a trip between Milan and Turin. Mattia will also conjure up his own version of vitello tonnato, using nasturtium instead of capers.

Portugal, and I am happy about this, also dominated the wine offerings by the glass. The one that gave me extremely positive vibes was the Malvarinto de Janas from Quinta de San Michel, a winery located in the historic Colares wine region. A drink at once fresh and sensual, savory and spicy, influenced by the double embrace of the Atlantic Ocean and the high hills of the Serra de Sintra.

He who is farthest from the truth -
Who sees the truth in shadow?
Or who sees the dream illuminated?

The one who eats well, or this one?
The one who feels like an outsider at the party?

I did not ask Mattia if he had ever sat next to the poet Pessoa. I suppose he might have heard these words, taken from the poem "Who Dreams Most". Camila would have been there anyway to call him back with a loving "one dream at a time".

P.s In the end, Kanye West had the burger made for him.