Portuguese celebrity chef Henrique Sá Pessoa opens first restaurant in Asia in Macau
- The chef, known for the two-Michelin-star restaurant Alma, in Lisbon, as well as the TV show Ingrediente Secreto, recently opened Chiado at the Sands Cotai Central
- He talks about Macau’s potential as a foodie destination
What was the first dish you cooked? “A really good spaghetti bolognaise that my auntie taught me how to make. I put a touch of cream in my sauce because, back in the 1990s, it was trendy to use cream on anything.”
You went to school in Pittsburgh for a year. How did you end up there? “I wanted to go to the United States because I was obsessed with basketball. There is [an international youth exchange] programme called American Field Service where you are matched with an American family. I ended up in Pittsburgh. ”
How did you get into cooking? “A chef who had graduated from my high school [in Pittsburgh] came to speak to our class. He explained how creativity is associated with cooking and how you can travel and make a good living from being a chef. Before, I thought, cooking was a job you did if you couldn’t find anything else. Now chefs are celebrities, rock stars. After one year in Pittsburgh, I went back home [to Portugal] for a year to save money and then went to the Pennsylvania Institute of Culinary Arts, which later became Le Cordon Bleu.”
You also lived in London and Sydney. What were they like? “London was great because I was there when Gordon Ramsay was on his way to a third star, there was Marco Pierre White, and Jamie Oliver was starting to be a celebrity chef.
“It was a hard environment in the kitchen, but at the same time I learned a lot. Australia was my first contact with Asian cuisines like Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese. There is no Australian food as such, so it’s a blend of several cuisines, which gives you freedom. There’s a lot of great ingredients, too.”
What was it like going back to Portugal in 2002? “I went back because I had been away from my family for quite a while; I wasn’t so much thinking of my career. However, I thought it’s strange that I’m a Portuguese chef who has never worked in Portugal. I didn’t even know how to cook Portuguese dishes because most of my experience was overseas. I started to connect with my Portuguese heritage and cuisine.”