Victor Felisberto

The head chef at London’s Portal restaurant reminisces with Keya Modessa about family holidays in Europe, attempting to fry eggs at the age of five, and his mother’s traditional Portuguese cooking

Surprisingly for a chef, I don’t drink a lot of wine.

It’s only when I’m eating a really good meal that I need a glass of wine to accompany it. More often than not my preference is for French wines, they are exceptional – but I have noticed in the last few years that Portuguese wine is getting better. I’ve been known to enjoy the occasional drop of Mouchão from Alentejo and Barca Velha from the Duoro region.

I’ve only been in London since October last year.

I like to explore the city by foot. Covent Garden is my favourite area – there’s something very special about it and the buzz and excitement is very contagious. So far I’ve really enjoyed eating at L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon (http://joelrobuchon.co.uk), the simplicity of the cooking there is something I admire very much.

As a young boy, I loved eating fried eggs.

I was five years old when I decided to try my hand at making my own. After pouring olive oil into a boiling hot pan, I cracked open the eggs – and you can imagine what happened next... there was a huge explosion and I set fire to the kitchen! I guess you can say that was my first attempt at cooking. After that my mother didn’t want me in there ever again – until I became a chef!

Family holidays were spent in Brittany and Granada

In Brittany I used to eat a lot of seafood including moules marinières: steamed mussels with white wine, shallots, laurel leaves and thyme, as well as the exquisite, rich soup made from fish, shellfish and served with garlic mayonnaise, grated gruyère cheese and crunchy bread croutons. They also have wonderful crêpes; the savoury ones – galettes – are made with buckwheat flour and stuffed with cheese, egg and ham; the sweet ones are prepared with wheat flour and served with a little sugar, honey or jam. The first time I remember trying Iberian black pig was in Granada. There, some of my fondest holiday memories involve eating tapas with close friends and family.

Traditional Portuguese food is simple and flavoursome,

and the best I’ve tasted. My mother would cook rustic favourites like favas à Portuguesa, broad bean stew, and sopa de pedra, which translates as ‘stone soup’. It has everything in it – chicken, onions, chorizo, egg, pork belly, potatoes and even lettuce. Both these dishes absorb the flavour the longer they sit, so taste even better after two or three days. Other popular dishes include chanfana, a thick goat stew, and fish caldereta; in Portugal this dish is still made by local fishermen while out on their boats during the day.

Barcelona is a melting pot of flavours.

You can stumble across every kind of cuisine in this city, from Italian to Indian, Mexican to Moroccan. A few minutes outside the city you’ll find a modern Catalan family-run restaurant called Via Veneto (http://viavenetorestaurant.com). Here, the seafood combinations are wonderful – where else can you get dim sum filled with red prawns, tuna and served with seaweed dashi broth?