Chris Bulow

Pig enthusiast

We both love the food of Portugal — possibly even more than that from their close Iberian neighbour (sorry San Sebastián) — so I was tempted to put one of my favourite’s, “Lisboeta” by Nuno Mendes, into this top-10 list but this quite short alternative choice works better for how I now choose to cook and eat. Less self-consciously “food for the beautiful people” than ex-Chiltern Firehouse’ Mendes, it’s produced by a Lisbon restaurant collective who take the cornucopia of sea-food that’s been pulled from the Atlantic and then preserved in tins in this way there for centuries and, via a group of local cooking stars, offer great takes on how best to present them. If you didn’t love sardines before you start (and if you don’t, why are you even here?), by the end you’ll be ordering cases of the shiny things.