Is there a crisis in the restaurant industry? Boy Cavallo Case | interview

At the end of August, news broke: Boi-Cavalo, one of Lisbon's most innovative restaurants for a decade, located in Alfama, will close at the end of October. In addition to the closure of Izcalli, Evo Tavares' Mexican restaurant, this news led to press reports of a restaurant crisis in Portugal, especially in major cities – an impression confirmed by others. Chefs I heard in these articles.

But this crisis seems to have special characteristics, because it does not affect the entire restoration. Will only independent designer kitchen projects be affected? Are there too many restaurants in a city like Lisbon? On the other hand, are there a few restaurants that Portuguese people can go to? On September 29, at one stage of the Kitchen Conference, in Oeiras, we spoke with Hugo Brito, founder of Boi-Cavalo, a conversation we are now reproducing.

The question that is the pretext for this conversation here at the Kitchen Conference is: Is there a crisis in the national supply? We see restaurants full and others closing. Is there a crisis or not?
Sometimes, it is difficult to compare the reality on the ground with the numbers that Turismo de Portugal releases almost monthly, as it seems that every month records are broken for the number of tourists and arrivals at Lisbon Airport. What seems to me is that there is a change in the tourism profile and the experience that other cities have already had in terms of mass tourism, we are starting to feel it directly.

People are there now, whether they are an audience that supports the restaurant ecosystem that is desirable for us, is another issue, which has not been adequately addressed. And sometimes it is difficult to get close to it while there is this general rejoicing in the numbers of arrivals and the fees that tourists pay to the city council which fills the pockets of the city council without the need to do an analysis of who they are and what they are bringing to the city. Not to mention the long and medium-term consequences on the preservation of the restaurant ecosystem and on the daily lives of Lisbon residents.

In short, in terms of what I consider a healthy and interesting environment, it is legitimate to talk about a restoration crisis.

How is the situation evolving with Portuguese customers?
State-dependent workers, who make up a large proportion of the active population, have suffered a loss in wages, without a real wage increase for seven or eight years, and this has consequences. On the other hand, after Covid-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there was a general rise in interest rates in Europe, which led to a significant decrease in the disposable income of the Portuguese. Faced with rising household expenses, the first thing people cut back on are luxuries. Eating out at restaurants, especially if they are fancy or expensive, is one of the first things you should stop.

At the same time, there is a huge oversupply of restaurants in Lisbon, and there is no control over the economic activity that is so important to the Portuguese GDP, and no justification for it being as unregulated and unsupervised as it is now.

In the case of Oaks Horse, how have things changed in ten years? Who were your customers initially, who was your target audience and how has that changed?
We start from a simple, ideological and somewhat idealistic idea, which is that every city represents a whole and you don't have to associate a particular type of restaurant with a particular type of neighbourhood. You can fill the entire city with an interesting gastronomic offer without necessarily being in a neighborhood where rents are high and where the properties of the neighborhood themselves block out customers. Basically, it was about having a distinctive kitchen, in a more relaxed way and putting it in a less obvious neighborhood.

In Lisbon, we have a bit of a shopping mall logic where this is the place to be, that's where we go shopping, there are restaurants. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the city was a little structured that way and we wanted to break that up a little bit.

The idea was a premium restaurant, not a fine dining restaurant – they are two different things – in Alfama. And we wanted Portuguese agents. We knew there would be foreigners and we also wanted the internationality of this clientele to permeate the experience, but we wanted it to be unique food for everyone. You won't need to save up for six months to go there. Ten years ago, this is roughly what happened.

Did you feel there was an audience for this and did you confirm that there was?
This happened for the first three years, although it was always a struggling restaurant, and there were no off-months. Then a series of things happened in Lisbon that began to cast doubt on this work. Now that I made the decision to close, looking back, I realize that there were specific moments where I had the tools to read the situation and there were some adjustments that I didn't make, a lot of them out of stubbornness, because I didn't want to stray from that original purpose. I was sometimes a little blind when it came to reality.

For example?
We have kept the tasting menu for a very long time. We should have realized that this was not the ideal situation for what we presented. We could have communicated more clearly that we are a comfortable place. Perhaps the stubbornness of staying in Alfama lasted too long.

If you changed the neighborhood, what would your choice be?
If I had done that, I would have stayed true to the initial idea. When we opened, Alfama was starting to fill up with young professionals, people with a fairly interesting income. If we had reopened in Estefania, Campo de Ourique and Alvalade, neighborhoods with neighborhood life, perhaps we would have remained true to the idea of ​​Lisbon-based cuisine, and potentially for everyone.

Was there a moment when you clearly saw the Portuguese disappear and begin to be replaced by foreigners?
Yes, in the beginning most of us were Portuguese, and at the end of the third year the number of foreigners began to increase, and even without taking into account the loss of recent years, the purchasing power of the Portuguese is not great. Either you can acquire customers and keep them loyal in the first two or three years, and we've been lucky enough to gain some customers like that, or else…

What makes a person go to a restaurant is very complex. It's about things like “I love this food”, but also “I would love to be seen at this place and I want people to know I love this type of food”. In a city where restaurants open every week, there seems to be an urgent need to go to the newest restaurant. One always seems to be out of breath chasing down the newest restaurant.

There comes a point where you have to look at this objectively as a business, and understand whether I can sleep well at night without worrying about suppliers, or is it an effort that we feel we no longer have the energy to do.

If you had the energy, what model could fit for a restaurant to reinvent itself?
I don't know. Something that's causing me a lot of confusion at the moment is this resurgence of interest in pubs. I'm not necessarily saying the two things are related, but this is happening at a time when there's a very large immigrant population in the city, and when I hear more racial slurs on the street, maybe those aren't separate things. The fact of feeling dissatisfaction on the part of the people of Lisbon towards foreign residents, whether immigrants or people who have chosen to live here, and at the same time listening to a speech praising the idea of ​​restoring and preserving traditional heritage, is something I remember hearing elsewhere.

Lisbon has lost a little bit of our idea of ​​who we are and I don't think that's something we'll recover quickly, that comfort in our own skin. There are things that scare me.

There is a limited number of people with a keen interest in the art of cooking who will be the target audience for a premium restaurant. Are these the ones approaching the bar now?
Not necessarily. People who were interested in gastronomy continue to do so, but it has not increased. They are the same thing. I have the impression that the Portuguese have not become more curious or interested, but on the contrary, they have become more demanding for no reason, and without a knowledge base. The people you meet at a gastronomic event, at a fair, in a restaurant are always the same. Those who were passionate about Boi-Cavalo ten years ago are the people I now find in Canalha [o restaurante de João Rodrigues, em Lisboa]. It doesn't seem to me that the community has grown at the same rate as the number of restaurants.

If a restaurant like Boi-Cavalo opened today, would it have the same story, and the same interested audience that you had in the beginning?
I thought it was impossible. We opened Boi-Cavalo at the price it would cost to buy an Opel Corsa. Between space, works, equipment and inventory, it was about 27 thousand euros. Today, for 27 thousand euros, I will change some sockets and paint the walls. We had no agency to communicate. We distributed plastic bags containing sealed horse parts and a recipe to newsrooms. This was our communication machine at that time.

Today that would not be possible. To make your voice heard, you need tools that are very difficult for any small restaurant to obtain. In six months we had a full restaurant. Today, without a reputation that precedes you, without a communication machine and great investment capacity, it was difficult.

How can this explosion in the number of restaurant openings be controlled?
These are political issues. The problem in Lisbon and many Portuguese cities is the lack of central planning. If someone assigns licenses, they can access population density numbers for each neighborhood and which businesses are open.

If the city council knows that in a neighborhood of 14,000 people there are Maybe one more restaurant on this street would be enough as there are already 14 restaurants, in this neighborhood where 12,000 people live. They can assign this license when the restaurant closes. A city only grows organically if you don't have one restaurant for every ten people and no stationery store, for example. This is not a city for its residents.

On the other hand, if people who work in a pharmacy have to have training, shouldn't the person who serves you food have any training? Does this make sense?

Will licenses depend on this as well?
I don't think people who prepare foods that have an impact on our health don't need some kind of training. This would make it more difficult for restaurants to open, which doesn't seem like a bad idea to me. And having a clear idea from the city about where they can or can't open doesn't seem like a bad idea to me either. Boi-Cavalo will be closed now, but every day I hear someone say it will be closed too. Let us be one of the first. I hope I'm not being too pessimistic, but the bubble has burst and we're all going to have to deal with it.

This text is the result of a partnership between PÚBLICO and The Kitchen Conference.