Vitor Matos

FOR VITOR MATOS, chef at Casa da Calçada, gastronomy is more than art, it is passion. His cuisine is based on four key pillars: influences and memories, the quality of the products, a sensory component, and techniques and technology. His work is driven by a constant search for perfection.

Trained in Switzerland, Matos’s first job was at the Restaurant des Jeunes Rives in Neuchâtel. He soon followed his family back to Portugal, however, and had a period of cultural and culinary readjustment, as he learned to savour the flavours and gastronomic customs of the Iberian peninsula.

In 2002, he took up the reins at the Grand Hotel Caldas da Felgueira, where he stayed for a couple of years, developing his career and knowledge. Looking back now, he credits the idyllic mountain scenery with much of his blossoming inspiration. A year later, participating in a wine and gastronomy competition on behalf of the hotel, he won gold. In the same year, he also won gold in the national finals of the Chef of the Year Contest 2003. This was not only a dream come true, but also marked the opening of many doors, paving the path of his future career.

After a brief spell at the Vidago Palace Hotel, Golf & Spa, Matos got together with 2004’s Chef of the Year, Luís Américo Teixeira, to create a new gourmet restaurant, Quinta do Pendão, housed in an old mill in São Pedro do Sul. Here, Matos further developed his signature culinary style, ‘a cuisine of traditional nature that is inseparable from the senses and emotions’. It was also here that he discovered a taste for herbs and edible flowers, now something of an obsession.

Soon, Matos moved on again, and next encountered what he describes as ‘the biggest challenge of [his] career’, working at the five-star Hotel Le Meridien Park Atlantic Porto (now Tiara Park Atlantic Porto, since March 2008).

More recently, Matos has been involved in teaching, lecturing and judging. He is an advocate of organic farming and sustainability.