15-07-2024
Ocean, the Austrian chef on a journey from Portugal to Asia
Hans Neuner toured Korea, Japan and China, generating nourishment for the 2024 menu. Notes and dishes from the Vila Vita Resort in the Algarve
In the foreground, Hans Neuner, Austrian chef at 2 Michelin-starred restaurant Ocean in the Vila Vita Parc resort in Porches, Algarve, Portugal (photo Stills)
Few districts in Europe have attracted Italian tourists in recent years as much as the Algarve, the southernmost coastal territory of Portugal. Once past the Pillars of Hercules, before entering the open ocean, crystal-clear water and beaches alternating rock and fine sand keep the eye on the right-hand side company for a long time.
The Atlantic ocean and the journey are the two horizons that best describe the most celebrated restaurant on these shores, Ocean, a brightly-lit room with a large window opening onto the blue. It is the flagship of the 54-hectare Vita Vila Parc complex, a luxury resort some 40 kilometres from Faro airport, the busy hub of low and high-cost airlines.
Ocean's two Michelin stars - the same as those of the neighbouring Vila Joya, incredibly Portugal still has no three-starred restaurant - are owed to the stubbornness of a quiet Austrian chef, Hans Neuner, who has been here for no less than 17 years. After years of diligently weaving together old techniques and new ingredients, Hans has changed his mind: the sadness of pandemic seclusion has triggered in him the impulse to get on ships and planes, as often as the restaurant's closure allows. An impulse to move that grips so many great protagonists of global cuisine in the last three years.
The consequence in the Algarve is that every year the menu is centred on themes from distant worlds: in 2022, it was Portuguese colonial traditions in Africa and India, in 2023, Brazil. The 2024 fil rouge is Asia, a continent explored at length last winter with the help of the talented Portuguese gastro-journalist Alexandra Prado Coelho. The result is a tasting menu of 15 dishes that extend from the Algarve to Tokyo, Korea and the markets of China.
Bright colours, themes that are just enough playful, pleasing, never-extreme tastes, the near and the far, the fresh and the fermented, the sweet and the brackish, products and whispered storytelling: all this coexists in turns in the sequence we tasted. This is the umpteenth proof that the best cuisine is the one that travels and absorbs, not the stationary one that rejects differences and pontificates.
OCEANO, Menu Asia Exploration, summer 2024
Vila Vita Parc is a resort in a 54-hectare park, with 203 rooms, 12 restaurants and 7 bars
The private beach, crystal-clear water next to a reef
For an aperitif you can sit at the Garden Bar and enjoy a barrel-aged Negroni (Tanqueray 10, Campari and Vermut La Quintinye) in peace.
Chef Hans Neuner, born in 1976 in Leutasch, Austria (photo Stills)
The spectacular view of the sea at restaurant Oceano. The tasting menu costs 275 euros and there are 3 beverage options: 175 euros 'normal' course, 360 euros premium wines, 125 euros non-alcoholic pairing (photo Stills)
First flight already delayed
Neuner's trip to Asia begins with a delayed flight. So while waiting, enjoy a tartlet of French-tropical ingredients, with a shape reminiscent of pastel de nata, Portugal's signature speciality: goose liver, mango and cinnamon
Mussel chawanmushi and early morning at Toyosu Fish Market
In the first round of appetisers, Neuner plays with the unfailing chawanmushi of Japanese tradition (here with myoga ginger and halidrys siliquosa, Atlantic brown seaweed, in the foreground) and a trip to Toyosu market, the new home of Tokyo's legendary Tsukiji market: a mushroom-shaped bite (left) holds tuna belly, porcini mushroom miso and Japanese mustard
Sensu and Dancing Shrimps
The fans enclose wasabi ice cream (Sensu, with Swiss chard, left) while in the foreground we find Dancing Shrimps, the most Instagrammed tasting on the current menu: in one bite, imperial caviar, rock shrimp, coconut and kaffir lime, an explosion of Thailand
Sourdough bread
Served with butter and a 20-year-old soy sauce. All around, the famous tiles of Mahjong, a popular Chinese board game
Lotus flower
The delicious tartlet with king crab, hollandaise sauce with ponzu and trout roe
Peixinhos da Horta
The 'fish from the garden', a dish from traditional Portuguese cuisine - which Jesuit missionaries from Portugal brought all the way to Japan, turning small fish into tempura, legend has it.
Here it is finished in the interweaving of atherina presbyter (a small blue fish that lives in the sand) and morels
Streets of Macao
Anchovies, ginger and peanuts make up Streets of Macao, a trip to the former Portuguese (now Chinese) colony, a happy synthesis of travelling ingredients (photo Stills)
No Tokyo Drift
Sea bass topped with lobster gyoza with sweet kombu seaweed and broccoli quenelles
One night in Bangkok
Murray Head's well-known 1980s motif inspires the name of this special carabinero with kohlrabi, Cambodian Kampot pepper and touches of cuttlefish. Classicism between two continents (photo Stills)
Kimchi
The pungency of Korea's iconic preparation enters the menu: underneath the dehydrated cabbage leaves, fermented cabbage (kimchi) with quail Renard Rouge
Tamarindo
A tri-ball dessert that plays between the sweetness and balsamic notes of the tropical fruit with pandanus and vanilla (photo Stills)
Closing with the scenic petit fours
The matching wines range from small, undiscovered producers from Portugal, Spain, Austria and Moselle to Junmai sake from Japan. Italy? Not a chance
Translated into English by Slawka G. Scarso
Zanattamente buono
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