Anyone who thinks that after Christmas and the festivities is the time to start cutting calories may want to put that project off for a few more days. This is because on the 7th and 8th of January, at Bistro 100 Maneiras, in Chiado, Lisbon, another Christmas will be celebrated, this time the Yugoslav one, in the good way of Ljubomir Stanisicwhich, despite the Yugoslavia no longer exists, it retains memories of the flavors of the country where it was born, in the city of Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina), and which it would eventually leave precisely because of the war that led to its dissolution in the early 1990s.
Under the motto Let’s braai, Bistro! – the new weekend lunches launched by the restaurant in December –, there will be a Bosnian party, in honor of the homeland of chef, who has lived in Portugal for 25 years. Remember that on the 7th of January we orthodox christmas. Saturday and Sunday the menu for two (80€) starts with “pink” bread, help or pepper paste, cheese kajmak, baked goods or pate of livers and smoked meats. Then came the bureks – Barrosã beef, potato and goat cheese and cabbage and onion (one per person, choose between the three varieties).
Brioche and pâté, poultry liver pâté
Fabrice Demoulin
In the main dishes section there is Sarma (naturally fermented cabbage rolls filled with minced meat), cevapi (roasted minced meat served on warm bread, the some), goulash (stew with various types of meat, marinated for 48 hours and slowly cooked, and lots of spices), and “Mamma’s kid” (+20€), recipe from the mother of chefalso marinated for a long time and cooked in the oven, served with satays, green salad and Bistro potatoes.
Goulash
Fabrice Demoulin
For desserts the choice is between baklava from Mama Rose, subtleties (a kind of sweet rice from the Balkans, without eggs) with ras el hanout, tufahija (apples stuffed with walnuts) with vanilla ice cream, or crofna (a kind of Berlin ball with the consistency of dreams) with vanilla ice cream and quince jelly.
The two lunches are accompanied by wines from the Slovenian Marjan Simčič, who in the region of Brda, located between the Alps and the Mediterranean Sea, in a terroir which he himself describes on his website as that of a soil “rich in minerals from the ancient history of the Earth”, deposited in these mountains “by the ancient oceans”, which gives a marked identity to his wines, made according to natural methods, without fertilizers or pesticides.
The Bistro 100 Maneiras team
Fabrice Demoulin
And after the Yugoslav Christmas celebrations, Bistro 100 Maneiras will continue with these “comfortable” lunches every weekend, with “good barbecue and great wines”, designed to be shared by two people. The menu is served on Saturdays and Sundays between 12h and 15h, and is divided into four moments: At Picanço, To Share, O Resto é Conversa and Happy Ending.
It is not exactly the Sunday barbecue traditional British, but revolves around the roast, which can be a swordfish chop from Peniche, an angus rib, half a free-range BBQ chicken or a pork chop, also organic. The idea is that the two people share this main course, which comes with grilled bread, green salad and potatoes.
Tufahija, one of the Balkan desserts
Fabrice Demoulin
But before that there was the “picanço”, which can be made with oysters, potato skins with truffle sauce or stew croquettes and mustard mayonnaise. And there were also appetizers to share, with a choice between brioche and baked goods (poultry liver cream), joke steak, mushroom salad and tempura, smoked swordfish salad or beetroot tartare and local cheese. As in the Yugoslav Christmas, every weekend there is always a guest producer whose wines accompany the menu.