Restaurant Boca Iberica

Manuel Martins, a fixture on Montreal’s restaurant scene since 1989, prides himself foremostly on his knowledge of classic regional Portuguese cooking, and in combining that with Galician cuisine from the north of Spain, he’s developed something he’s truly proud of. “You don’t need much — olive oil and a few ingredients depending on the region you're working with,” says Manuel. “People don’t realize what local Portuguese cuisine really is. In the south, people might never hear of cumin, and in the north, people may never hear of coriander. It all contributes to the real flavour and satisfaction of things.”

Another aspect that Manuel emphasizes is the incorporation of all the elements that come with a cut of meat. “When you prepare pork in the Portuguese style, you use the bones, you use the fat, and you save it for a sauce, or add cream and hide the quality in the real ingredients,” he says. “Much in the same way when we prepare seafood, we try to get real salt water to boil it in. It’s like the bones of a shrimp — they’re spineless little things, but all their distinctiveness comes from the type of water they were raised in.”