Nuno Mendez

Coming Up

Training at California Culinary Academy (from 1990) gave Nuno Mendes a formal base before the pace tightened at elBulli, with stints with Wolfgang Puck, Rocco di Spirito, and Jean-Georges Vongerichten. The sequence shows a chef moving through high-standard kitchens where discipline matters and every service sharpens the next. Each stop adds a different layer of control, pace and reference, building a practice that can absorb more without losing precision. In 2006, he opened Bacchus in Hoxton (from 2006), then moved that developing language into the loft project at The Loft Project in Shoreditch, and later into Viajante in Bethnal Green, Town Hall Hotel (from 2010). Those openings mark a progression in room, scale and intent, with the work increasingly defined by movement and reinvention. Later, former Executive Chef at Chiltern Firehouse in London, he took on his current chapter from 2022 as Executive Chef at Lisboeta in Charlotte Street, London (from 2022).

Where They Are Now

Portuguese cuisine is the specialty at Lisboeta in London, where Mendes works as Executive Chef. The role fits a chef whose practice has been shaped by travel but keeps returning to the same source materials; the cooking reads as continuation, not departure. Lisboeta and Chiltern Firehouse define the immediate frame of the present role. Read together, they show a line of leadership that ends in a Portuguese kitchen in London, with the work held between movement and return. The sequence matters: each room and title has built toward a place where Portuguese cuisine can be expressed directly, without needing to disguise its reference points. He has said of these dishes, "Both of them symbolize the food of Lisbon and they always taste better in situ." The line points to context as part of taste, where place and weather are not background but part of the dish itself. He has also said, "I prefer to sit outside to soak in the sun, perhaps because I now live in London where there’s so little of it." Lisbon and London are therefore not just locations in his work, but conditions that shape how the work is understood.

Signature

Nuno's signature dishes include Nuno’s Bacalhau à Bras and Lisboeta. The names themselves suggest a chef who understands how a dish can carry memory, and how a restaurant can hold a point of view.

In Their Words “Both of them symbolize the food of Lisbon and they always taste better in situ.” “These are the dishes that make me salivate when I fly back home.”

Honors

Nuno's honors include Michelin star (2010).