SULT Cascais

Portuguese recipes folded into the Italian line

The line holds Italy as its frame while Nelson Soares, chef at SULT Cascais in Cascais, works Brazilian and Portuguese references into the pass. Since 2024, the Brazilian chef has led this kitchen with a proposition that is narrow enough to be useful: Italian cuisine shaped by Brazilian and Portuguese nuances. The title matters because the room is not trading in a loose idea of fusion. Soares brought forward an Italian-Brazilian combination associated with his earlier work at SULT in Rio de Janeiro, then added Portuguese regional recipes after the move to Portugal. That gives the Cascais station its discipline. Pasta, rice, cured fish, black pork and steak tartare can sit in one menu without losing the line, because the kitchen keeps returning to structure first, accent second. Soares also serves as chef at B-Life Kitchen in Cascais, where the brief is healthy food without sugar and gluten. Beside SULT, that parallel role shows a cook comfortable with constraints. Here, the constraint is not subtraction. It is translation.

A menu built on crossings rather than decoration

SULT Cascais gives Soares a set of dishes where the crossings are legible from the first read. Spaghetti comes with lingueirão and bottarga, pulling the Italian bench toward the Portuguese coast. Piemonte-style steak tartare takes hazelnuts and Grana Padano into a preparation that keeps its northern Italian reference intact. Risotto carries 'nduja and grilled octopus, heat and char held inside a form that still depends on rice, stock, timing and the pass. Slow-cooked black pork ragù lets a Portuguese ingredient move through an Italian method without being treated as garnish. The restaurant works across à la carte and tasting menu formats, with a curated wine program beside the food. No production figure is the point here; the useful measure is the menu’s repeated grammar. Italy supplies the base, Brazil leaves pressure and memory in the cooking, and Portugal gives the current address its regional frame.

The room keeps close to the pass

The room is small, stylish and intimate, with a minimalist, design-forward language that keeps the attention near the plate. Scandinavian-inspired simplicity meets warm, romantic lighting, which suits a kitchen whose work depends on restraint rather than spectacle. The room’s scale matters. In a large dining room, a dish like spaghetti with lingueirão and bottarga can become a signal from far away. Here, it stays bench-side: saline, cured, direct. The counter, the pass and the dining room feel connected by proportion rather than performance. SULT’s official presentation gives space to both menu and gallery, and that emphasis on what is made and how it is seen fits the Cascais address.

The Rio idea, adapted in Cascais

The through-line is the useful part of Soares’s work here. SULT did not arrive in Portugal as a blank concept; the Italian-Brazilian identity had already been formed in Rio de Janeiro. Cascais adds another layer rather than replacing the first one. If the kitchen keeps moving with conviction, it will be through SULT Cascais dishes like lingueirão, bottarga, 'nduja, grilled octopus and black pork ragù.