In a city where new restaurants and cafés – many directed at Lisbon’s new residents and digital nomads – pop up faster than we can keep track of, Gunpowder has set its sights on conquering the tastebuds of locals through Indian seafood dishes and spices.
Harneet Baweja, originally from Calcutta, founded the original Gunpowder restaurant in London in 2015. A love for surfing drew him to the Portuguese capital, and he started making frequent trips to Lisbon and its surrounding beaches. “I absolutely love Lisbon, so it was a natural choice for me to open a restaurant here,” he says. “I fell in love with the city and the culture.” It was a love so strong that Baweja now divides his time between Lisbon and London, managing the several Gunpowder locations, while still chasing the waves of the Portuguese coast. “I’m still a pretty bad surfer,” he laughs. “But I won’t give up.”
Baweja sees Lisbon’s gastronomic renaissance in a positive way. “It’s becoming a real major food city for the world, with so many great restaurants and chefs doing a good job bringing Portuguese food forward.” At Gunpowder, the focus is on the coastal cuisine of West India, which Baweja finds has similar produce to Portugal. This area of India includes Goa, a former colony which was under Portuguese rule for almost five centuries, and Bob Baim (Mumbai) which also served as a Portuguese port from 1535 to 1661.
“We pride ourselves in learning about spices and hopefully showing people how different spices can be,” Baweja tells us. “Spices don’t mean chilies, and they can enhance good produce, fish, prawns, lamb, chicken, pork. We want to show how adding cinnamon, cloves or cardamom can elevate food. How healthy they are and how good they taste and smell. And Portugal has a big part in [the history of spices]; it changed the world. It’s the country that took a lot of ingredients across the world. All of these reasons made me come here.”
Some of the most delicious food at Gunpowder is on the starters menu, and can be mixed and matched as a meal to share. Here you can find a crispy fried-shrimp toast, egg and crab bhurji or Goan-style chili garlic squid, but also Portugal’s peixinhos da horta (green beans in tempura) under the name French beans pakora. The trio of chutneys is particularly good (tamarind, mint, fennel & chili) with the starters, especially the green beans. The Konkani fried seabass or the kali mirch grilled turbot – a marinated fish dish with black pepper, turmeric and curry leaves inspired from Kerala – are some of the stars on the fish side.
“Our approach is always produce first, good local produce, and quality, fair trade spices. We try to combine both and show you how good they are together,” the Baweja says. That approach can actually be observed on the ground floor of the restaurant, where an open kitchen leaves nothing to hide.
The lamb and beef on the menu come from Northern Portugal and all the seafood from the local coast. Baweja displays the fish and shellfish in the counter “just like in [iconic local restaurants] Ramiro or Sea Me.” Baweja explains: “We cook [the fish] fresh from the market, and sometimes the fish runs out and that’s that.” This happened on our last visit, when we found that the turbot was sold out. “We are very respectful of nature and respect the timing and seasons; we want to be respectful to the fisherman and the sea. We cannot eat all the fish all the time, it changes seasonally and we have to allow them to repopulate.”
Baweja finds there’s a misconception about spices and curry both here and in London. As an answer, he created an event called Curry Nights, which brings together chefs from different parts of the world based in Lisbon, united through shared spices. The series is curated by food writer and public relations manager Inês Matos Andrade and has already hosted chefs from Thailand and Jamaica.
“We want you to come and smell the beautiful aromas, the colors and taste the difference,” Baweja says of the event. The final dinner is set for July 26 when chef Yuko Fukuda from Japan will close the event.
The organizers have hopes for another edition of Curry Nights, but that depends on the people of Lisbon. “If they come, we will keep doing it; it has been mostly sold out so far. A lot of the clientele are people from the Greater Lisbon area who are curious and we hope that we continue to serve local Portuguese people,” Baweja says.
Lisboetas, he feels, are curious and willing to look deep into these spice connections that go back to the 16th century and the Portuguese trade across the globe. “India, Brazil, Macau – a lot of nations were part of this trade, and so many spices, goods and produce were part of this exchange that it left this cultural mark on the city. That’s why I see Portuguese chefs being so progressive, it’s in their heritage, in their blood.”
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