Gal. The vegan croissant café also fights waste
13/08/2024
A vegan, specialty coffee shop that fights food waste every day, has opened in Anjos, Lisbon. Welcome to Gal. The team at Too Good to
It opened as Botanista in 2018, introducing Lisbon to vegan options it had never seen before. There have been many changes over the years, but the essence is there: to never cease to surprise and never fail when it comes to sweets.
Train lines, metro, bicycles and scooters, lots of tourists and an ever-vibrant Cais do Sodré. But as soon as you step beyond the white neon that announces “Orteá”, it’s time to stop. There’s no rush and no breathing contaminated by what it’s like to live in a big city. The plants, all natural and cared for daily without chemicals, give the space a kind of lightness that makes you want to camouflage and be part of it.
The now Orteá was once a lot of things. It was born in 2018 as Botanista, a vegan restaurant that presented a menu that until then had been rarely seen here. Sophisticated dishes, original ingredients and unusual flavor blends. Oh, and a display of desserts that made us wonder how those works of art could be made without eggs, milk or gluten.
“Pastry has always been my passion,” Catarina Gonçalves, the head (and body) behind this machine, tells Peggada.
Even today, she doesn’t go to a restaurant without trying several desserts, in a mix of gluttony and the need for inspiration. There are always cakes in Orteá’s window, tall and full of color, with flavors ranging from red fruits to dried fruits, and their versions of snickers and cookie dough. But it’s on the menu where the classics are, those that, no matter how much the place has changed, have remained the same since day one. This is the case with the frying pan. Journalists shouldn’t give their opinions, but this writer believes that there’s no dessert like it.
The basis is always the same, but the toppings change with the season, as does everything served here. It’s the end of the Winter menu, so the crumble, caramel and homemade vanilla ice cream are joined by a raspberry and rhubarb jam. For those who go from June 15 — the day the new menu is launched — they can count on a pineapple and miso jam.
Changing the menu (which you can see here) on a seasonal basis is part of the concern to serve what is in season. But there are other pressing matters. With each menu, more processed products are removed and, nowadays, with the exception of tofu and tempeh, which they serve occasionally, everything is made in Orteá’s kitchen, which has almost become a laboratory.
In a dark room are stored bottles of kombucha, which are served on tap or bottled, and in the fridge are the various vegan cheeses that are served on a board to share.
The bread is also made in the restaurant’s kitchen and, as of June, they will be removing the only two gluten dishes on the menu to present themselves as a place that prefers other flours to a wheat based one. “We’ve always had fresh pasta, but from June, this dish will be replaced by sweet potato gnocchi,” says Catarina.
The bakery, meanwhile, remains gluten-free, as it has been since day one, with Catarina recalling all the failed attempts to find the perfect blend of flours, which remains the same to this day.
We started this article at the end, but we can’t finish without talking about the beginning.
At Orteá you can choose between toasts and main courses, with hot and raw options. There are also bowls and pancakes and vegan cheese boards.
Peggada ventured into a very original canolli filled with mushroom mousse and lime mayonnaise and some mushroom and Chinese cabbage gyosas.
We hadn’t left the entrances yet and the journey had already gone from Italy to Japan. For the main courses, the originality of the flavors that have no borders was kept here: the Talisman, made with tempeh in Asian spices, mashed sweet potato with wasabi, mashed chickpeas and miso and tapioca pearls in teriaki; and the Geographia, a bread served with tomato hummus, mushrooms, zucchini, sage, olive powder and a grapefruit and juniper gel. It leaves your taste buds jumping with happiness and surprise with every bite.
There is brunch at the weekend. From 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. a board filled with pancakes, various topping options, yogurt, fruit, crudites and hot and cold drinks is served.
One of the most recent steps taken towards sustainability in the way food is served happens precisely in one of the options that make up brunch: the fruit peels used at the bar for juices and cocktails are fermented to make the fermented drinks served on this special Saturday and Sunday menu.
“When we opened we were unique in many ways. The challenge now is to never stop creating. And I think we’ve succeeded”. Full tables and a place in Happy Cow’s — the vegan restaurant search app — top 10 prove it.
Zomato and Peggada have teamed up to launch a new Eco and Sustainable Collection.
Zomato is the most widely used restaurant discovery app in Portugal. The updated content includes restaurant menus, photos, addresses and other information, users can also rate and give feedback on the restaurants. It is the most complete app for those looking for options to eat out, take-away service, reservations, contactless solutions for restaurants, and has recently launched the Delivery service – new Zomato app.
Marta Cerqueira is from Minho and vegetarian. Luckily, she lives in Lisbon, where there is more tofu than sarrabulho. She has been a journalist for over 15 years, the last of which writing about food and sustainability. Now, out of the newsroom, she continues to write whenever she can, be it in magazines, journals, post its, or on her Instagram page, which she uses to share a life divided between being a mom-person-foodie-traveler. Still, she created Peggada so she could write about what doesn't fit in a magazine, journal, post it or Instagram: a better world.
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