Meet the first Goan chef to be on the Michelin Guide

It isn’t every day that you see a Goan chef’s name said in the same breath as the Michelin Guide. Yet, last month, Gaspar Fernandes achieved that distinction when his restaurant, Gaspar’s in Vilnius, Lithuania received a Michelin Bib Gourmand—this was the debut edition of the Michelin Guide in Lithuania. “I have always wanted to be on the culinary map of the Michelin Guide and give Goan food some recognition,” says the chef.

The Goan food here is unique. Think a recheado masala grilled octopus with potatoes and wild garlic sauce; European lobster, mum’s curry (his version of cafreal), rice crisp, and squid ink sauce; langoustine with caramelised onion, xec xec and Goan poi; and a vindaloo Iberico pork chop with crispy suckling pig belly, and slow cooked shallots.

Fernandes, 34, is the first Goan chef whose restaurant has won such an honour. Last year, Gaspar’s was voted the top restaurant in the country by 30 Best Restaurants (Lithuania). It’s quite an achievement for a restaurant that was birthed in a 23 square metre studio.

Also read: Savouring the multi-cultural food pie of New York

It starts with a love story

Gaspar’s journey started because of a love story.

The year was 2010. Fernandes was working at a golf club in London, when he met Krystsina online (she was working in Vilnius) and was smitten. Things didn’t work out, but Fernandes remained hooked. In 2014, when she reached out with a ‘hello’, he did what any lovesick person would do: booked a flight to Vilnius. That summer of 2014, he made several trips to meet her. “I told myself, ‘I’ve to bet everything on making this work’.”

It did and in October, he decided to move there permanently.

He lied to his family. “I told them I was tired of the UK scene, and got a white collar job as a professor in Vilnius University teaching cooking’.” In reality, he had no job and relied heavily on his savings. There were a few cooking classes at the culinary study and entertainment network ČIOP ČIOP, but Fernandes’ big break came after winning the Lithuanian Open Wine & Dessert Pairing Championship in 2014. He was part of a team that created a dessert named Local Delight—goat milk panna cotta with a beetroot gel, chocolate cremeux and candied beets.

“People were impressed that a foreign guy was making a dessert based on local ingredients. It was a big deal.” That victory helped him get his face in local newspapers and build connections. One of those connections was with award-winning Lithuanian chef Deivydas Praspaliauskas, the owner of the premium dining restaurant Amandus. Fernandes joined him as a pastry chef for a short stint.

“I didn’t know what I wanted, but I was sick and tired of working for others and wanted something of my own,” he says. It was this hunger that helped him “hustle”. “We started our journey at a street food market selling things like a sorpotel-style pulled pork wrap. We lived in a tiny apartment then and I would cook the pork overnight. We would sometimes smell like pork when we stepped out,” he recalls.

People loved his food, and it gave him the impetus to find a place at the edge of Vilnius’ Old Town and start Gaspar’s, serving “India-inspired food cooked with European ingredients” in 2015. “We built it from zero,” he says, adding that it’s been an uphill battle especially when COVID hit years later.

Krystsina was by his side through it all. She quit her job at an ad agency to help with the restaurant. “She took away a major chunk of my workload. Unfortunately, I get given most of the credit,” he says.

The couple married in 2018 and a year later, Krystsina visited Goa for the first time. That trip provided the inspiration for the couple to completely revamp the restaurant in 2019, and go full Goan, from the food to the azulejos-inspired floor tiles.

A new direction

Fernandes is a proud Goenkar. He visits Goa every year (when possible), carrying back some spice blends, jaggery and chillies. Krystsina, who has been to Goa three times now, considers herself an adopted Goan.

Gaspar’s 2.0 is distinctly Goan. “There has always been a Goan influence from the beginning. But it is hard to tell people about Goa when they don’t know about India. I started with Indian food and then got more regional,” he says. Gaspar’s has served bebinca, a modern take on sorpotel, and a vindaloo-spiced suckling pig with orange sauce and potatoes from our kitchen garden. “When it comes to cuisine, there are a lot of Goan-Portuguese influences like crab xec xec, recheado, xacuti, and bacalhau, but the food served here is about my life, my history and where I come from.”

Fernandes was born in Goa, but moved to London as a teenager. The love for cooking came early. “My grandfather was a cook, and my mother ran a catering company in Goa. I always had that liking for food.” Becoming a chef was inevitable. He went to Le Cordon Bleu, but dropped out in eight months — “I was young and naïve and didn’t make wise life choices.” He moved to Goa, did odd jobs before working at the Wentworth Golf Club, when he got acquainted with Krystsina and his life changed.

The Michelin Bib Gourmand is a “big achievement”. “We are both foreigners—Krystsina is from Belarus—and to be able to play at the top with everybody gives us a little pat on our shoulders.” Earlier this year, a film crew accompanied Gaspar to Goa—he was one of the nine chefs from the Baltics featured in the Lithuanian-English food series 'Kitapus lėkštės. Egzotiška virtuvė’ (Behind the Plate: Exotic Food). When his mother — he believes she is the world’s best cook— comes to visit, they team up to create a Goan feast and invite people for intimate buffet-style feasts.

“There’s never been a day that I don’t wake up and hate working as a chef,” says Gaspar. What is next on the menu? “I want that star.”

Joanna Lobo is a Goa-based journalist.

Also read: The secret lives of chefs