The Yugoslav chef didn’t sleep the night before and by dawn he was already at the door of No. 39, waiting for the piece he had drawn two years earlier in Italy… He certainly wanted to punch the engineers who had forgotten to take some measures, but there were no injuries recorded in this episode (only a few more white hairs and a few less years to live…). But more than certain is that this “Ferrari” got in. And soon it became the fulfillment of an old dream. (Overcoming!).

The new 100 Maneiras isn’t “just” a restaurant. It is not “just” the restaurant of one of Portugal’s most famous cooks. 100 is a life story, the story of Ljubomir Stanisic and many others, of all (so many…!) who fit inside these walls made of stone and velvet, ruin and luxury. A project chosen, just 9 months after opening, to join the list of the 50 Best Discovery, compiled by the organization of The World’s 50 Best, and winner of a Michelin star in the following year.

100 is, above all, part of the life story of its owners – Ljubomir, Nelson Santos and Nuno Faria – who, with the courage that only a few have, invested in a business of a considerable scale without a support network, but also of others who thought this life project with them, like Mónica Franco, the chef’s wife, author of his books and creative director of the group.

100 is made of flesh and blood… Of people like Hugo Marques Amaro and João Miguel Esteves, the architects from HAJE who helped the project to be born, designed and adapted it, and still accompanied it all these years without throwing the towel…

People like Nini Andrade Silva, the interior designer from Madeira island who took the ideas and the concept to every inch of the decoration… joining the feeling of “Decadentism” to the Fantastic, and put it in a place where the dream becomes matter of the real.

People like Gil Correia, André Sentieiro and other elements of Partners, the creative agency who read thoughts and created the new graphic identity, joining uniqueness and irony, contemporaneity and nature. With genius trace(s).

Or the late Mário Matos Ribeiro, founder of ModaLisboa and a University Fashion professor, who created the uniforms in organic linens, at the same time minimal and multicultural, dispensing words to explain them.

Many names fit within 100. And many destinations as well. Stockholm, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Madrid, Barcelona, Paris are places marked on the map of 100. But if these years were of intensive gastronomic research, it was far from the contemporaneity that the training became more profound. In Sarajevo… capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, part of the former Yugoslavia, where Ljubomir was born on June, 8, 1978 and from where he had to flee at the outbreak of the Bosnian War and the Siege of Sarajevo, and to where he took part of his team – the wife, his business partners and executive chef Manuel Maldonado. So they could get to know the heart of the story, this story, which is told (he tells, they tell) every day at the no. 39 of Rua do Teixeira.

We’ve already said it: this restaurant is made of flesh and bone, of blood and sweat, of tears and many laughs. Lots of laughs. And a lot of wine (which ends up being interconnected…) There are about 500 references that have been gathered over the years and that, thanks to the delay, have accumulated even more… (Consolidation!).

Nuno Faria joined forces with our team of sommeliers to, besides these hundreds of entries of the main menu, build an alternative menu with 100 wines grouped in other ways. One of them is “To Die For! By Dirk Niepoort”, a selection signed by the great (wine producer and friend) Dirk Niepoort.

100 is maturity. Ljubo’s maturity but also of the group 100 Maneiras. A restaurant opened when we celebrated 10 years together and know what we want. We want to look at the whole world, to bring the whole world into us, to bring our world into every detail, to bring us into everything. And we want to be just like ourselves.

We thought about each and every detail: from the tableware (much of it drawn by Ljubomir himself), to handmade crystal glasses; from the custom cutlery to the music selected by Nelson Santos; from the plants on the walls of The Glass House to the light, which creates different “scenarios” for each moment of the “performance”. From the coffee menu, with 5 different types of service, including Bosnian, to the choice of teas and olive oils.

With the birth of the restaurant we also wanted to make a statement of principles. We look for sustainability, first. In the materials we use, the choices we make, what we serve. Handpicking the products, the producers. Including a vegetarian menu of 17 moments – Echoes of 100 – which proves the versatility of the vegetable world. Or the use of less consensual proteins (like the insects in our XO sauce) that aims to deconstruct paradigms and prejudices. For health, for flavor, for happiness – ours, our people’s, the world’s.

The declarations continue on the lower floor, where the restrooms (and the wine cellar and the service area) are located. Inside, surrounded by moss, stones of the Portuguese sidewalk, iron and tree branches, we enter into a tunnel of time. There are voices that speak to our ears. They speak of politics, but also of equality, traditions and history. The speaker is Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, but also Josip Broz Tito, the former president of the former Yugoslavia, Apollo 11 astronauts, Alberto Caeiro, Fernando Pessoa, José Saramago, the Lisbon “cauteleiro” (the old sellers of lottery tickets), the bells of the Muslim mosques from Sarajevo…

Culture dresses in countless ways, in different places. And there are (much) more than 100 ways to be happy. We had a dream…!