New blood at 100 Maneiras’ Bars

Rafael Vairinhos, João Franco and Bruno Fernandes are the head bartenders at Bistro 100 Maneiras, Restaurant 100 Maneiras and Carnal Gastrobar. Being part of the team previously led by João Sancheira, this wonderful trio now has the mission of leading the cocktail destinies of the 100 Maneiras group.

At just 23 years old, Bruno Fernandes is the youngest of the trio of co-head bartenders. On the team since October 2022, the bartender from Caldas da Rainha once wanted to be a priest and bullfighter but ended up at our counter grabbing shakers by the horns. He has pure drive, as he proved last year while one of six national finalists in the Bartender of the Year competition, hosted by The Bottle Affair.

João Franco, 26 years old, is the second member of this triad. Known for “talking his mouth off” (so say his colleagues), he was studying Law when, suddenly, spirits entered his life and he found the counters of 100 Maneiras, in 2022, the ideal place to mix drinks while chatting with customers.

And because three’s a charm (and everyone knows how seriously we take these things), Rafael Vairinhos, 28 years old, completes this perfect sum. Part of the group since February 2023, the last of the co-head bartenders was born in Faro, where he started working behind the counter, but decided to head to Lisbon to escape the seasonality of the South and grow in the career he fell in love with.

It is with this new blood that the legacy of more than a decade of cocktails made in 100 Maneiras continues. With published books (100 Cocktails 100 Maneiras, launched in 2015 by A Esfera dos Livros), several awards (Best Restaurant Bar in Portugal at the Coaster 2017 awards and the same title, in 2019 and 2022, at the Lisbon Bar Show Awards, for Bistro 100 Maneiras’s bar) and a philosophy that continues: the gastronomic approach to classic mixology, using ingredients that come from the kitchen in cocktails, to create, just like in food menus, journeys around the world – ours and the one around us – in liquid state.