Meet the first Goan chef to feature in the Michelin Guide

It’s not every day that you see a Goan chef’s name mentioned in the Michelin Guide. However, last month, Gaspar Fernandes achieved the distinction when his restaurant, Gaspar’s in Vilnius, Lithuania, was awarded a Michelin Bib Gourmand – the first edition of the Michelin Guide in Lithuania. “I always wanted to be on the Michelin Guide’s culinary map and give some recognition to Goan cuisine,” says the chef.

Goan cuisine is unique here. Consider reheated grilled octopus masala with potatoes and wild garlic sauce; European lobster, mom’s curry (her version of coffeereal), crispy rice and squid ink sauce; langoustine with caramelized onions, xec xec and Goa poi; and one vindaloo Iberian 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 best restaurant in the country by 30 Best Restaurants (Lithuania). It’s quite an achievement for a restaurant that started out in a 23-square-metre studio.

It all starts with a love story

Gaspar’s journey began because of a love story.

It was 2010. Fernandes was working at a golf club in London when he met Krystsina online (she was working in Vilnius) and fell in love. Things didn’t work out, but Fernandes stayed hooked. In 2014, when she said “hi,” he did what any love-sick person would do: he booked a flight to Vilnius. That summer, he made several trips to meet her. “I thought, ‘I have to bet everything on this to work.’”

So he did and in October he decided to settle there permanently.

He lied to his family. “I told them I was tired of the British scene and got a white-collar job as a cooking teacher at Vilnius University.” In reality, he had no job and was largely reliant on his savings. He took a few cooking classes at the culinary education and entertainment channel ČIOP ČIOP, but Fernandes got his big break after winning the Lithuanian Open Wine & Dessert Pairing Championship in 2014. He was part of a team that created a dessert called Local Delight: a goat’s milk panna cotta with beetroot gel, chocolate crémeux and candied beetroot.

“People were impressed that a foreigner was making a dessert with local ingredients. It was a major event.” The win helped him gain exposure in local newspapers and establish relationships. One of those relationships was with award-winning Lithuanian chef Deivydas Praspaliauskas, owner of the high-end restaurant Amandus. Fernandes joined him as a pastry chef for a short time.

“I didn’t know what I wanted, but I was tired of working for other people and I wanted something of my own,” he says. It was this desire that helped him “hustle.” “We started our journey at a street market that sold things like sorpotel-style pulled pork wraps. We lived in a small apartment at the time and I would cook the pork all night. Sometimes we would smell like pork when we went out,” he recalls.

People loved his food, and that gave him the impetus to find a spot on the edge of Vilnius’ Old Town and create Gaspar’s, serving “Indian-inspired cuisine cooked with European ingredients” in 2015. “We built it from scratch,” he says, adding that it was an uphill battle, especially when COVID hit years later.

Krystsina accompanied him throughout his life. She left her job at an advertising agency to help at the restaurant. “She took away a lot of my work. Unfortunately, I deserve the most credit for that,” he says.

The couple got married in 2018 and a year later, Krystsina visited Goa for the first time. This trip inspired the couple to completely renovate the restaurant in 2019 and adopt a completely Goan approach, from the food to the azulejo-inspired floor tiles.

A new direction

Fernandes is a proud Goenkar. He visits Goa every year (when he can), bringing back spice mixes, jaggery and chillies. Krystsina, who has been to Goa three times already, considers herself an adopted Goan.

Gaspar’s 2.0 is quintessentially Goan. “There has always been a Goan influence from the beginning. But it is difficult to talk to people about Goa when they don’t know India. I started with Indian cuisine and then became more regional,” he says. Gaspar’s has served bebincaa modern version of sorpoteland one vindaloo-spicy suckling pig with orange sauce and potatoes from our garden. “In terms of cuisine, there are a lot of Goan-Portuguese influences like crab xec xec, reheated, xacutiAnd Bacalhaubut the food served here speaks of my life, my history and my origins.

Fernandes was born in Goa, but moved to London as a teenager. He developed a love of cooking early on. “My grandfather was a chef and my mother ran a catering business in Goa. I always had this love of food.” Becoming a chef was inevitable. He went to Le Cordon Bleu, but dropped out after eight months: “I was young and naive and didn’t make good life choices.” He moved to Goa, doing odd jobs before working at Wentworth Golf Club, where he met Krystsina and his life changed.

The Michelin Bib Gourmand is a “huge achievement.” “We are both foreigners – Krystsina is from Belarus – and to be able to play at the highest level with everyone is a little pat on the back.” Earlier this year, a film crew accompanied Gaspar to Goa – he was one of nine Baltic chefs featured in the Lithuanian-English cooking series ‘Read the book. Absolute virtuosity“(Behind the Plate: Exotic Food). When his mother — whom he believes to be the best cook in the world — comes to visit, they team up to create a Goan feast and invite people over for intimate buffet-style feasts.

“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t wake up hating being a chef,” Gaspar says. What’s next on the menu? “I want that star.”

Joanna Lobo is a journalist based in Goa.