Margarida Fonseca opened Cupola Plus in March 2017 in a building on Rua das Flores in Cascais that had been a hardware shop for thirty years before she got hold of it. The renovation took four months longer than planned and cost more than she budgeted, mostly because she refused to cover the original azulejo tiles on the back wall. Those tiles are still there. Regulars know to ask for the table closest to them. The name comes from the small dome above the entrance. Nothing grand, just a detail she liked and decided to keep.
The early menus were simpler than they are now. Margarida had cooked in Lisbon for seven years, first at a brasserie in Chiado and later as sous-chef at a small hotel restaurant in Sintra that closed in 2015. When Cupola Plus opened, she was cooking alone with one other person in the kitchen, doing forty covers on a good Friday. The turning point was autumn 2019, when a food writer from Porto passed through Cascais and wrote a short, precise piece about the caldeirada she had eaten. The phone started ringing differently after that.
A slow-cooked fish stew built on whatever has come into Cascais harbour that morning. The base is always the same. Onion, tomato, olive oil…
Octopus from the Setubal coast, boiled slowly for 45 minutes before it goes on the grill. Served with smashed potatoes roasted in the oven …
Wet rice cooked with smoked linguiça from a producer in Almeirim, torn kale from a small farm in Mafra, and a long chicken stock that simme…
Margarida Fonseca grew up in Setubal and spent her twenties cooking in Lisbon, starting on the line at a brasserie in Chiado before moving to a hotel restaurant in Sintra as sous-chef. When that restaurant closed in 2015, she spent a year eating her way around Portugal's interior, keeping notes in a blue notebook she still has. In March 2017 she opened Cupola Plus in a former hardware shop in Cascais, doing the renovation herself on weekends. She writes the menu every Tuesday morning, drinks Vinho Verde with fish without apology, and has not owned a television since 2012.