13/08/2026
Yesterday was Alex’s round birthday. It was a normal working day: he came home around four, we ate together, he grabbed a thirty-minute nap, and then we headed to the beach with friends to watch the solar eclipse and make our wishes ;)
When you run a kitchen, birthdays don’t always land on the calendar the way you’d plan them. So we do what we always do: we book a proper gastronomy experience the moment a table opens up. No long planning, no fixed date, just “there’s a table, let’s go.”
This time it was Ocean Ocean Restaurant on July 17th, the two-Michelin-star restaurant in the Algarve, our first time at a two-star table, after several dinners at one-Michelin-star restaurants over the years. It did not disappoint. Every single dish was a small piece of art, how it looked, how it was served, how it tasted. Expensive, yes. Worth every cent? Also yes.
This is something we’ve done for years: instead of gifts, we give ourselves a proper gastronomy experience. His birthday is in August, mine is in September, so we put the two together and make a bigger celebration of it.
Experiences over things. Always.