The Boa Nova Tea House Restaurant, in Leça da Palmeira, Matosinhos, is the latest Rui Paula gastronomic space.

Because of the building history, the new Boa Nova restaurant is the biggest challenge of OPorto Chef career, and has everything to become one of the main gastronomic and architectural spots in Northern Portugal.

Paradigm of integration of architecture and landscape the Boa Nova Tea House was built on the rocks, and soon became an obligatory reference.

The choice of that difficult but gorgeous place went to Fernando Távora, who had won the architectural competition. “The solution appears today as obvious and inevitable, but only Fernando Távora great experience and intuition made it possible,” acknowledged Siza Vieira, the architect who would be responsible for the project.

At the time, Siza Vieira was a Fernando Távora disciple and the Boa Nova Tea House marked the beginning of his career, consecrated worldwide in 1992, when he won the Pritzker Prize, the architecture “Nobel”.

After some years of neglect, the building has recently undergone profound works of redevelopment by the Matosinhos Council, again under the guidance of Siza Vieira. Even the original furniture was reproduced, according to the designs of the time and using the materials originally planned, with the aim of returning to the Boa Nova Tea House all the beauty and uniqueness that led to its classification as a National Monument in 2011.

The property was granted for 20 years to Chef Rui Paula, who invested about 750 thousand euros in equipment. The Boa Nova Tea House is equipped with a modern and functional kitchen, a dining room with capacity for 40 people and a waiting room with bar service. In this new restaurant, located near the fish auction of Matosinhos, Rui Paula will have the best fish and seafood in the world, to create innovative and bold culinary proposals.

The aim is to make the Boa Nova restaurant a new Northern Portugal gastronomic icon and thus honor the Matosinhos culinary tradition and also the genius of a property that seems to be born of stones, in communion with the sea and the surrounding landscape.