Die Hard in Beato
➔ Duro de Matar
Remember Pistola y Corazón near Cais do Sodré, back before a pandemic busted the restaurant industry? Best original Mexican tacos in town, top notch mezcal, the coolest-craziest decor in a cozy familiar room, and a vibe like a small speakeasy from the 1920s. Aaaah, how we miss that place!
But new and arguably better things have happened since. A post-Covid restaurant network called Foodriders was born, and they have since launched Las Gringas, a concept that serves an authentic version of Mexican food but a bit healthier, and Ameaça Vegetal [vegetal threat!], which is a Southern California-style vegan burger concept. Both the menus are cooked and sold from a busy place in Penha de França district, which displays a beautiful open view for the kitchen and the pantry.
Now, there’s Duro de Matar, on the ground floor of Factory Lisbon, and we couldn’t be happier to tell you all about it.
Eating Mexican is eating local
“Duro de Matar exists because Pistola collapsed”, says Damian Irizarry, its cofounder. With the traumatic experience, came the desire to make a more efficient restaurant, maybe a crisis-proof one.
As he sees it, McDonalds and Starbucks stand for an old version of how to exist in the restaurant business: to create something and then repeat it worldwide. For Foodriders, every new project is a chance to imagine something different.
Duro de Matar, for example, is a completely plant-based mexican food concept with no fats and no added sugars. “Our journey for food has changed a lot since Pistola. The Mexican food we used to cook was correct, like my grandmother did, which uses a lot of fat and is heavy on sugars. It tastes amazing but always leaves your body breaking and you can’t eat it every day. So our goal is to create a space where you can eat every day”, Damian explains.
“Here, we serve food that you can eat and feel no shame, but still get that same feeling like when you’re eating guloso [with gluttony]) Mexican food”.
They even got a name for the concept, which they borrowed from the coffee culture. “Third-wave coffee” alludes to how the industry treats the people who produce the beans and serve the coffee, but also how coffee shops treat the product itself, featuring the bean, not over-roasting it. Well, at Duro de Matar, they serve plant-based food on purpose and they put a lot of effort into not over-adulterating the products, so you can actually taste the vegetables.
Also, they’re trying to convince people that eating Mexican food is eating local. “All of Foodriders concepts use local organic products. We work with 2 or 3 farms that are close to here. We really want people to think about what they eat from a different perspective. You can eat local by eating Asian, Mexican, Portuguese, if you're supporting the local food network. It’s more about the origin of the product, not just saying it’s vegetarian and vegan. It should be about flavor. But that’s a hard mental barrier to break”, Damian tells us.
She & Him
Today Foodriders employ a diverse team with 21 people, but in the beginning there were only two. Marta has been in Portugal for 15 years now. Damian has been for 19 years. They met in Lisbon 11 years ago.
Marta Fea is an architect, designer and illustrator from Italy and she stumbled in the world of restaurants through Damian. She was working as an architect when Damian told her that if they opened up a Mexican restaurant together, they would see each other more and the work would be super easy. “We do see each other more… but the work is not easy at all”, he tells us with a laugh.
Why a restaurant? “There are easier ways to make money. A restaurant is a very difficult one. But if you do your part correctly, it’s very honest”, Damian says.
And why Mexican food? Because Damian grew up on the south border of the USA, in El Paso, Texas. Part of his family is from Northern Mexico. He lived in California and Chicago, worked as a journalist, then spent a summer in Granada, then came to visit Portugal for a week and ended up staying 20 years. He founded hostels in Spain and Portugal, growing a chain all over the country. He had a tourism company called We Hate Tourism, doing tours in Lisbon and telling a true non-embellished version of local history.
Marta was initially resistant to the idea of doing something she knew nothing about. “Tacos were not part of Italian culinary culture.” But a trip to the desert was all it took.
“Damian took me to New Mexico where his mom lived, I had some tacos from the local taco trucks and I became excited about it”.
At Foodriders, Marta does everything that looks cool, Damian says. “Do you see these windows? She designed them to incorporate elements of the old factory we’re in. She also manages the team, she’s the head bartender when we need, she does communications, design and, basically, runs things. And she has a tendency to sell herself short”, he adds.
A Data Scientist goes into a restaurant…
On top of the profiles a restaurant usually employs, Foodriders' team includes a software developers, a data scientist, the “radio guys” and a booking agent. Not the regular crew you would expect.
Damian tells us how he's always built some technology within his businesses, whether it was a booking agency or a restaurant.
“Good software allows us to have less staff, doing less hours and pay them a bit more. We have to consider the hours people usually work in this business and how they can live in a city that’s becoming more expensive”, he says.
The software does the ordering, takes care of delivery and makes the whole process more efficient. It also collects massive amounts of data, which are used by Diana, the data scientist, to support daily decisions that allow for an optimization of resources - such as hiring the best last mile delivery services, deciding which neighborhoods should be targeted, setting pricings and customizing rewards for loyal clients.
Foodrider’s software is also part of the efforts to create direct communication with customers. no longer depending on Instagram, Uber or Glovo. As Damian puts it, “we want it to be us with our customers on our app, offering different experiences based on the kind of interaction they have with us. We want to be super digital but avoid the inhumane part of the digital. You can go to a McDdonald's kiosk, do your thing on the screen and the robot hands you the order. I think that’s incredible. But there’s a part missing there, right? That’s why at Duro de Matar, we also have a radio, music acts and other artists performing. We overcompensate with a cultural part and we see how efficient and fun we can get”.
Is it a pop up? Is it a soft opening? It’s a restaurant under construction!
There’s a lot of things that you hate to pay for in life, like parking tickets or taxes. But if it’s done right, the one time that people smile and happily give over their money is in a dining experience. That is why Duro de Matar serves food, but also has great music and entertainment.
“We like those supper clubs from the 1930s and 40s in the United States, where someone would come out and sing a song, and then go back. You’re having this whole experience while you’re eating”, Damian explains.
Looking to make it even more unique, they decided to open it as a restaurant under construction, during its first few months.
“It’s like we’re half open and half ready, and then slowly, every week, every time a customer comes, we make more changes, so they see the process of what it’s like to actually open a restaurant."
A lot of the stuff Duro de Matar is using now was lent by friends and the local community from Hub Criativo do Beato. Many of them will be replaced, as the restaurant is finished. You can see little notes on the furniture to explain all the things that have yet to be finished. There is unfinished art on the wall because it’s made by a friend who has a day job and has to come on Thursdays to finish. This is all part of a process that customers wouldn't see because restaurants open only when they’re finished.
"There’s an aspect of transparency about it that we like, and it’s advantageous to start to get revenue, but mostly we feel it’s kind of cool to let people in on this and see our guts”, says Damian.
Summer was a good test, Marta tells us. “We tried to explore different experiences. We invited artists to take over two of the Duro de Matar floors and people could explore all the three floors. We had a tattoo artist, a girl doing nail art, a guy who brought a really nice Mezcal and was doing tastings for free, we had international DJs and a photography exhibition. It was a way to test the space, little by little, and see the best way to put the tables, to organize the kitchen, and how our customers inhabit this kind of four dimension space”.
Duro de Matar is currently open from Thursday to Saturday, 6pm to midnight. It will slowly expand, both in hours and staff. “We will add another team member, then another. We prefer organic growth, instead of just putting a full staff and saying: alright everybody let’s go, this has to work, everyone needs to be ready! Putting massive pressure on the staff is one of the things we believe to be unsustainable in the old way of doing restaurants”, Damian states.
Seven years in Beato
When Damian visited Beato for the first time, 7 years ago, it reminded him of Lisbon 20 years ago, and he loved it.
"Locals tend to think Beato is not the city center, but for someone who’s lived in Chicago and San Francisco, that perception is wrong and I believe it will change as things here start to grow."
Foodriders figured they could be one of those things, so they started throwing parties. "We did many pop-up events in and around Factory Lisbon, during construction, and everyone has just been so nice all along: the civil parish [Junta de Freguesia do Beato], the Factory team, the Hub Criativo do Beato people… That doesn’t happen so much in downtown Lisbon anymore”.
For Marta, there is a power in old places which were something else in the past and were kind of left behind. “If you have access, you can visualize and interpret that place in a completely different way and come up with something new for the people and the community to rediscover. We were given an opportunity to show people how many little pieces and bites of their own city they can discover”.
Marta describes being in Beato like a really powerful emotional voyage: “I remember when we first came here and discovered the packages of the cookies and all the gigantic machines that were still here”.
Recently there was a visit from a lady in her 80s who used to work in the old army cookies factory where Duro de Matar now is.
Marta recalls “she was completely fascinated and astonished about how the place changed. She told us she was super happy to finally see new things happening in Beato”.
Damian agrees: “Factory Lisbon’s building is an emotional story for us. We personally helped to clean all the bird poop that was here. We have a lot of pride in this being finished and opened. We've seen this child be born and we’re not the parents, but we feel like the cool uncles”.
As a resident of Hub Criativo do Beato, Damian finds the most pressing challenge is to make HCB look and act as a part of Beato. “Speaking as a person who uses this neighborhood for the past 5 years, just opening a connection between the river front and Rua do Grilo, behind the hub, and not taking 10 minutes to walk to the bus stop, these small differences are really making us a part of the community. We have to be careful not to be too foreign, too strange. We have to be part of the community, presenting them with something of value. That’s also why it's important to have a cheaper menu and faster service. We want to be a place that gets the local community and a newer community together - the same way we know that the people moving in will eat at Duro de Matar, but also at the local tascas. I believe in a symbiosis that will make everyone benefit”, Damian adds.
