Fifty Seconds by Martín Berasategui

Fifty Seconds, the name of this fine dining restaurant explains the length of the elevator ride required to reach it. But the 35-seat dining room atop the Myriad by SANA hotel in the iconic Torre Vasco da Gama in Parque das Nacões isn’t just another pretty—but vapid—restaurant with a view. And, less than a year after opening, Fifty Seconds has earned a Michelin star!

Basque-born Martín Berasategui holds 12 Michelin stars at his various restaurants in Spain (and one in Portugal), making him the most-starred chef on the Iberian Peninsula and one of the most-starred chefs in the world. (He has three at his original namesake restaurant in San Sebastián.) What he is doing in Lisbon lives up to that reputation.

The ingredients are luxurious and exotic; the cooking, meticulous. On the a la carte menu, you can find Vegetable leaf and petals salad, herbs, sprouts with lettuce cream and king crab (below); Egg yolks in carbonara with pork mask carpaccio; and Grilled ox fillet on a bed of chard chlorophyll and cheese bonbon. These dishes become only slightly less mysterious when they arrive at your table.

Salad of vegetables, petals, herbs, lettuce and lobster

But this is a big-night-out restaurant, so you might as well go all-in. There is a seven-course Fifty Seconds menu (which takes far longer than 50 seconds to consume) and a ten-course tasting menu.

Crab with avocado mayonnaise, tomato confit and lemon gel

These are quite consistent, as there is real Portuguese talent in the kitchen. Executive chef Filipe Carvalho has worked with chef António Bóia at Rio’s, Vincent Farges at Fortaleza do Guincho, and João Rodrigues at Feitoria. Pastry chef Maria João Gonçalves has come through restaurants such as Belcanto, Villa Joya, and Lasarte.

The space was designed by interior architect Nuno Rodrigues and his teams Metrobox and Stabörd, with a shimmer of copper and a lot of smoky blues. All of the furniture and lighting was crafted specifically for the space. The result is an environment that is as luxurious and sophisticated as the items on the menu.