Discover Portuguese food at Soul & Surf Portugal, where chef Ben cooks with seasonal local ingredients, homemade breads, garden produce and plenty of Algarve flavour.
15th August 2026
photography by @inbluesfilms
Ben has been cooking at Quinta Agave for three years. Not two, as we said when we started filming. He corrected us straight away. "Stop the record. Bloody three years, innit?"
Ben has been cooking at Quinta Agave for three years. Not two, as we said when we started filming. He corrected us straight away. “Stop the record. Bloody three years, innit?”
He came here looking for a challenge. “I just searched for a challenge abroad where I could do my own thing for a while and not work under someone.” Learning to surf and living by the sea was the bit that came with it.
A little look at what’s coming out of Ben’s kitchen at Soul & Surf Portugal.
Three years in, the food at Portugal has a shape to it. Every dish changes with the season, because it has to. Fruit and veg comes in three times a week from Bio Sabor, an organic grower we've worked with since before Ben arrived. What arrives is what you eat.
The rest comes from the garden. Right now that means green figs and purple figs, chillies, basil and purple basil. Nesperas, the sweet lychee-like fruit that shows up across the Algarve, and pomegranates later in the year. Even the fig leaves get used, which is Ben's favourite ingredient full stop. They go into the lemonades.
Speaking of which. Ask Ben what his favourite thing behind the bar is and he doesn't say wine or beer. "Our lemonades. Whatever special's on the board, there's always something from our garden in it." Mango chilli, using our own chillies. Fig leaf. There are alcoholic versions if you'd rather.
Photography by @in.the.flow.photography_flora
A lot happens that guests never see. All the bread is made here. Pizza dough. The flatbreads for the Monday dish. A rye sourdough. And in high season, cornbread from scratch to go with the sardines.
His own favourite day to eat here is Sunday. It starts with pan con tomate, or a coconut roti borrowed from our Sri Lanka kitchen once the tomato season is done. Then a cold noodle dish with Portuguese flavours and serrano. Then fish on the barbecue. Saturday is a close second, mostly because of the blueberry muffins from Mati, one of our chefs, and the falafel dish.
If he had to eat one of our dinners every day for a month, he'd pick the chicken. The piri piri one, spicy, tweaked through the season. It is also the dish he is most excited about, which tells you something.
Photography by @in.the.flow.photography_flora
Off the clock he cooks Peruvian. Ceviche, mainly. If he wasn't in a kitchen he reckons he'd be a carpenter, because he'd still want to make things with his hands. The one thing he'd love to cook more of is braised meat, slow cooked beef or pork, even though he barely eats meat himself.
We finished with a quickfire round. Kiwi is the worst ingredient in the world. No pineapple on pizza. Always parmesan in the fridge. Coffee, not tea. Worst job in the kitchen is cleaning, asked twice, same answer. Best staff meal of the year was pizza, after a long pause and a claim that all of them were horrible.
And if he could cook for anyone, dead or alive? He picked the person holding the camera.
Come stay with us. The food is part of the Portugal surf and yoga retreat, and the menu changes as the seasons do, using what’s growing nearby and what Ben and the team feel like cooking, so what lands on the table in spring is not quite what lands in autumn.
Photography by @issycroker
