SEIVA & FEITIO

Seiva and Feitio, two doors in Leça. 
No collection this time. Just a hunch.
A chef we'd never met, a message on Instagram and a long dinner for ten in Leça da Palmeira.

Not every story we tell starts with clothes. This one started with a feeling. We were in Porto as a team, and one name kept coming up: David Jesus.

Let's be clear. We're nobody's barometer for what's good, and we don't hand out verdicts. But we do believe we can have a voice that matters, and we want to use it for people we haven't met yet, not only the ones we already know. David was one of them.

So we did the simplest thing. We sent him a message on Instagram and asked if it would make sense for us to come for dinner, take a few photographs and get to know him a little. He said yes.

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David is from Setúbal. Before opening his own place, he cooked in the kitchens of Dabiz Muñoz, Quique Dacosta and Björn Frantzen. In 2021 he opened Seiva in Leça da Palmeira, a vegetarian fine dining restaurant whose name pays tribute to resin tapping, a craft tied to his family. Two years later, the Chef de Bancada panel named him Emerging Chef of the Year.

Then he did something we found even more interesting. Right next door, he opened Feitio, a restaurant serving Portuguese food, meat and fish included. Not fine dining, not a carbon copy of Seiva. A different door, with a different idea behind it.

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But spend an evening there and you quickly see they're siblings. They share a kitchen and they share a schedule. More importantly, they share the same obsessions: great produce, real technique, constant study and an almost stubborn care for how things are kept and preserved.

We'll confess what excited us most, and it wasn't only the food. It was David himself. Here's someone who has faced enormous challenges and got past every one of them through perseverance, study and sheer hard work. He seems to know exactly what he wants, and he seems to have the method to get there. He's going to go far.

We had dinner at Feitio, a table of ten, the whole ISTO. team around it. It was one of those afternoons that quietly turns into night: a chance to get to know the project, and a good way to close the day.

We photographed both restaurants, because this story only makes sense told that way. Two places, side by side, in the same spot, built on the same conviction. Thank you, David, and the whole team at Seiva and Feitio, for having us. We'll be back. Probably hungrier.