Vincent Farges, chef of Michelin-starred restaurant Epur, from Lisbon, Portugal, had been keeping the restaurant’s doors closed for nearly four months. The successful chef meets the Lisboners with a whole new idea to build a different relationship with the city after the quarantine.

“The idea of offering people snack food with a good wine had been in my mind for a long time,” said the chef, who thought it might be interesting to open the restaurant earlier to serve wine, oysters, croquettes and torricados (a kind of Portuguese bruschetta) while there were far fewer tourists on the streets, “The circumstances made me speed up the project.” Farges, which literally opens a window to the street to serve passers-by, is also easily accessible to people with its affordable prices.

According to Fine Dining Lovers, the chef, who recalls the couple coming to Epur to eat at the window and coming back the next day to ask for a table, said: “This pandemic made us look at what is closer to us. On the other hand, the price [from 3.5 to 18 euros] is attractive, but I think people usually feel intimidated by Michelin-starred restaurants. With this window service, we managed to debunk the idea that a fine-dining restaurant is way too inaccessible.”