I do long walks—usually around 15 km, about twice a week. Sometimes I turn them into a hike and explore the surroundings of Ericeira. Other times I go to Lisbon and walk through the whole city.
One day, while we were already planning to open some kind of food place, I walked from Campolide to Oriente train station. Somewhere on the way I got hungry and stopped at a smash-burger restaurant. I cannot remember the name.
It was a well-designed place. Plenty of staff running around, enough room to serve maybe fifty people, and at that moment it was only me and two other customers.
I ordered a burger. I do not want to talk bad about it, but it was not a good burger. It was not cheap either. I could taste that nothing had really been worked on. No proper crust on the meat, no sauce that added anything, no detail that made the burger feel worth the price. All together, it was mediocre at best.
It reminded me a bit of one of those beach shacks where you get a mediocre burger for a steep price, but you do not care too much because you are hungry from surfing and you can see the ocean. Here I could not see the ocean. Just passing cars.
It got me thinking: when was the last time I walked into one of those super-designed places, made to work on Instagram or make a good first impression, and actually left satisfied? It happens, of course. But far too often I leave feeling like the design did the work and the food was just there to carry the bill.
I understand that restaurants have to make money. Nobody opens one because they do not want to make money. But there should be an honest deal between the customer and the restaurant. You give us your money and your time, and we make sure the food earns it.
That was one of the things I knew when we started Cheat Day. I wanted to build a place I would be happy to find on one of my walks: hungry, tired, and ready for something that actually makes the stop worth it.
I wanted an atmosphere where people feel welcome—not like they were lured in by nice design, good pictures, or a famous name. I wanted a place where we know the ingredients, where every product goes through testing, and where we keep working on a sandwich until we would be genuinely happy to get it ourselves.
Of course, not everything works straight away. Sometimes we test something and it is simply not good enough. Then we change it. But the direction is clear.
From the beginning, people came back. We have had customers tell us: “These are the best tacos I had in my life.” “Since I left the USA, I have not had fried chicken like that.” We also hear that people notice the thought in our vegan taco and that the place feels warm and welcoming.
Those are big words, and we do not take them lightly.
We are grateful for every person who decides to come to Cheat Day. They could spend their money somewhere else. So we want to give them food that feels like somebody cared about it—not just a nice room, a good photo, and something average on the tray.
That is the kind of restaurant I would want to find hungry.