The art of saudade: Isabel Pavão’s creative evolution from Porto to New York

Isabel Pavão, the Portuguese painter who has lived in New York since 1990, believes that the process of making art matters as much as the finished work. In this episode of The Heart & Hustle of Portugal, the artist retraces a path that runs from Porto to Paris and finally to Manhattan, where she ar…

Katherine Vaz: the American writer who made Portuguese saudade a universal story

In this conversation on “The Heart & Hustle of Portugal” podcast, hosted by Tony Gonçalves, the New York-based author Katherine Vaz recalled how her first novel, published by a major New York house, was advised against using the word “saudade” in its title. She insisted, and the word found its read…

“You’ve built the most New York thing we’ve seen in years” | Eugenia Oswaldt, Tascha NYC

Eugenia Oswaldt left a corporate career to open up Tashca, a modern eatery in Nolita, New York City. She tells Tony Gonçalves the story of how a visa issue led her to change a lucrative career for the hustle of opening up a restaurant.  Eugenia had never imagined herself as an entrepreneur until a…

Nuno Marques: When fado meets piano and a festival becomes a movement

Nuno Marques, the Portuguese pianist who played Carnegie Hall twice and built a festival from scratch, sits down with Tony Gonçalves to explain why he has spent a career carrying Portugal in his hands. Listen to The Heart & Hustle of Portugal.

Laughing in the face of addiction: Filipe Santos’ wild ride from humble beginnings to boss life

Filipe Santos, a Portuguese-American entrepreneur born in Newark, hrecounts a path that began in the tight-knit Portuguese community of his childhood and passed through more than a decade of heroin addiction. Listen to “The Heart & Hustle of Portugal”.

Rita Barros: Chelsea Hotel room 1008, a lifetime of photography

Trained as a translator and interpreter, Rita Barros came to photography almost by accident. It began with a Tom Waits concert, where she took photographs that turned out overexposed but salvageable, and which she ended up selling to a journalist when the singer had banned the press. From there cam…

Ana Miranda turned New York dreams into a global stage for Portuguese culture

After working at the Portuguese mission to the United Nations and trying out journalism, Ana Miranda decided, in 2011, to build something of her own: a platform to show contemporary Portuguese culture abroad, starting with a short film festival she funded out of her own salary. Fifteen years later…

Joey Bats never fried an egg, now he ships pasteis de nata worldwide

Joey Bats put pastéis de nata on the map in NYC, and he did it by refusing to sell people a history lesson. He'd never cooked a day in his life. Engineer, corporate job, bored out of his mind. He got his mother's Bolo de Bolacha recipe first, sold it door to door to restaurants and bodegas, then sw…

“Losing one-zero”: Nuno Sousa on running a restaurant like a soccer match

Chef Nuno Sousa reflects on his journey from immigrant worker with three jobs to restaurant owner, and on how New York’s culture of resilience, risk-taking and reinvention shaped both his career and his outlook. The conversation traces the growth of Leitao from a street-food concept inspired by Ne…

Rerelease: Bankrol Hayden on making a hit on his death bed

Hayden Inacio grew up in Modesto, California — Central Valley, agricultural, working class. His grandfather emigrated from Terceira in the Azores, came through the East Coast, and eventually built a dairy. By the time Hayden came along, the Portuguese was mostly gone: no language, not much culture,…