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Through the encounter with young chefs which is being held here today, we are paying a tribute to all those who, throughout the country, are bringing prestige to Portuguese gastronomy.

I am grateful for the collaboration of the “Portuguese Academy of Gastronomy” and for the enthusiastic drive of its president, Eng. Bento dos Santos.

An important part of our life, of our economy, of our culture, of our health and well being, is related with what we eat and how we eat it.

Family memories, as well as those that we keep from the regions and countries we visit, of the friends with whom we fraternize, of the celebrations in which we take part, are often related with gastronomy.

Portugal has a notable gastronomic heritage. In part inherited from remote antiquity, connected to its specific nature, simultaneously from the Mediterranean and from the Atlantic, to the produce we have always harvested, to the differences between regions and to the imagination of our forbears.

In part, as well, as a result of recent research carried out by scholars and sensitive chefs, who, using their sense of taste achieved new gastronomic solutions with great quality, which have received recognition both in Portugal and abroad.

The issue now placed before us is to become aware how to transform Portuguese culinary practice, our fish, which seem to be among the best in the world, our excellent wines and olive oils, our fruits and horticultural products, and the art of our chefs, into tools at the service of our economy, and how to promote these effectively, in order to be easily recognized everywhere, both by the Portuguese and by those that visit us.

I thus salute the movement which has defended amongst us the traditional quality products and has been able to extend the scope of products with a Designation of Origin and with a Protected Geographic indication.

Inheritances from antiquity are important, but do not have to remain unchanged. Although we all value their defence and preservation, it is my belief that we should not oppose their being combined with modern and innovatory techniques.

This is precisely what is carried out by a number of our chefs, to whom I wish today to show my appreciation for the way by which, with dedication and professionalism, they have contributed to disclose, enrich and develop the already wealthy and varied national gastronomic heritage, transforming the success of taste and of the pleasures of food and drink into an objective for healthy living.

I am particularly grateful for the presence and participation in this encounter of the young chefs who came to exhibit their experience and who will shortly present some of their gastronomic creations.

I also want to highlight, and greet with great regard, the presence and the contribution of Mrs. Maria de Lurdes Modesto, to whom we are much in debt for her dedication at the service of the prestige of Portuguese culinary art.

To the young chefs and to all those others who have defended and given value to our products and our flavours, and also to the scholars and researchers into our gastronomic quality, with special regard to those that, in the past, were well able to dignify Portuguese culinary art, I want to show my appreciation, whilst President of the Republic, for their efforts and dedication, for the benefit of our country, our health and our collective pleasure.

Finally, I would like to invite you all to a small symbolic gastronomic experience, concocted by several of the young chefs with us here today, and which will be held in a few moments in the Garden of the Waterfall, in this Palace.

Thank you very much.