The Sea Urchin Festival was held March 21–30 this year at its usual site, the Mercado Municipal da Ericeira. It used to be held in the basement fish market area, but starting last year, they moved it to the craft sales area on the second floor—maybe because of all the cooking that’s involved.
It also used to be a small local event where you were sure to run into people you knew, but today it’s clear that visitors are coming from Lisbon and even overseas. The venue is packed.
The fun of walking around enjoying sea urchin with a glass of local wine in hand hasn’t changed, but now they’ve moved beyond sea urchin to everything from grilled oysters and sea snails, and it all costs money—so it’s quite expensive. Even the sea urchins were going for five euros each—crazy!
But the Portuguese just love their seafood, so there they were, lined up at the booths.
In the past, you could get sea urchin for free—though quantities were limited. You’d line up to get your sea urchin, eat it, and immediately line back up again like a merry-go-round—maybe three to five times? At today’s prices, I guess we were scarfing down 15-20 euros’ worth of food for free. Pretty amazing when you think about it.

Of course, there are still things you can eat for free. The festival includes “Show Cookings” during the two weekends it covers, where famous chefs are invited in to create “one-bite snacks” showcasing sea urchin as the main ingredient to test their creativity. It is the highlight of the event, yet you can still taste their creations for free.
Incidentally, we used to be able to line up as many times as we liked, but there are so many people now that I was only able to visit each booth once…
I heard that a friend of mine was invited, so I made sure to go on the day he was there. There were four chefs:
• Rodrigo Alves from Ao Lume/Talho do Mar Londres
• Carlos Duarte Afonso from C-A/24 Kitchen
• Justin Jennings from Downunder
• Fagner Buzinhani from Gojuu Clube
Below are the dishes they presented.


Rodrigo Alves
Caçao soup (caçao is a kind of shark)
Alves used caçao to make broth, and then ground up the meat to add to the soup as well. The soup also had sea urchin in it. To be honest, I couldn’t taste the sea urchin, but the soup was delicious—so good that I went back to ask him for the recipe.



Carlos Duarte Afonso
Afonso stir-fried and marinated leeks, carrots, and other vegetables and then topped them with mackerel marinated in olive oil. Thinking back now, I don’t even know if he used sea urchin in his dish. The vegetables were tart. Afonso was quite a handsome chef.





Justin Jennings
Jennings made an incredibly delicate dish that used a variety of ingredients and required painstaking preparation. You could tell he was a consummate professional. Unfortunately, everything tasted so delicious that I felt like the flavors ended up clashing.



Fagner Buzinhani (my friend)
Buzinhani served miso-stewed mackerel and sea urchin over white rice and finished it with spring onions and a touch of wasabi.
It was straight-up Japanese cuisine—so of course it was delicious.
Although he made a classic dish, the sea urchin was certainly there as a highlight. And because he prepared it so well, there wasn’t a hint of fishiness. The wasabi complemented it beautifully.





Buzinhani actually worked with the chef to the Japanese ambassador to create the dish, and we can be sure he knew how to use the sea urchin.

Local restaurants also serve sea urchin and sea urchin dishes during the festival. There were 24 restaurants participating this year.
Sea urchins are considered a nuisance to surfers, who injure themselves on the spines. You used to be able to buy them by the bucketful. I can’t believe it’s been ten years already since they started the Sea Urchin Festival.