José de Avillez Burnay Ereira was born on October 24, 1979, in Lisbon and grew up on family land in Cascais, according to Wikipedia. He is the son of José Burnay Nunes Ereira and Maria de Fátima Miranda de Avillez and has a sister, Teresa, per the same source. Rather than attending culinary school, Avillez graduated in Business Communication from the Instituto Superior de Comunicação Empresarial with a thesis on the image and identity of Portuguese gastronomy, a subject that would define his later career, according to Reporter Gourmet. In place of formal training, he sought out Maria de Lourdes Modesto, widely regarded as the doyenne of traditional Portuguese home cooking, for private lessons, per Wikipedia. He married Sofia Melo de Castro Ulrich on May 2, 2015, and the couple have two sons.

Avillez’s professional kitchen career began at Fortaleza do Guincho in Cascais, followed by a posting under gastronome José Bento dos Santos at Quinta do Monte d’Oiro, according to Wikipedia. He then trained in France under Alain Ducasse and under Éric Fréchon at the Hôtel Bristol in Paris, and in 2005 was named “Chef d’Avenir” (Chef of the Future) by the International Academy of Gastronomy, per the same source. In 2006 he joined Ferran Adrià’s Creativity Department at elBulli in Spain, an experience he has described as career-changing, according to Reporter Gourmet. From 2008 to 2011 he served as executive chef at Restaurante Tavares in Lisbon, where he earned his first Michelin star in 2009, per Wikipedia, giving him a Michelin-rated kitchen of his own before he had opened a single restaurant under his own name.

Avillez opened his first restaurant, Cantinho do Avillez, in Lisbon’s Chiado district in September 2011, followed in January 2012 by Belcanto, the fine dining restaurant that would become his flagship, according to Wikipedia. Belcanto earned a Michelin star in its first year and a second in 2014. The early going was not universally welcomed: Avillez has said he received threatening letters from critics who objected to his modern reinterpretation of Portuguese classics, judging the food on photographs and dish names rather than on eating it, per Reporter Gourmet. “I always knew that what I was doing not only did not destroy traditional cuisine, but rather promoted and consolidated it,” he said, according to the same interview, and Belcanto’s two stars settled the argument in his favor.

Avillez’s restaurants now hold four Michelin stars across three addresses: two at Belcanto in Lisbon, one at Encanto, Portugal’s first Michelin-starred vegetarian restaurant, which opened in 2022 and was starred in 2023, and one at Tasca, his outpost inside the Mandarin Oriental Jumeira in Dubai and his first venture outside Portugal, according to Reporter Gourmet. Belcanto’s ranking on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list has climbed steadily over a decade, from 91st in 2015 to 85th in 2017, 75th in 2018 and 42nd in both 2019 and 2021, before reaching the low 30s in more recent editions, per Wikipedia and Reporter Gourmet. In 2018 he also received the International Academy of Gastronomy’s Grand Prix de l’Art de la Cuisine, having been named the organization’s “Chef d’Avenir” thirteen years earlier.

Avillez is widely described as Portugal’s most famous chef and its clearest ambassador for a modernized national cuisine. He hosted the television cookery series “JA ao Lume” and “Combinações ImProváveis” on SIC Mulher, has been a judge on TV Globo’s Brazilian competition show “Mestre do Sabor,” and hosted the radio programme “O Chef Sou Eu” on Rádio Comercial, according to Wikipedia. He also writes a weekly recipe column for Revista E, the magazine supplement of the newspaper Expresso, per the same source. His profile extends beyond Portugal’s borders: he accompanied Anthony Bourdain during the filming of a Lisbon episode of “No Reservations” in 2012, and international outlets including CNN have profiled him as the figure most responsible for putting Portuguese fine dining on the global map.

Avillez’s outside income leans toward media work and his own branded products rather than third-party brand-ambassador deals. His television and radio roles, including hosting duties on SIC Mulher and Rádio Comercial and his judging seat on TV Globo’s “Mestre do Sabor” in Brazil, are paid broadcast engagements built around his own culinary authority rather than sponsorships for outside companies, according to Wikipedia. Similarly, the “JA” wine label and his tinned sardine line are products released under his own name rather than paid endorsements of someone else’s brand, per Fine Dining Lovers. No outlet reviewed for this profile documents a conventional third-party sponsorship, such as a consumer appliance or drinks brand ambassadorship, of the kind common among television chefs in larger markets.

Avillez has built one of Europe’s larger chef-led restaurant groups. He has said he now leads a network of 31 restaurants, of which he personally owns and operates 14, spanning Lisbon, Porto, Cascais, Dubai and Macau, according to Reporter Gourmet. A separate Reporter Gourmet report puts his core group at 14 restaurants and more than 500 employees, anchored by the multi-concept Bairro do Avillez complex in Chiado, which houses the Taberna, Páteo and Mini Bar venues alongside Pizzaria Lisboa, per Reporter Gourmet. Beyond restaurants, he has launched a branded wine label, “JA,” made in partnership with his early mentor José Bento dos Santos, and a line of tinned sardines, and in 2023 he and his wife opened Casa Nossa, a hospitality venture in the Alentejo countryside, according to Fine Dining Lovers.

Avillez’s clearest publicly documented property asset is Casa Nossa, “The Lake Farmhouse,” a ten-room private estate overlooking the Alqueva reservoir in Portugal’s Alentejo region, which he conceived with his wife Sofia Ulrich and opened in 2023, according to Casa Nossa’s official site. The property is rented out in full to guests rather than operated as a conventional hotel, and meals there carry Avillez’s own culinary signature, per the same source. His official biography confirms the venture was launched jointly with Ulrich as an extension of the couple’s hospitality work, according to joseavillez.pt. Beyond Casa Nossa, his major identifiable assets are his ownership stakes in the 14 restaurants he operates directly, though the value of those individual stakes is not publicly disclosed.