I’m used to cheap and cheerful Portugal — city breaks in Lisbon and Porto, beach weeks away from the grottier bits of the Algarve — and never thought of it as a high-end destination. Then I took up an offer from the self-described Portuguese enfant terrible of luxury, JNcQUOI, to spend 48 hours in Lisbon and Comporta, an exclusive and carefully nurtured district of white sand beaches, rice paddies and storks nesting in electricity pylons, 90 minutes south of the capital.

It was a weekend of sublime seafood, an on-call Range Rover and driver, and sunning and swimming from a lavish four-poster beach bed where minions proffered drinks, doughnuts and chilled cucumber slices to ease tired eyes. Then a stroll from the friskily azure sea up to JNcQUOI’s thatched and elegantly weathered Beach Club to drink the company’s own wines from Alentejo, survey the day’s spanking fresh catch and ponder Shark’s Drool, a sinful sugar hit of a pudding made from local rice and pine nuts.

Founded in 2017 by a couple, Paula Amorim and Miguel Guedes De Sousa, JNcQUOI operates six restaurants and a members’ club in Lisbon; Fashion Clinic boutiques carrying Amorim’s clothing and interiors collections around the country, and the Deli Suite, a restaurant with rooms in the town of Comporta, inland from the Beach Club. This portfolio is soon to expand with the opening in Lisbon of House, a hotel where guests become temporary club members, carved by architect Vincent Van Duysen from a venerable powder-blue townhouse that already contains JNcQUOI’s newest restaurant, Table.

Then there’s the creation of a huge hotel and “estate” around a golf course in a historic fir forest set back from the Comporta sand dunes, which will have both family and adults-only restaurants and pools, padel and tennis courts and a helipad. Due in 2028 it will comprise 64 brutalist-rustic villas and 34 larger “pavilions”, all with indoor and outdoor pools and dining areas. Everything from the furniture to the ashtrays and table mats will be designed by Van Duysen — there’s luxury in not even having to choose your own furnishings, I suppose.

With House not due to open till October, our delightful driver Miguel whisked us from the airport to an Airbnb we’d arranged for our first night in a car smelling of buttery leather. We declined a lift to Fish, 50 yards up the road. Even so, the doorman greeted me by name and ushered us into a room of cream-patterned walls and dark banquettes built around the zoo-enclosure of a glazed and gleaming kitchen.

We started with an excellent tomato water cocktail and an agreeable negroni, followed by tiny but plump Algarve oysters, zingy fish tacos with mango and avocado, and lip-smackingly saucy red shrimp on a quail’s egg pancake. Then an impeccably fresh whole red snapper from the grill, served with lush traditional tomato rice and green beans, accompanied by glasses of bracing white and chilled red Douro wines. After a not-too-sweet spin on the local milky “flan” we headed down to the “secret, undersea” Mirror Room bar, where the Medusa tequila cocktail comes in a glass with tentacles.

The following morning there was just time for a walk down to the mouth of the Tagus for a coffee with a pastel de nata and a visit to the cathedral known as the Sé. I’d have liked to revisit MUDE, a fashion and design museum in a dramatically gutted bank. Then Miguel whisked us to the coast. After a tour of the hotel site, we were taken to the Deli Suite, currently JNcQUOI’s only rentable property in Comporta. Compared to the modesty of the Beach Club, this is a showcase for the founders’ bold design ethos.

The staircase to the apartment is faced in split, milled timbers painted red, white and blue. The bedrooms and brass-fitted bathrooms are off a circular sitting room, a riot of stripes and checks, tiles and twine, leather lampshades and hammered brass downlighters. Everything is in bold, poster-paint colours. Outside is a shaded terrace with seating for 12, where breakfast is served from the Deli restaurant below, which sits beside a Fashion Clinic for women (there’s a men’s one across the street).

Back at the beach, we spent the day dipping in and out of the sea, dodging the blazing sun and availing ourselves of cucumber slices and free sunglasses-lens cleaning before lunch at the Beach Club, which has separate indoor and outdoor zones for members and non-members. Delicate tuna carpaccio was followed by a whole grilled sea bream and the guilty-pleasure Shark’s Drool. At 6pm, Miguel floated us back to the Deli restaurant where we duly polished off beef carpaccio, pica pau (tender beef stewed in a vinegary, umami sauce) and a nata ice cream. There’s seating and tables around a central bar, an open kitchen down one side, and brass masks and enormous vases depicting caricatures of local worthies, as well as JNcQUOI’s founders: a fun-looking, glassed off “party room” behind boasted football on TV and a DJ.

Good job our 48 hours were up before I could get used to a level of luxury that I can’t afford. Once House opens, punters can book one of its 16 suites, each with its own 24/7 butler, for €1,200 (£1,028) per room per night, access the benefits of JNcQUOI membership, and be chauffeured to the Deli Suite (dates permitting, of course). The Comporta hotel is built around JNcQUOI members buying the villas and pavilions (from €4.8 million to around €10m); the company may then sublet them in free months to other holidaymakers.

Membership of JNcQUOI costs €900 per year up to the age of 27, €2,200 for those aged 27 to 35, and €3,200 for those over 35, and the company is keen to expand from its solidly Portuguese base. I asked who their membership was — old money, new money? — and was told it was “good looking people” and no footballers apart from Ronaldo, “because he’s Ronaldo”. So, if you think you and your bank account qualify…

Suites at JNcQUOI House from 1 Oct at £1,028 per night; Deli Suite, £343-1,071 per night for five guests