“This is the best time for bivalves,” says Portuguese chef João Rodrigues. It’s late February, and we’re speaking in the dining room of Canalha, his award-winning Lisbon restaurant. “Usually you think of bivalves as something you eat in summer, but you shouldn’t. During the months with no letter R, you shouldn't eat them.” We had asked the chef to share a seasonal dish, but since proper spring produce hadn’t yet quite arrived, he suggested razor clam rice served with deep-fried hake – a fish related to cod, although with a more delicate flavor – creating a dish that takes advantage of those plump, non-summer bivalves.

The story goes that in the early 19th century, an Italian immigrant, António Marrare, arrived in Lisbon and opened four eateries, essentially introducing the concept of the contemporary restaurant to the city. These venues – all of which bore his name – would have an impact on Lisbon’s culinary scene that exists until today, as would the steak dish he invented, which was also – perhaps unsurprisingly – named after himself. Marrare’s last restaurant closed in 1866, but a century later Lisbon restaurateurs, nostalgic for that era of dining, opened restaurants that paid homage to Marrare. Those that exist today include Snob Bar, opened in 1964, Café de São Bento, in 1982, and Café do Paço, in 2009.

Lisbon’s steep hills and cobbled streets are home to a rich pantheon of delicious dishes – visitors would be remiss to fill up exclusively on the famous pastel de nata before exploring all the flavors the Portuguese capital has to offer. Anchored by excellent seafood, comforting stews, and cod prepared every which way, traditional cuisine is still possible to track down all around town. But what makes Lisbon unique is that its food doesn’t stop there – culinary influences have filtered in from different corners of Portugal and the former colonies, making this a perfect place to try acarajé from Bahia, Angolan peito alto, or modern takes on regional dishes from the many young chefs stepping up in the city’s food scene.

It’s that quiet time between lunch and dinner, and we’re sitting with chef Leonor Godinho in a tasca, or rustic, casual, Portuguese restaurant. The furniture is sturdy but unremarkable, and walls are mostly bare except for a couple old photos, a child’s drawing and the ubiquitous vitrine, a built-in refrigerator. “I knew about this place because my best friends had just moved their studio to this building,” Leonor tells us of the space, formerly known as Casa do Alberto. “I would come here all the time to eat with them, and they would joke with me, ‘It would be great if this was yours!’”

At any Portuguese pastelaria, the pastel de nata, Portugal’s famous custard tart, is only the tip of the iceberg. Lisbon, especially, is home to a host of bakeries both traditional and innovative, and a wide selection of sweet treats you can’t leave without trying. From lesser-known convent sweets like the elaborate ovos moles to Brazilian baked goods to chocolate made by master chocolatiers, there’s something for every sweet tooth in this city. Culinary Backstreet has you covered: Our local guides have handpicked the absolute best desserts in town, from pastel de nata and beyond.

For me, some of my favorite dishes when I return to Lisbon are the following: Rissois de camarão – prawn rissoles Grilled Alentejo pork plumas with a tomato salad and piri piri. These are the dishes that make me salivate when I fly back home. Both of them symbolize the food of Lisbon and they always taste better in situ.The pork dish is one you can find with reasonable quality in most good tascas or old school eateries throughout the city. I prefer to sit outside to soak in the sun, perhaps because I now live in London where there’s so little of it.

We’re in Os Papagaios, the restaurant Joaquim Saragga oversees in Lisbon’s Arroios neighborhood, where we’ve asked him to show us how to make one of Lisbon’s more iconic dishes: ervilhas guisadas, peas braised with Portuguese sausages, typically crowned with poached eggs. Come spring, Portugal revels in green-hued produce: fava beans, asparagus, artichoke, spinach and other leaves. Peas feature in this bounty, but the ubiquity of frozen peas means that the dish makes frequent appearances on tasca and restaurant menus during all times of year.

Gambrinus, in operation since 1936, is the type of restaurant with fully-suited wait staff, white tablecloths, signature plates, wood paneling on the walls and a menu that touches on items such as foie gras and crêpes Suzette. If you’ve ever eaten there, it’s likely that you sat in one of the elegant, warm dining rooms designed by Portuguese architect Maurício de Vasconcelos in 1964. But for generations of Lisbon diners, especially chefs and others in the hospitality industry, food writers and photographers, Gambrinus means one thing: its bar.

Lisbon is changing so fast that it’s quite refreshing when a restaurant opens without proclaiming a twist or a “concept.” When Canalha was announced, it stirred great curiosity among local diners – and for good reason. A talented chef, renowned for Michelin-starred restaurant Feitoria, as well as the itinerant project Residência in 2023, was leaving fine dining to open a place with Portuguese fare sprinkled with a bit of Spanish inspiration. Just a few days after opening in November, Canalha became the talk of the town, and now you need to book a table for dinner weeks in advance.

We were somewhat intimidated by doing a profile of Nova Pombalina, a snack bar in Lisbon’s Baixa neighborhood. When we stopped by to arrange an interview and shoot, the staff – when they finally had a spare second to chat – seemed slightly suspicious and generally disinterested. And our first attempt at a shoot and interview was postponed for reasons that weren’t entirely clear to us. It isn’t much different when we ultimately arrive. It’s 11 a.m. on a Saturday, but the place is already buzzing with customers – a slightly rowdy group of Irish bros, a local who had stopped in for breakfast, a couple Spanish families. Eventually, when things slow down, we sit down at a table with co-owner, Manuel Maurício. He tells us that in 1980, he and his brother, Virgílio, took over the space, which had been in operation since 1938.

It was an unusual night. But Black Sheep is, admittedly, an unusual venue. Lucas Ferreira, one of the co-owners of the Lisbon wine bar, had pulled out a guitar and was engaging in a jam session with a former bandmate. For a good 45 minutes, the normally buzzy bar was on pause: the chatter had ceased, glasses were not being poured. The only interruption was the occasional bark of an elderly dog that was wandering the space. Customers were singing along, the lights were low, and the vibe was less of a wine bar and more of a private party.

Those pastry shops that seem to command just about every corner in Lisbon? They’re an important institution in the city, as well as an utterly delicious way to start the day. But the truth is, these days, the range of pastries sold in Lisbon is limited and many of those sweets are produced on an industrial or semi-industrial level. Leonor Oliveira and Pedro Nunes wanted to create a pastry shop that went in the opposite direction.

Unlike most capitals, Lisbon has vineyards within its territory, and plenty of vines within reach in neighboring municipalities, from Sintra to Cascais and Loures. But until 2020, there wasn’t a single winery to be found in the city itself. Adega Belém has remedied this. Located right at the edge of one of the city’s most visited neighborhoods, where tourists line up to see the Belém Tower or eat Lisbon’s most famous egg tart, The winery’s unusual location – occupying a former garage in the backstreets – is a peaceful antidote to all the queues. Upon arrival, we’re greeted by Lili, a friendly brown labrador. She has a red wine named in her honor but we’ve already fallen in love with her even before learning that. Lili takes us to meet Catarina and David, the couple whose vision of producing wine in the city made Adega Belém a reality. Prior to this venture, they both had careers in academia, and left jobs at universities to dedicate themselves to wine.

Mozambican, Portuguese and Cantonese – with a fair bit of Indian thrown in. On the surface, it’s an utterly unlikely culinary mashup. But it makes perfect sense at Bula Bula, a restaurant on Lisbon’s northern outskirts. The husband-and-wife owners of Bula Bula, Ana Lee and Fernando Ho, are ethnic Chinese who can trace their ancestry back to China’s Guangdong (formerly Canton) Province and then to Macau, the latter of which was, for more than 500 years, a Portuguese colony.

“Five years ago, I started to write a cookbook about tripe,” Chef Gareth Storey tells us. “But I realized that I knew nothing about it other than how it was served in France and Italy. I needed to explore more about tripe in different parts of the world.” It could be said that he’s conducting his research in Portugal. Gareth is originally from Ireland, but is currently the head chef of Antiga Camponesa, in Lisbon. The restaurant is overseen by André Magalhães, of Taberna da Rua das Flores fame.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that Lisbon’s fresh markets are disappearing. The Greater Lisbon area is home to 28 market spaces, yet only ten of these witness any significant commercial activity. As the city’s shoppers increasingly shift to supermarkets, its traditional markets have had to find new ways to remain relevant. In an effort to do this, some Lisbon markets have opted to transform part of their spaces into food courts – a phenomenon sometimes called the “Time Out effect,” after the high-profile market of the same name. It’s been a decade since the first of these relaunches, so we decided to visit the three Lisbon markets that have adopted it. What we witnessed showed a model that in one case seems to benefit both the traditional market and food court sides alike, while in the other cases, appears more lopsided.

“It’s the king of Portuguese gastronomy,” declares Miguel Oliveira. He’s describing pudim Abade de Priscos, one of Portugal’s most infamous desserts, and the dish that is the specialty of his Lisbon sweets shop. Allegedly invented by the eponymous abbot in the 19th century (pudim is a term that refers to a variety of steamed desserts in Portugal), the dish unites a staggering 15 egg yolks, sugar, pork fat, port wine and aromatics in the form of a gleaming, golden ring. It’s easily the most over-the-top dessert in a country of already over-the-top desserts, and is the dish that has captivated Miguel more than any other.

Your friends or family are visiting Lisbon for the first time. Where do you take them to eat? If you’re us, it’s a no-brainer: Pica-Pau. Open for less than a year now, the restaurant, for us at least, has become a go-to introduction to the dishes, ingredients and flavors of Portugal. Or, more accurately, the dishes, ingredients and flavors of Lisbon. “Lisbon is a culinary region, just like Trás-os-Montes or Alentejo,” says Luís Gaspar, referring to Portugal’s far north and south, both regions with distinct, recognizable culinary legacies. He’s the chef behind Pica-Pau, and collaborated with the restaurant group Plateform to create a venue that centers around the sometimes-neglected cuisine of Lisbon.

It’s been a long journey – literally – for pastry chef Juliana Penteado, culminating in her small-but-beautiful bakery in Lisbon’s São Bento neighborhood, and another shop soon to come. The Brazilian chef first enrolled in a cooking school in São Paulo at age 12 where, she would spend six years studying. As a young girl, she went back and forth between cooking and baking, but the latter would eventually win. “I also like cooking but baking has a more delicate and feminine side which make my eyes sparkle,” she tells us. It’s that inspiration which shines through in the elegant, lovingly made pastries that have become her calling card.

Lisbon, it could be said, is a tough city for fresh markets. The Greater Lisbon area is home to 28 market spaces, yet only ten of these currently witness any significant commercial activity. And among these ten, many have seen immense changes, with Mercado da Ribeira, Mercado Campo de Ourique and Mercado de Algés essentially operating more as food courts rather than fresh markets. Mercado 31 de Janeiro, in Lisbon’s Saldanha neighborhood, has also seen its share of changes in its near century of existence that spans various incarnations. But it stubbornly remains a relevant marketplace for Lisbon shoppers.

You don’t have to look far to find a glass of wine in Lisbon. But a unique glass of wine – perhaps something made by a small producer, or a bottle from an obscure region – in a comfortable or perhaps even trendy atmosphere, poured by someone who can explain what you’re drinking? That’s where it gets tough. But Lisbon can deliver. In recent years, the city has seen an explosion of wine bars. If we broaden the term, these could include restaurants with forward-thinking wine lists such as Insaciável, Senhor Uva, Tati and Sem. But we wanted to focus on venues that, in our opinion at least, prioritize bottles and glasses over plates.

In a city where new restaurants and cafés – many directed at Lisbon’s new residents and digital nomads – pop up faster than we can keep track of, Gunpowder has set its sights on conquering the tastebuds of locals though Indian seafood dishes and spices. Harneet Baweja, originally from Calcutta, founded the original Gunpowder restaurant in London in 2015. A love for surfing drew him to the Portuguese capital, and he started making frequent trips to Lisbon and its surrounding beaches. “I absolutely love Lisbon, so it was a natural choice for me to open a restaurant here,” he says. “I fell in love with the city and the culture.” It was a love so strong that Baweja now divides his time between Lisbon and London, managing the several Gunpowder locations, while still chasing the waves of the Portuguese coast.

We’re in a small café in Lisbon’s Madragoa neighborhood, and all of the disparate dishes loading down the table in front of us – small bread-like balls, a dish that resembles a small crepe, granola studded with flakes of grains, a pudding-like dessert – have one ingredient in common: cassava. “Cassava is known as the Queen of Brazil,” says Laila Ferreira Soares. “Everyone eats it, it’s always present.” Laila, a native of Brazil, along with her partner, Gregory Busson, a Frenchman, are the pair behind Uaipi, a new café/market in Lisbon with a focus on this particular ingredient.

We are in Lota da Esquina, in Cascais, staring down a small bowl filled to the brim with a mix of crab meat, chopped eggs, mayonnaise and other seasonings. On the surface, it looks like a straightforwardly decadent dish but according to chef/owner Vítor Sobral, it’s actually a way to boost a product that’s not quite at its peak.

One of the joys of Lisbon’s food scene is the access it allows to cuisines from across the Lusophone world. And one of the most represented is the food of Cabo Verde (formerly known as Cape Verde), an archipelago of 10 islands off the western coast of Africa. Its ubiquity is due to immigrants from the islands, but also perhaps because it has so many links with the cuisine of Portugal. 
“Our ingredients [in Cabo Verde] are almost completely European,” explains Maria Andrade, better known as Milocas, the chef/owner behind By Milocas, a Cabo Verdean restaurant in Lisbon. “Our food has so much to do with Portugal. The way we prepare fish, octopus and seafood is similar to how they’re prepared in Portugal.”


It’s an early example of guilt tripping. The story goes that a monk arrived in a Portuguese village, hungry and clever. He grabbed a rock and carried it door to door, claiming that it was his only ingredient, asking people if they would be kind enough to supplement it so he could make a meal. Tugging on heartstrings in this manner, he was able to accumulate a pot, a potato, some beans, a bit of sausage and some salt-preserved pork and seasonings – a hodgepodge of ingredients that, along with that crucial stone, he united as soup. Thus, goes the story, sopa de pedra, “stone soup,” was born. Hélia Costa, a restaurateur in Almeirim, an hour north of Lisbon, tells a much more practical origin story for the dish’s unique name.

Senhor António, the keeper of one of the oldest grocery shops in Lisbon, Mercearia Celta, died two weeks ago. With his passing, Culinary Backstreets Lisbon lost a dear friend and the city lost a living link to what is an increasingly disappearing past. “That’s life.” This phrase would end most of our conversations and visits to his tidy, old grocery shop. António da Fonseca, or Sr. António, as we knew him, was the most beloved inhabitant of the Campo de Ourique neighborhood and his corner shop a true neighborhood institution. He regularly welcomed guests on our Lisbon Awakens tour with never-ending enthusiasm and would be, for most visitors, the highlight of their walk.

In most countries around the world, it’s safe to say that steak is a minimalist affair – a dish that, in some cases, combines perhaps no more than beef and salt. In Portugal, however, people tend to go in the other direction. “It’s a steak that’s pan-fried, and served with smoked ham, bay leaf, garlic and white wine,” says Manuel Fernandes, when we ask him to describe the country’s signature steak dish, bife à portuguesa, “Portuguese-style steak.”

We didn’t exactly receive a warm welcome at Feira do Relógio, a weekly market that unfolds along a suburban strip north of Lisbon’s city center. “I saw you taking photos from the bridge! What are you doing?” shouted a man as he approached us aggressively. “You can’t take photos of people!” We explained calmly that we were taking photos for an article, and that people would not feature in those images. He hassled us a bit more before eventually wandering away. Later, we saw him selling knockoff socks from a bag slung over his shoulder. The rest of our visit was event-free, but the incident was a reminder of the occasional semi-legal nature of this market.

It was something almost unheard of: there was no line. We could have walked right into Pastéis de Belém, ostensibly the most famous pastry shop in Portugal – if not in the world – an exceedingly rare occurrence since Portugal’s tourism boom. But we had already wrangled a way in; we had an appointment with Miguel Clarinha, the fourth-generation owner of the iconic Lisbon bakery, who had agreed to give us a behind-the-scenes tour. Pastéis de Belém claims to be the inventor of the egg tart, known generally in Portugal as pastel de nata, “cream pastry,” but here as pastel de Belém. The story goes that the sweets – pastry cups filled with an egg and cream custard – have their origins in the Jerónimos Monastery, steps away from the bakery’s current location in Belém, just west of Lisbon.

“I’m afraid there are no tables for the next week or so.” This has become the most-repeated phrase lately at Taberna Sal Grosso, a small space which first made a significant impact in Lisbon restaurant scene nearly eight years ago. Now, after a couple of challenging years due to the pandemic, the 25-seat-spot is again one of the most coveted in town, attracting both locals and in-the-know visitors. If Sal Grosso (“Coarse Salt”) helped to breathe new life into the old Lisbon tradition of enjoying beer, wine and petiscos in a small tavern, its second life – now with new owners and chefs – brings another breath of fresh air to this corner of Santa Apolónia, on the margins of the Alfama neighborhood.

In a nation with so many baking and confectionary traditions, it’s surprising that one of the most popular cakes – the bolo-rei – was imported from another country (a sweet tooth does not discriminate, apparently). Translated as “king cake,” the bolo-rei was brought to Portugal from Toulouse, France, by one of the oldest bakeries in Lisbon, Confeitaria Nacional. Over the years, the bolo-rei has become a staple during the festive season: ubiquitous on the table before, during and after Christmas and New Year, and certainly a must for Dia de Reis (Epiphany) on January 6, when it’s baked in its fanciest form with a nougat crown (made of caramel and almonds) and fios de ovos (“egg threads,” or eggs drawn into thin strands and boiled in sugar syrup).

What a year this was. The breath of fresh air that returned to Lisbon after the lifting of pandemic regulations was tempered by the tragic return of war to Europe. Rising inflation and the difficulty local restauranteurs faced to find staff created further challenges for Lisbon’s food industry, which was only starting to emerge out of its Covid-induced slumber. Still, the summer of 2022 was quite busy for restaurants with crowds returning to gather around a table, celebrating food and wine without masks and without groups restrictions. We were happy to return to some of the places we love the most, and discover new restaurants, bars and bites that the past year has brought to Lisbon.

As amazing as Lisbon’s food and drink scene is, many of its markets are underwhelming. The sad truth is that it’s necessary to head outside of the capital to witness spaces that showcase the real bounty of Portugal’s fields, orchards, vineyards, farms and waters. The recently-renovated Mercado do Bolhão, in Porto, is one such place. Or the expansive, seafood-forward Mercado de Olhão, in the country’s far south. From Lisbon, visits to either of these would involve time-consuming trips, but thankfully, one of the country’s best markets is located an hour south of the city. 

In Portuguese, it’s now known as Efeito Time Out, the “Time Out effect.” An iconic fresh market – for example, Lisbon’s Mercado da Ribeira – is renovated and rebranded, given a new life, albeit one that has little to do with the traditional Portuguese market. In 2014, the Time Out media brand took over control of more than half of Lisbon’s central market, renaming it Time Out Market Lisbon, and essentially turning it into a food hall, one that is largely frequented by tourists. On the market’s opposite side, the neat rows of produce, fish and meat vendors remain, but just barely. It would be easy to heap blame on the Time Out group, but the truth is, across Lisbon, fresh markets are dying.

There might be a menu at Bota Feijão, but we’ve never seen it. The only decision to make at this restaurant located just outside central Lisbon is whether or not you want a salad (the answer is yes) and what kind of wine to drink (the answer is sparkling). “We serve suckling pig,” says Pedro Pereira – the second generation in charge of Bota Feijão – by way of explanation. And it really is as simple as this. Pedro and his family spit-roast suckling pigs in-house, serving them with a couple simple but delicious sides. If they do have a menu, it’s not a very long one.

When Tanka Sapkota, originally from Nepal, arrived in Portugal 25 years ago, Lisbon was a very different city. There were no Nepalese restaurants and the only momo people knew of at that time was the King of Carnival (Rei Momo). Tanka says there were only four people from Nepal in the country, including him. “And now there are around 20,000,” he says, smiling. He first came to Lisbon for two weeks before deciding to move in 1996. Three years later, he opened his first restaurant. However, he didn’t start with a Nepalese restaurant, but with an Italian one.

“For me, it’s a grandma’s dish,” says Miguel Peres, without hesitation, when asked about his relationship with pastéis de massa tenra, a Lisbon specialty of deep-fried, palm-sized pastries filled with meat. “She would make a lot of them and freeze them, so we would always have them around. When there was a birthday or party, we would pull them out and fry them. We would take them to the beach in boxes. As kids, we would eat them with carrot rice and salad, using the pastries to scoop the rice.” Miguel is the chef-owner of Pigmeu, a pork-focused, head-to-tail restaurant in Lisbon, where pastéis de massa tenra can be found on the menu. He’s made some subtle updates to his grandma’s recipe, but the fundamentals remain intact: a thin, golden, pockmarked, crumbly pastry concealing a fine, tender, salty, savory pork filling.

Casa da Índia is not, despite the name, an Indian restaurant. The menu boasts a pretty standard repertoire of the type of hearty, meat-and-potatoes dishes one would associate with Portugal: grilled sardines, salt cod baked with cream, stewed fava beans. “This space used to be a warehouse for spices,” says Paulo Campos, Casa da Índia’s manager, when asked about the restaurant’s rather misleading name. “We’re close to the river, so this is where spices, coffee, tea and other things from India were stored. The owners wanted to retain this legacy, so they gave it this name.”

The annual Congresso dos Cozinheiros (the Congress of Cooks) returns to Lisbon this 25th and 25th of September, with two days of events, workshops and conferences. It’s one of the highlights of the year for professional chefs, but also an event open to all food and restaurant lovers. The theme of this year’s Congress is a particularly rich one: Conexão Africana – the African Connec-tion. The gathering is organized, as always, by Paulo Amado, a man who has battled and worked end-lessly for chefs and restaurants in Portugal. Paulo is a jack of all trades; an author, musician and songwriter. He is perhaps most widely known for Edições do Gosto, his multidisciplinary company dedicated to Portuguese gastronomy.

Alongside chef and restaurateur André Magalhães in his Lisbon restaurant Taberna da Rua das Flores, we stare down a rustic clay vessel piled with a mixture of steaming clams, fragrant cilantro and garlic, wedges of lemon…and not a whole lot more. As recommended by André (“It’s tastier if you use your hands”), we pinch the clams with our fingers and, after eating the meat, use the shells to scoop up the mixture of olive oil, clam broth, herbs and lemon juice that coats the bottom of the dish. It’s savory, rich, salty, tart and fragrant, and as with many Portuguese dishes, we’re left wondering how it’s possible that so much flavor came from so few ingredients.

Despite its name, Tabernáculo by Hernâni Miguel is not a church. It is a sanctuary and haven of sorts, though, a place where the local community gathers weekly for African and Portuguese food, wine and live music. Ministering to this congregation is Hernâni Miguel himself, one of the vibrant Bica neighborhood’s best-known characters. “Estás boa?” Miguel asks passersby on Rua de São Paulo as they pass his place. And “viva!” is the jovial response Miguel exchanges with old and new patrons who enter through the purple, crushed velvet curtains of Tabernáculo. The architecture of the restaurant reveals Roman-style archways and a 15th-century cave that doubled as a wine cellar in times past and which inspired the place’s name (Tabernáculo means tabernacle in Portuguese).

On a narrow and, until recently, slightly forgotten street in Lisbon’s city center, a simple Cape Verdean eatery is holding its own. As one of the few tascas serving up African dishes in this part of town, Tambarina, with its dozen tables and keyboard and mics set up in the corner, bears testimony to this urban quarter’s historical connections to the people of Africa’s northwestern archipelago. Rua Poço dos Negros – a street whose name (poço means “pit” in Portuguese) reveals a disturbing history as a mass grave site for the bodies of enslaved people – is on the border of what until two decades ago was known as “the triangle.” This is an area extending to São Bento and which in the 1970s became home to a new group of migrant Cape Verdeans.

Those normally finding themselves craving Angolan flavors in central Lisbon head straight to Mouraria, the medieval downtown neighborhood that has experienced a conceptual conversion of its peripheral status into a landmark of cultural and culinary diversity. Despite it being the area with the highest density of Angolans in Lisbon’s city center, Angolan restaurants open and close at a rapid rate, with now-shuttered CB favorites Palanca Gigante and Shilabo’s falling prey to this trend. In the beginning, these restaurants were only popular among the Angolan community, but nowadays, due to the rehabilitation of the neighborhood, a new clientele is discovering them. Now that we can’t get the country’s iconic national dish, muamba, at Shilabo’s or Palanca Gigante, we head to Rato instead for a taste of Angola.

Despite Brazil being the largest of Portugal’s former colonies, the presence of its people in Lisbon has only been felt recently. During the 1950s and 60s, Brazilians in Portugal were limited to small groups of students, a few migrant adventurers and those Portuguese descendants born in Brazil who decided to return to the motherland. However, since the 90s, a more regular coming-and-going has been taking place between Brazil and Portugal. This pendulum-like swing of migration is a consequence of their respective political and economic crises and moments of growth. At the beginning of that decade, many Brazilians moved to Lisbon in the wake of the difficult inflationary crisis that was affecting South America’s biggest nation. By 2005, they formed the largest foreign community settled in the Portuguese capital, with more than 30,000 residents.

Vasco de Gama’s voyage to India in the late 15th century laid the groundwork for the Portuguese empire, in which Goa, a small region on the southwestern coast of the Indian subcontinent with ample natural harbors and wide rivers, would come to play an important role. In the early 16th century, Goa was made the capital of the Portuguese State of India and remained as such until 1961, when the Indian army captured it. Over four centuries of colonial rule, Goan intellectuals most often migrated to Portugal in search of education, especially in the 20th century. Yet following the annexation of Goa by India, many Goans, particularly those working in government and the military, accepted the state’s offer of Portuguese citizenship and made their way to Europe. Others migrated to Mozambique, another Portuguese colony that at the time had not yet gained independence.

Outside of an airy pink wedge of a building off of Praça do Chile, protected from the bright midday sun by an awning with “Fox Coffee” printed on it, we waited with great anticipation for lunch: cachupa do curaçao, a specialty of the house which involves stuffing a leaf of steamed Lombardo cabbage with stewy cachupa and a poached egg. This was our third visit to the so-called “King of Cachupa” and we were working our way through the menu trying to identify what was so different and superior about this cachupa, the signature dish of Cape Verde, a former Portuguese colony situated off of the coast of West Africa.

In your granddad’s Lisbon, lunch in a tasca may pass silently, the television, on mute, tuned to the mind-numbing variety show Praça da Alegria. It may take years to achieve a first name basis with the dour man behind the counter. On his menu, scribbled on a paper napkin and taped to the window, anything but cozido portuguesa on a Thursday would be tantamount to treason. Now don’t get us wrong, we have a deep appreciation for the code of that bastion of traditional Portuguese cooking that is the tasca – the knee-jerk resistance to change that has helped preserve neighborhood culinary traditions against a ferocious tide of globalized sameness – but, let’s admit it, fun is generally not on the menu.

Simple and quick, the dish bitoque can be found all over Portugal. Its origins are a bit murky, but seem to be connected with the Galician immigrants from Northern Spain who moved to Lisbon during the Spanish Civil War. It consists of a small, thin steak surrounded by carbs (fries and rice), cooked vegetables or a salad of sorts, and topped with a fried egg on top. The essential ingredient is the sauce, however, and across the city of Lisbon are several variations and styles – all are generous and comforting, all are thick, and many include ingredients like bay leaf, garlic, and white wine.

On a hidden street in Lisbon’s residential Anjos neighborhood, Francisco (Chico) Jesus and Daniela Silvestre are busy prepping for dinner service. It’s still early afternoon, but there’s a lot to do before the doors of Patuá open at 7:30pm. Some Chinese art pieces are scattered about their restaurant, hinting at the tastes to come – though these only tell one part of the story. At Patuá, food hailing from the former Portuguese colony of Macau – now administered by China – anchors the menu, but the restaurant is also chronicling the evolution of the Portuguese post-colonial kitchen, with the country’s connection to India and the African continent making an appearance on the plate.

Lisbon in 2021 shared in much of the upheaval of our other Culinary Backstreets cities. Long lockdowns kept us apart from our favorite restaurants and tascas as well as our loved ones. But with the onset of summer, those restaurants that made it through that rough period saw the return of crowds. Lisboetas flocked to the city’s terraces and by October – when Portugal had made it to the top of the world’s list of most-vaccinated populations – folks were thronging indoors, too. After two very difficult years, many beloved places didn’t survive. But in their place, new businesses are opening and opportunities for creativity are blossoming across the city tables.

Despite being incredibly salty, stinky and made essentially out of rotting fish, garum, the ancient Roman sauce, was the ketchup of its day, a ubiquitous condiment found on every table and in every pantry. Prepared by fermenting whole, brined small fish for multiple months, the amber-colored umami bomb was a major part of Roman trade and widely used across a variety of dishes, from meats to salads and even in sweets. Though it was undeniably popular, garum eventually lost its place in the kitchens of the Mediterranean and other parts of the former Roman Empire. Iterations of the pungent sauce exist today, like Colatura di Alici in Italy, but its original recipe and method of production are no more than ancient relics. A rather smelly experiment at an archeological site in Portugal is trying to change that, though.

Port wine and Madeira wine are well-known Portuguese fortified varieties, but Moscatel de Setúbal remains a perfect stranger for many visitors. Which is a shame, since this wine – complex and elegant, with a delicate sweetness and rich flavor – is one of Portugal’s great vinous pleasures. In Lisbon and the south bank, it’s common to enjoy a small glass of Moscatel (muscatel) as either an aperitif (chilled) or a digestive. The fertile land of Setúbal, a peninsula south of the city of Lisbon, has long-been a wine producing region. It is not known exactly when Moscatel – which is made from the Muscat grape, although the name also refers to the grape itself – was first made here, but it is generally accepted that the Phoenicians and Ancient Greeks were trading the wine in the estuary of the Sado River.

Like many of our favorite Lisbon restaurants, Modesta da Pampulha has very humble beginnings. Originally opened in 1920, the eatery started off as a shop selling charcoal and bulk wine with a simple tavern on the side, evolving over the years to become a temple of homestyle Portuguese comfort food. During the week, office workers from the Pampulha area – between the busy Lapa and Alcântara neighborhoods – along with staff from the nearby Ministry of Education and taxi drivers from a stand just in front of Modesta da Pampulha, gather for lunch in the small restaurant to eat the freshly-made daily specials or charcoal-grilled fish and meat.

Cabana do Pescador (the fisherman’s hut) got its start some 50 years ago with a very simple premise: A fisherman named Luís Maria Lourenço decided to sell his leftover daily catch by grilling it on iron barrels halved lengthwise – an old-school upcycled getup that can still be seen at many popular tascas. Since then, this no-frills fish shack has become such an institution that the strip of Costa da Caparica coastline where it sits has come to be known as cabana de pescador as well. Costa da Caparica was originally comprised of small fishing villages. In the 1970s, it became the favorite seaside getaway for Lisboetas, owing to its proximity to the Portuguese capital and its numerous spacious beaches.

When friends Paulo Sebastião, Paulo Pina and Paulo Neves decided in 2018 to open Isco Pão e Vinho, a small bakery-café, they knew they wanted to be in Alvalade, a Lisbon neighborhood at the edge of the city’s busy center. “We didn’t want to be dependent on tourists, we wanted a neighborhood clientele, and I have to say that 80 percent of the clients here are recurring,” says Pina, who has long worked as a business consultant, a job he still does in addition to running Isco. But the choice of Alvalade presented the pair with a challenge: It can be difficult to stand out in the neighborhood, which has an impressive density of bakeries, restaurants and cafés per square mile.

A decade ago Lisbon was a very different city, and the riverfront Cais do Sodré neighborhood was dominated by Mercado da Ribeira, the central market, and office buildings. No Time Out Market, no hipster cafés or trendy restaurants and bars, and hardly any tourists. In 2011 Café Tati opened in an 18th-century building behind the central market, a new entry amongst the old-school tascas and restaurants feeding market vendors and office workers, and the bars and clubs down neglected streets in the neighborhood’s former red light district. Founded by Ramón Ibáñez, a transplant from Barcelona, Café Tati was a breath of fresh air, offering relaxed meals, organic and natural wines, and live music, too.

Last Monday was an emotional day for João Gomes, his wife, Adelaide, his son Nuno and Nuno’s wife, Ludmila. Imperial de Campo de Ourique, the family’s tasca, reopened for business after being shut for almost three months due to anti-Covid measures in Portugal. Hungry Lisboetas can once again enjoy the traditional and hearty dishes cooked by Adelaide, the heart of Imperial’s kitchen, and the joy of a warm welcome by João, the tasca’s enthusiastic frontman. “The biggest pleasure is to be able to talk to my clients again, I really missed this,” he tells us, a mask covering his wide-open smile.

A ripe loquat is a thing of beauty. For a short window of time, usually in April and May, trees heavy with the fruit can be spotted across Lisbon, in both public parks, private gardens and tiny backyards. We have a few favorite ones that we frequent, sometimes surreptitiously, during loquat season to pluck the small, butterscotch-colored fruit and fulfill our craving. But we have to be quick – loquats are as short-lived as they are delicious. Adriana Freire, the founder of Cozinha Popular da Mouraria, a community kitchen, knows the city’s loquat trees even better than we do. Although a popular spring fruit in Portugal, many of Lisbon’s loquat trees are ornamental in nature and often left unpicked.

That the Portuguese love rice – Portugal is, in fact, Europe’s largest consumer of rice – comes as a surprise for many. Unlike Spanish paella or Italian risotto, the country’s rice dishes are barely known beyond its borders. Yet a glance at the menu of any tasca or traditional restaurant in Lisbon will reveal the wealth of Portuguese rice dishes. It’s mostly served soupy, as in arroz de marisco, a stew of seafood and rice, but there are exceptions, such as arroz de pato, almost like a pilaf of duck and rice. You’ll also find it in blood-thickened meat stews such as cabidela and sarrabulho, and soups, from canja, made with chicken and rice, to bean soup. It’s also a staple side dish, usually paired with vegetables or legumes.

A former industrial center, eastern Lisbon has gained a new vibrancy of late, with old factories and decrepit warehouses made over into art galleries, restaurants and breweries. Not even the pandemic has been able to stop this development: A Praça, a marketplace connecting Lisboetas with producers from around the country, has recently set up shop in an old meat-processing plant and civil personnel canteen in the former Manutenção Militar, the industrial area of the Portuguese Army that’s now home to Hub Criativo do Beato. The project is set to open to the public later in the year but is already up and running digitally, offering many products, including fresh produce from local farmers, artisanal smoked sausages, wine, cheese and olive oil, for takeaway and delivery.

It’s hard to imagine now, but Alvalade, a neighborhood north of downtown Lisbon and close to the airport, was comprised mainly of fields in the early 20th century, with farms in the area supplying the Portuguese capital with dairy products as well as fresh fruits and vegetables. Those farms may be long gone, but this residential neighborhood is still famous for its high-quality produce – except rather than being grown on the land, it’s sold at the Mercado de Alvalade, a municipal market that opened in 1964. Although the produce comes from MARL (the large central wholesale market north of Lisbon), a lot of it is still grown in the fertile region north and west of Lisbon.

Switch Samosas (Or, Last Night a DJ Saved My Dinner) As lockdowns continue to ravage the restaurant industry, predictions in the news tell us we ain’t seen nothing yet. Uber Eats riders, unmistakable with their lime green cooler backpacks, have taken over the streets, blazing up the Avenida like road warriors in formation. Mom and pop can barely keep the lights of their tasca on much less pay the delivery shakedown. Hope is scarce for the independent, free-spirited food entrepreneur whose livelihood is built on serving people, directly. If you are as tired of this old tune as we are, prick up your ears to the story of Switch Samosas, a project of Marco Antão AKA DJ Switchdance, Lisbon’s premier DJ-cum-samosa-slinger, who is nurturing his community through the pandemic on his own terms with his mother’s samosas.

The black-and-white photo shows a crowd, a policeman and José Martins holding a piece of salted cod, all crammed together in Manteigaria Silva, a small, historic shop in Baixa. It’s from a newspaper clipping dated December 10, 1977 – Christmas season. That year Portugal experienced a shortage of bacalhau, the beloved salt cod that was (and still is) a Christmas Eve favorite, and the people of Lisbon were so desperate to get their preserved fish that the police were often called in to maintain order. The scene at Manteigaria Silva played out at shops across the city. José, who still oversees the bacalhau section at Manteigaria Silva, remembers those days well. “Hard to imagine now but people were fighting for salt cod, that’s why we had to call the police,” he recalls.

The current Praça de São Paulo formed in the wake of a disaster: the square was rebuilt soon after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, and serves as a model of the architectural style from that time. More recently, this beautiful yet oft-neglected square has been given a new lease on life thanks to another calamity – the Covid-19 pandemic. Over the summer, chef André Magalhães took over the square’s charming red kiosk – the oldest in Lisbon – and overhauled the menu, filling it with traditional drinks, delicious sandwiches and petiscos. And since the start of November, the grocery store Comida Independente has been organizing a successful farmers’ market in the square on Saturdays, bringing Lisboetas in contact with independent producers and one another – a balm in this strange time of social distancing.

The pandemic has inspired a new passion for quality loaves in Lisbon, a city saturated with industrialized bread. Baking bread became an escape for many people during global lockdowns, and the Portuguese capital was no exception – talk often turned to bread recipes or the desperate search for flour and yeast, which flew off supermarket shelves. Like in many European countries, bread has always been an important part of the Portuguese diet. It’s an essential part of the culinary traditions in the Alentejo, where wheat bread is widespread, and in the north, where corn and rye loaves are also found. In difficult times, it was a staple that fed many empty stomachs.

On a quiet street in the Campo de Ourique neighborhood, a green awning hangs out front of Pigmeu, giving the restaurant a bit of a French look. But inside, the nose-to-tail menu couldn’t be more Portuguese: As one might guess from the restaurant’s name (it’s a play on the words pig and meu, “mine” in Portuguese), the dishes feature pork and offal as well as seasonal vegetables. Miguel Azevedo Peres is the mastermind and talent behind Pigmeu, which he opened in December 2014. Since his first kitchen job in 2007, Miguel has cooked at various restaurants in Lisbon, including Estrela da Bica, and for a time had the concession for the café at Museu do Chiado. But it was a desire to focus on sustainable meat consumption that led him to go in an entirely different direction with Pigmeu.

Fruit orchards and vineyards line the driveway, and the impressive mountains of Montejunto contribute to the scenic view. More than eye candy, however, the peaks also influence the climate, making this area one hour north of Lisbon a paradise for grapes. As we reach the end of the dirt road, a friendly dog, whom we later learn is named Noruega, and cousins Joana and José Vivas are there to greet us. We’ve come to Quinta do Olival da Murta, a sprawling property in Cadaval, to learn more about the natural wines made by Joana, José and three other cousins of theirs, and how they have opened the grounds to other natural winemakers, fostering a collaborative community of like-minded individuals.

The kiosk in beautiful São Paulo square, located close to the waterfront, in the Cais do Sodré neighborhood, always reminded us of a beacon, with its vibrant red color and many light bulbs. Except rather than warn off passersby, it attracts the hungry and the thirsty, even more so now that André Magalhães, the chef at Taberna da Rua das Flores in Chiado, has taken over this traditional kiosk. The oldest and only privately owned kiosk in the city, Quiosque de São Paulo has a long history, although not quite as long as the square itself – Largo de São Paulo is one of the best examples of the architectural style known as Pombalino, named after Marquês de Pombal, who led Lisbon’s recovery in the aftermath of the 1755 earthquake.

If we had to describe the landscape, idyllic would be the first word to come to mind. But while the sunflowers initially command our attention, our eyes soon drift downward, where tomatoes of different shapes and colors, from yellow to red, orange green to black, are growing bigger and ripening. Brothers Miguel and Diogo Neiva Correia, the two farmers behind Hortelão do Oeste, are showing us around this immense vegetable garden. It’s a hot late August day in most of Portugal, but at the farm, which is located one hour north of Lisbon, near Runa, in the municipality of Torres Vedras, it’s cool and breezy. Miguel and Diogo are meticulous, telling us all about the tomatoes, peppers and corn in great detail.

The dining room may be empty but João Gomes, his wife, Adelaide, and their son, Nuno, still beam a warm welcome as I enter their tasca. Monday – the first day when restaurants in Lisbon were allowed to open – was slow, they explain, and Tuesday was not much different, with only a few people sitting down for a meal. But they have faith that their regulars will start coming in June. “Things will get better, people are still fearful but they will come back,” João tells me. Their tasca, Imperial de Campo de Ourique, is one of the great classics still left standing in the city. They had sold out for many days in February and early March, as lamprey season was in full swing, but now that feels like a distant memory.

Editor’s note: As our cities begin reopening and adapting to the new normal in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, we are asking CB team members as well as chefs, journalists and food personalities to share the meal they are most looking forward to eating in our new “First Bite” series. First up is Célia Pedroso, our Lisbon bureau chief. Choosing a place for a first bite in Lisbon after all the restaurants, cafés and pastelarias have been closed for more than two months is not easy – there are so many options, and so many foods I’ve been missing. But after a few inquiries, I realized many places won’t open on Monday, May 18, the official date given by the government for the opening of restaurants, cafés, kindergartens and museums. So that narrowed down the list of possible venues.

From a humble petisco (“snack”) in tascas to a fancy dish in elegant restaurants, peixinhos da horta are experiencing a revival in Lisbon. Chefs have perfected their crispy texture and experimented with dipping sauces, turning them into a simple and delicious starter or a snack to pair with a cold glass of white wine. Peixinhos da horta (which translates as “little fish from the garden”) are nothing but green beans deep-fried in a batter. As a child, I often ate them on summer holidays in the Algarve; my granny fried them in small batches of four or five, similar to how she prepared small horse mackerel, in a delicate batter and served them with soupy tomato rice on the side.

Poverty and social problems are a worrying side effect of the pandemic, especially in big cities like Lisbon. As in most urban environments, there is a significant homeless population. Moreover, skyrocketing unemployment has meant more people than ever are in need of some assistance – families are struggling to pay their rent and put food on the table. The Portuguese have responded, however, to this large need with an equally large number of solidarity projects. While it’s impossible to name all the people involved who have stepped up to help, we thought it would be worth highlighting the efforts of many people in the food and wine industries.

One of the things we cherish most at Culinary Backstreets are the friendships we build with the restaurant and small business owners featured on our walks. While we worry what will happen to them (and their independent businesses) once the pandemic ends, we also want to learn more about what they are doing during this period. The first person we checked in with was chef Filipe Rodrigues, from Taberna do Mar. He hasn’t left home since he closed the small corner restaurant, one of the highlights of our Lisbon walk “Hidden Flavors of the Hillside: Graça and Mouraria,” on March 14. While the delicious fish dishes are always a big hit with our guests, they really seem to love chatting to Filipe and admiring his skills, especially when he torches the sardine nigiri.

Folar is the generic name given to traditional Easter sweet bread in Portugal. Making it from scratch is somewhat of a long process, but being confined due to the coronavirus crisis, we seem to have a bit more time on our hands than expected. My family’s folar recipe is from my grandmother Felismina, who was from Rosmaninhal, near Mação (in the center of Portugal). As long as I can remember we would have this sweet bread around Easter. (A similar type of sweet bread is also baked around November 1, for All Saints’ Day.)

Rua Antero de Quental is a short street that runs uphill from Avenida Almirante Reis – within whiffing distance of the famous Cervejaria Ramiro – to the pale yellow palace housing the Italian Embassy. Handsome 19th century buildings in various states of disrepair line both sides of the street. It’s a shortcut up to Campo Martires da Patria and over toward Avenida Liberdade so it gets a lot of thru traffic. A couple of haggard men stand at the bottom of the street waving people in toward parking spots up the street. At night, sometimes, African mestres leave flyers tucked under the windshield wipers of cars that offer remedies to all sorts of ailments. I collect these flyers.

My first reality shock with the quarantine and its food implications was when beans and chickpeas, both in tins and jars, started to disappear from the supermarket shelves. It was a sign of things to come. Portugal has been on official lockdown since last Saturday, but most of us spent the week leading up to the announcement voluntarily at home. Now, we are only allowed to go out to buy food, go to the pharmacy, work out or walk the dog. I have been taking advantage of that last reason – the dog has never walked so much in his short life. Plus, he’s not complaining about this new reality of having humans all day in the apartment.

Old Carnide feels like Lisbon’s land that time forgot. Just a 15-minute subway ride from the tourist bustle of downtown, tucked away behind a sprawling mega-mall and phalanxes of high-rise apartment blocks, it’s a neighborhood of cobbled lanes and pastel-painted 18th-century homes, where children play beside the cream-colored medieval church and graybeards argue soccer and politics under shady lime trees. Come lunchtime, however, and the sleepy, village-like calm is shattered. Cars honk for parking spaces, and packs of besuited business types, chatty troops of workmates, extended family groups and multiple couples suddenly emerge onto Carnide’s narrow streets with one thought in mind: food.

These days, plenty of traditional restaurants in Lisbon display in their windows a homemade sign reading “Há Lampreia.” We have lamprey. This simple message is usually illustrated by a pixelated photograph of said creature, almost always taken from Google. While lamprey, an eel-like fish, is one of the ugliest in mother nature’s portfolio, many people are delighted to look at it. That’s because lamprey, the ingredient, has a lot of fans in Portugal, especially in the areas around the rivers (Minho in the north, and Tejo in the center) where it is usually caught during its spawn migration period, from January to April.

Back in 1966, when it opened on Avenida da República, one the main roads connecting the new avenues of Lisbon with the city center, Galeto caused quite a commotion. Lisboetas flocked to the huge snack bar, seduced by both the design – it was styled like an American diner – and the menu, which in those days seemed wildly innovative. Locals used to more conservative Portuguese fare were suddenly introduced to club sandwiches, burgers, mixed plates that brought together some wildly disparate elements and even Brazilian feijoada. Eating at the long counters while perched on a comfy seat was quite different from sitting on a stool at an everyday tasca. When combined with the avant-garde décor, swift service, and long hours (it was open late, until 3:30 a.m.), it felt like Lisbon was catching up with the dining habits elsewhere in Europe or the U.S.

Portugal is famed for its sweet, fortified wines. Porto and Madeira are home to some of the world’s top tipples of this kind and the muscatels produced in the hills around Setúbal have a more discreet, but growing reputation. So why has nobody heard of vinho de Carcavelos? After all, this honey-hued fourth member of the vinho generoso club is rooted right in the suburbs of Lisbon rather than some remote Atlantic island or distant northern valley. Its history dates back at least to the 15th century and is intimately linked to the greatest Portuguese statesman since the Age of Discoveries. Yet, until recently, Carcavelos was a wine at risk of extinction.

The clock strikes 11:55 a.m., and the tables at Adega Solar Minhoto are already filling up with hungry customers. Many are regulars who come daily – they know that this traditional restaurant in the Alvalade neighborhood doesn’t accept bookings and is packed by midday, requiring a bit of a sprint if you don’t want to wait in line. Most workers in Lisbon take their midday meal after 1 p.m., so this is certainly an early lunch. But Adega Solar Minhoto’s fresh and delicious traditional fare, generous portions, friendly service and great value are worth rearranging your schedule for.

A bit like 2018, we saw a lot of old and traditional places closing in 2019, with many others threatened with closure – like Casa Cid, a tasca that has been operating since 1913. An investment group bought the building where the tasca is located and will turn it into a luxury hotel, forcing the tasca out in February; in response, the family behind Casa Cid launched a petition that calls for “more pork crackling less phony gourmet stuff.” Dozens of new places have opened in Lisbon, and while many are not successful, there are some that sparked our interest. We ate at amazing social projects like É Um Restaurante and modern tascas.

On our Hidden Flavors of the Hillside walk, we explore Lisbon’s historic neighborhoods of Mouraria and Graça. While the smell of change is in the air here – new communities are sinking roots and new restaurants are opening – we also visit traditional spots, like the city’s oldest coffee roaster, a third-generation family business.

When Lisboetas are looking for a night out on the town, Lisbon’s Bica and Bairro Alto neighborhoods aren’t as high on the list as they used to be – the area is crowded with tourist traps and expensive menus that make locals roll their eyes and run away. But António and Bruna Guerreiro saw an opportunity to upend the current state of things and bring a breath of fresh air to this corner of Lisbon. Both are artists, as well as seasoned consumers of culture and good food. Intent on marrying these two passions, the couple set out to create something that connected gastronomy and the arts while also paying homage to their Portuguese regional culinary heritage.

When Crescer, a non-profit association focused on the social integration of Lisbon’s vulnerable populations, was tasked by City Hall to create a restaurant that would serve the homeless three years ago, the association’s top brass had another idea. “If you give a man a fish, he eats for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.” With this saying as their guiding philosophy, Crescer proposed a different venture: a restaurant where the homeless could gain professional experience and training that would allow them to integrate into the community and find a job. In other words, tools for a better future.

In the 1980s and 1990s Bairro Alto was the epicenter of Lisbon nightlife: Bars here had the best DJs, and interesting restaurants were opening more often in this neighborhood than in any other in town. Although Bairro Alto lost some of its more compelling spots over the years, it’s still a party district and on a recent upswing, with promising new restaurants cropping up. Among these is Zé Varunca, a notable ambassador for the food of Alentejo, one of Portugal’s best regional cuisines. Having limited resources, Alentejo cooks learned how to go far with a little, deliciously using, for example, stale bread as a staple ingredient along with chouriço or other sausages, pork fat and sometimes a bit of meat.

It’s a crisp and cold winter morning in Alentejo. We are in Mora, a one-and-a-half-hour drive from Lisbon, to visit Susana Esteban’s winery, a very simple adega where her award-winning wines are made. Susana welcomes us at the door and leads us inside, where, sitting among the barrels, we taste her wines. They leave a strong impression on us, and not just because of the early hour – the wines have a distinct personality, one that’s formed on the vine. Yet when we peek outside, there are no vineyards in sight, only oak and cork trees. That’s because Susana grows her grapes in Serra de São Mamede, a mountain range in Portalegre, one-hour east of Mora and close to the Spanish border.

Zé Paulo Rocha was born in September, 22 years ago. By December of that year, he was already sleeping on top of a chest freezer in his parents’ tasca, right behind Rossio, one of Lisbon’s main squares. Like so many tasca owners in the Portuguese capital, they had come to Lisbon from northern Portugal’s Minho region years before. As a young teenager, Zé Paulo used to help with the service while his mother cooked and his father ran the business behind the counter, the traditional family tasca format. His professional fate was sealed from the beginning.

On our Hidden Flavors of the Hillside walk in Lisbon, we sample charcoal-grilled piri piri chicken paired with house-made hot sauces, whose recipes traveled to Lisbon from Angola and Mozambique after the 1974 revolution. So, how hot can you go?

It was a cramped but iconic tasca in the heart of Lisbon’s downtown. Its name, Adega dos Lombinhos, disclosed the house specialty: grilled lombinhos – thin slices of pork loin. And we mean really thin, almost if they were slices of wet-cured ham, served with a fried egg on top, white rice and golden fries. But it wasn’t the rice, the egg or the fries that made it special. It was the slender, delicate, hand-cut slices of meat. It was the miscellaneous crowd that chose to have lunch there daily: bankers and construction workers, marketers and shoe shiners literally rubbing elbows at the few available tables. It also was the charm of not even having coffee – “this is a tasca, not a coffee shop,” they would say – and only one dessert on the menu: a homemade arroz doce (sweet rice pudding), which was top notch, by the way.

The Algarve, one of the most visited regions in Portugal, also has some of the country’s most distinctive and delicious cooking. Integrating layers of different historical influences, from the Romans to the Moors, along with fishing traditions and countryside rusticity powered by its fertile land, the Algarve has made a deep impression on Portugal. But until Taberna Albricoque came on the scene, the region hadn’t been making much of an impact on Lisbon menus. Bringing the Algarve’s history to the forefront of Lisbon dining was one of the goals of chef Bertílio Gomes in opening his new restaurant. Albricoque, in fact, is the word for apricot in the Algarve, notable because the south has preserved its Arab etymology, as elsewhere in the country damasco is used (instead associating the fruit with the city of Damascus).

Despite being one of the liveliest of Lisbon’s neighborhoods, Alvalade doesn’t appear in most city guides. Maybe because of the location, north of downtown and next to the airport, with planes taking off and landing being part of the usual sights and sounds. Maybe because it is mainly a residential area, with few – if any – hotels available nearby. Maybe because it is seen as a strictly local neighborhood, with no museums, elevated viewpoints or places to listen to fado. But despite all that, it has a lot to offer, especially to those who want to eat, shop or simply roam the streets with the locals. Let’s focus on that first verb: to eat. In Alvalade, there are still plenty of places that offer traditional Portuguese food at traditional Portuguese prices: less than 15 euro per meal. Some of the neighborhood’s best tascas have been recently renovated, with a slight increase on the bill – nothing too hefty – but keeping the same old-style cuisine and the daily dishes that have been attracting a faithful clientele for the last few decades.

As women in pink polo shirts conveyed steaming tureens, pungent earthenware crocks and freshly-baked sweet loaves, it was clear that the Azores’ celebration of the heavenly spirit had a strong component of earthy sustenance. We were at a função (function), a communal meal built around bread, wine and traditional meat dishes that forms a central part of the archipelago’s unique Holy Ghost festivities, which take place in villages around the islands over the 50 days after Easter. “This is one of the island’s most deeply respected traditions and it’s taken very seriously,” explains José Álamo Meneses, mayor of Angra do Heroísmo, a jaw-droppingly beautiful UNESCO World Heritage city on the island of Terceira. “Only around 10 percent here go to mass regularly, but they fill the churches on the day of the Holy Spirit,” he adds, before joining 250 fellow citizens for lunch in a hall hung with patchwork blankets in the hillside neighborhood of Bicas de Cabo Verde.

We spotted this colorful display of conservas (canned fish) at one of Lisbon’s finest traditional markets. The tinned fish industry is an old one in Portugal, dating back to the 19th century. The quality of the fish and the olive oil, plus the retro packaging makes it a delicious souvenir or gift.

The up-and-coming, terroir-obsessed wine distributor Os Goliardos is reached through a tiny alley that opens into a courtyard behind an apartment block in Campolide, a residential Lisbon neighborhood just north of the Amoreiras shopping mall. The company keeps a low profile, hiding Lisbon’s greatest wine storeroom in a narrow garage that counts several auto body shops as its neighbors. Since they keep odd hours, we were told to find a mechanic named Senhor Rui who would let us in with his key to pick up our order. We looked for him in a dark garage, where a man sat, listening to fado on the radio, beside a distressed Fiat. Wrong mechanic. Suddenly a large, smiling man in work clothes appeared in the yard jangling a set of keys.

[wptab name='Story']Up on the walls of O Frade’s polished interior is an old radio that catches the eyes of most clients. The music wafting from it is part of an illusion: “We hid the wireless speakers we use inside it because the radio doesn’t work anymore,”' says chef Carlos Afonso, who runs this small new restaurant alongside his cousin, Sérgio Frade. The radio came from their grandmother’s house and is there to remind them of the very long afternoons the two cousins spent around the dining room table, eating with their families. “That’s where we first learned to appreciate food,” Carlos recalls. Food has always been a serious subject for both. O Frade’s namesake is an old taberna that was run by Sérgio’s family members in their hometown of Beja during the ’60s. Back then, tabernas were a big part of the way of life in the Alentejo region, serving as meeting points where men gathered after work, to eat (a little), drink (a lot) and (when the mood was right) to sing the famous Cante Alentejano, polyphonic form of singing that UNESCO designated as an Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2014.

Walk through Lisbon’s Madragoa, a neighborhood of cobblestoned streets and small houses, and you are likely to be hit with the intoxicating smell of freshly roasted coffee. Follow the scent and you are likely to find yourself in an utterly unique spot: Flor da Selva, one of the last wood-fired coffee roasters in Europe. Manuel Alves Monteiro, from Melgaço in northern Portugal, founded Flor da Selva in 1950, and Manuel’s son, Jorge, and grandson, Francisco are keeping the family business alive and kicking via an artisanal method – one they started using many years before anything artisanal was trendy, mind you. “My father was a coffee lover,” says Jorge, thinking back to when Manuel first opened his shop. “At this time, we were drinking a lot of mixtures with barley or chicory that were inexpensive, but he could see the potential for 100% coffee blends.”

We like to be comforted with a hearty stew after a long day, so we visited Senhor Palma's to see what is stewing today. It was pea and chouriço stew - ervilhas com chouriço - so of course we stayed to have some.

Next to some wooden shelves overloaded with spirits, a photograph of Natália Correia hangs on the wall. The photo’s placement makes it appear as if Correia, cigarette in hand, is surveying the small room, which is crowded with semi-broken tables. The late poet and upstart co-founded this tiny bar/café a few decades ago, and her presence is still felt here and in the neighborhood more generally: A nearby street, with a spectacular view of the city, is also named after her. Botequím is one of Graça’s oldest bars, located on the ground floor of Vila Sousa, one of the worker apartment complexes built at the end of the 19th century.

On our Song of the Sea culinary walk in Lisbon, we witness Brazilian Arabica coffee beans being roasted while we get into the history and significance of coffee in the culture and cuisine of Lisbon.

It’s 5:20 in the morning and while most lisboetas are still sleeping, Lurdes and Ermelinda Neves are already arriving at the Mercado da Ribeira in the Cais do Sodré neighborhood. Cooks and chefs from Lisbon’s restaurants start showing up at this central market at 6 a.m., and these two seafood sellers need to prep their stall for the day. On this April day, there are clams, both from Setúbal and the prized ones from Ria Formosa, in the Algarve; sea snails; the beloved percebes (gooseneck barnacles); mussels and canilhas (a kind of small and spiky whelk) from Peniche; and cockles and shrimp of different origins – although the best seafood usually comes from the southern shore, the western coastline also yields some excellent specimens.

Traditionally the Portuguese consume large amounts of sugar and cakes all year long, with the most famous being the pastel de nata, Lisbon’s iconic and delicious custard tart – no visit to the city would be complete without trying one. Luckily for you, it’s one of many sweets that we sample on our Culinary Crossroads walk.

José Saudade e Silva always knew, deep down, that he wasn’t cut out for tedious office life. So one day in 2014, after studying marketing and working a 9-to-5 job in that same field, he bought a one-way ticket to Oslo, where he had some friends. He didn’t exactly know how he would make a living there, but one of those friends quickly got him a job working in the kitchen of a new fine-dining restaurant, even though José didn’t have any sort of professional cooking background. His only experience in the kitchen was being around his father, an excellent cook. “My father instilled in me a love for food from a young age. He does a great bacalhau à Brás [salt cod with potatoes and eggs], among other dishes,” says the 27-year-old.

On our “Song of the Sea” walk in Lisbon, we visit some of the city’s best cervejaria, no-frills seafood and beer halls, where we find prized shrimp from the northern coast, the best cod cakes, percebes (the goose barnacles that are harvested from the rocky coast of Portugal) and delicious local clams.

Not many companies baking in Portugal can claim that they’ve been in business since 1756. But Queijadas da Sapa, the first bakery to make queijadas de Sintra, cheese and cinnamon tarts in a thin crust, can proudly display “Since 1756” on their labels and the doorway to their shop. These small and spicy bites are not only, as the name suggests, the pride and joy of Sintra, the fairy-tale-like town of castles located 40 minutes away from Lisbon, but they are also some of the best creations in the large catalogue of Portuguese pastries. In fact, they were already quite popular many decades before 1837, the year that the café in Belém began selling Pastéis de Belém, the famous custard tarts.

João Gomes, the owner of Imperial de Campo de Ourique who is famously known as “João espetáculo,” holds out a fava stew for us. It’s made by cooking fava beans, which are now in season, with several cuts of pork and cured sausages. João serves it with cilantro and his special piri-piri sauce on top – Asian and African culinary influences are always present, even in very rustic Portuguese dishes.

André Magalhães is not your usual well-known, successful chef. For starters, he doesn’t even look like a chef, as he never wears whites and a hat, but rather an apron and a beret. Also, he has seen more than most of his Portuguese peers, having traveled through Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean working in kitchens, after finishing high school in the United States in the early 1980s. Instead of chef, many call him taberneiro – the owner of a taberna, a small, unpretentious spot to drink wine. That’s because of his most successful venture in Lisbon: Taberna da Rua das Flores, a small restaurant he opened in 2012 where he serves a mix of original and traditional recipes, either faithfully recreated or creatively remixed in small portions, using seasonal ingredients from local producers.

Lisbon, as we’ve written numerous times before, is visibly changing every day. Consequently, there aren’t many restaurants in town that have survived in the same venue, with the same name, continually serving proper meals for the last 100 years. If memory (and Google) serve us well just nine of those century-old venues remain open: Café Nicola, Cervejaria Trindade, Estrela da Sé, Faz Frio, João do Grão, Leão d’Ouro, Martinho da Arcada, O Polícia and Tavares. This, of course, in a city that according to INE, the Instituto Nacional de Estatística (the National Statistics Institute), has more than 20,000 business premises registered as restaurants or something similar.

At the end of Rua da Voz do Operário, the main road that leads up to the hilltop of the previously sleepy Graça neighborhood, is a new, hip Lisbon kitchen that is reflecting the city’s growing hunger for great food and a good time. Damas, as the name indicates, is run by two women who have both previously worked in some of the city’s well-known food institutions, including Chapito. The restaurant, bar and club has been popular pretty much since it launched in 2015, thanks to its combination of knowledgeable chefs, classic and not-so-classic dishes done well, and a regular music program that ranges from punk to afro-beats.

The Portuguese have a sweet tooth, and one of their favorite ways to satisfy it is with so-called convent sweets, indulgent desserts that were created in Catholic convents and monasteries using egg yolks, sugar and other rich ingredients. We sample some of these sweets on our “Lisbon Awakens: A Culinary Crossroads, Reborn” walk.

Whenever I hear Annie Lennox singing, “Sweet dreams are made of this, who am I to disagree,” I like to think she’s looking at a bowl of pumpkin doughnuts. I’m sure she never heard of sonhos, but let me explain. Traditionally, the Portuguese consume huge amounts of sugar and cakes at Christmas time, from the Bolo-Rei (a circular cake with nuts and candid fruit) to broas (small cakes, sweet and moist usually baked with sweet potato or corn flour), arroz doce (rice pudding), azevias (a fried pastry with a chickpea or sweet potato filling) and lampreias de ovos (an odd-looking lamprey fish made of egg yolks and sugar). But during this sugar overdose between Christmas and the New Year, the deep fried sonhos (literally “dreams” in Portuguese) are my favorite.

Over the course of 2018, Lisbon saw restaurants, cafés and bars popping up like hot buns. It’s hard to tell if there’s room for so many places, especially in the already saturated city center. In the meantime, we watched helplessly as many classic shops and restaurants shuttered their doors. It’s a pattern we saw in 2017, but it seemed a lot more intense this year. There are reasons to celebrate, though, and they are delicious.

Most European capital cities have a Chinatown, and Lisbon is no different. In the 1980s many immigrants from the Zhejiang province, on China’s eastern coast, made downtown Mouraria their home; the wave of newcomers remained steady and eventually peaked in the 2000s. As the first generation grows up, their family businesses are leaving indelible marks on the wider city, joined now by entrepreneurs from Macau – Portugal’s last colony – and those benefiting from the country’s Golden Visa scheme, which allows people who invest a certain amount or buy property in Portugal to move here. This means a boom in Chinese food right in the heart of the city.

Last month, Sr. João Santos marked 51 years of working in his Lisbon shop! We were more than happy to help him celebrate. While he sells a wide range of goods – cheese, wine, fruit, salt cod, bread and coffee – we stop in specifically for cheese and port wine on our “Song of the Sea” walk.

The innovative chef Filipe Rodrigues, known for marrying Asian inspiration with Portuguese flavors, has finally opened his long-awaited restaurant, A Taberna do Mar (Sea Tavern), on a corner in the Graça neighborhood. Considering that 41-year-old Rodrigues has already ascended to a position of prominence thanks to his sardine nigiri, still one of the most iconic and innovative dishes in contemporary Lisbon, it’s no surprise that his new restaurant, the first that he will own outright, is focused on the fruits of the sea (as the name would suggest).

Around 30 people crowd into a small bar in a quiet neighborhood in Lisbon for a film screening. It’s a Wednesday night, but the place, called Valsa, is full, despite the fact that it’s in a peripheral residential zone. “Valsa” is the Brazilian translation of “waltz”; the Mittel-European folk dance that arrived to Brazil via Portugal in 1808. Danced in the elite salões of Rio de Janeiro, the term is now back on this side of the Atlantic, thanks to this tiny Brazilian-run association with one of the busiest cultural programs in the city.

They withstood the phylloxera and the strong Atlantic winds, and are slowly fighting back against urban expansion, so it’s no surprise that a glass of wine made from grapes grown in Colares tastes like no other. The smallest wine region in Portugal, Colares is also probably one of its most distinct. Located on the coastline of Sintra between the hills and the Atlantic, the region owes its fame to the amazing wines produced in the sandy soil so close to the ocean. It’s also the western-most wine region in continental Europe and has fought like no other the vile phylloxera, the plague that wiped out most European vineyards in the late 19th century.

Lisbon’s communities from Portugal’s former colonies provide the strongest link to the country’s past, when it was the hub of a trading empire that connected Macau in the east to Rio de Janeiro in the west. Though integral elements of Lisbon life, these communities can sometimes be an invisible presence in their adopted land, pushed out to the periphery of the city. With our “Postcolonial Lisbon” series, CB hopes to bring these communities back into the center, looking at their cuisine, history and cultural life. In this fifth installment of the series, we look at Lisbon’s Goan community.

The owners of Zuari and Delícias de Goa, two of the most traditional Goan restaurants in Lisbon, share not only similar backgrounds – both migrated from Goa to Mozambique before settling in Portugal – but also the dedication to keeping family traditions alive.

Last year, Casa de Goa, celebrated its 30th anniversary in Lisbon. Located in Alcântara, it’s a cultural hub for Goans in Lisbon, keeping both traditions and memories alive. Besides a library and museum, there’s a restaurant – currently closed but soon to re-open – and regular events, conferences, exhibitions, games, social gatherings and food workshops. Casa de Goa is particularly active in promoting traditional Goan music and dance: it hosts a folk dance group called Ekvat and the music group Gâmat. Jerónimo Aráujo e Silva is the musical director and also the composer of some of the original songs.

We’ve long been tasca hounds, searching out the best that Lisbon has to offer. But in the last few years, a good number of our favorites have closed: the perfect storm of spiking rents, real estate interests, and aging owners and clients have stacked the odds against these small, cheap, familiar restaurants. For a while, the stream of closures had us thinking that the Lisbon tasca scene might face complete extinction sooner than expected. But while doing research for a story on summer tascas – places with outside seating, grilled food or simple dishes similar to the ones you can eat by the beach – we found hope, in an unexpected way.

Street life still remains a big part of the port zone’s narrow alleys, which are lined with small traditional shops and restaurants, many with a big charcoal grill out front for cooking up whatever fish is in season. We sample several preparations of seasonal fish and seafood on our Song of the Sea walk in Lisbon.

In an ideal world, all fish restaurants would be like Casa Ideal, with its fresh red mullet, proper fish stews with rice, lovely staff taking care of your orders and affordable prices. Also in an ideal world, we would have visited Casa Ideal much earlier. We first heard about the restaurant, which for 40 years has operated in the backstreets of Trafaria on the south bank of the Tagus River, some time ago but never made the time to stop in for a bite. Yet after learning that the restaurant had changed hands a year and a half ago – 54-year-old Conceição Augusto took over from her sister and brother-in-law, and now runs Casa Ideal with her cousins Gabriela Carmo, who works in the kitchen, and Delfim Carlos Gomes, who works behind the counter – we decided to check it out.

The diverse bay of the Sado River estuary, with its old port towns, cork oak groves, ancient rice fields, beaches and wildlife, is only around 45 minutes south of Lisbon, but feels a million miles away from the Portuguese capital. The history of this region – which includes the slightly gritty main city of Setúbal – goes back to Roman times, and it has had a strong connection to the ocean ever since. Fish salting has been key to Setúbal’s economy from the first century onwards, with port activities developing in the 15th century and later more industrial development, particularly fish canning, in the 19th century.

Way before brunches, special bowls, latte foam art and white marble counters took the city by storm, restaurants like Petite Folie, Lorde, Saraiva’s, Bacchus and Belcanto were the coolest cats in Lisbon. You wouldn’t walk in not wearing a nice jacket or a dress. You would never go straight to your table – first, you would sit at the bar, greet your favorite waiter, who knew you by name, and order your usual drink, which he would already be preparing. But those days are gone, like most of those restaurants – the ones that aren’t, such as Michelin-starred Belcanto or the newly reopened Saraiva’s, have changed dramatically.

Over the course of June, Lisbon’s neighborhoods are perfumed with the smoke of barbecued sardines. It’s one of the most prominent features of the traditional arraiais, the festivals that pop in each neighborhood at this time of year, offering grilled fish and pork, beer and sangria, and music. While all this eating, drinking and making merry is certainly a fun time, it’s by no means the main event. For many Lisboetas the highlight of the June festivals, which are held in honor of Santo António, Lisbon’s favorite local saint, are the marchas (parades) on the night of June 12, the eve of Saint Anthony’s Day. It’s the moment they have been waiting and preparing for all year.

Fishmongers are getting ready for the Santo António Festival, which the city celebrates by grilling up copious amounts of sardines – large swathes of Lisbon turn into one extended outdoor cookout. We spotted these festive workers in Campo de Ourique market, on our Lisbon Awakens walk.

Considering how much hype has been laden upon it since 2016, when a few galleries moved into some of its former warehouses, you’d think the light-industrial, heavily residential neighborhood of Marvila would already be out of fashion. Yet, step outside the cluster of streets hosting these art spaces, co-working hubs, brewer-bars and the famed cultural center Fabrica Braço de Prata, and Marvila as a whole still feels a long way from being the next big thing. Located between Lisbon’s airport and the river Tejo, this sprawling eastern district is mostly unchanged when you move away from the marginal and towards its heart: the expansive Parque Bela Vista.

Editor’s Note: This photoessay was created by CB’s Lisbon-based photographer Rodrigo Cabrita. The subject is a year in the working life of João Rafael, an agricultural worker living in Portugal’s interior and struggling to maintain his way of life. In the text below, Rodrigo explains how his project got its start. I first met João while on assignment for a Portuguese magazine that covers the agricultural sector. It was the harvest time and he was finishing his day working on the grape harvest. He was splattered with grape juice and tired because of the long day’s work, but agreed to my request to take a picture of him. We ended up talking more, with him telling me about his everyday life, and that’s when I thought his story could make an interesting project.

Let’s go back in time to 1981 – the beginning of a decade of hope in Lisbon. Portugal is about to enter the EEC (European Economic Community, precursor to the European Union), and word on the street is that funds will start flowing into the country and living standards will improve. People really need to believe that word, as the inflation rate is almost at 20 percent and the illiteracy rate even higher. Next to the always busy Santa Apolónia train station, a new snack-bar opens. Green Apple is the chosen name. The owners? A pair of Josés. José Carlos, from Tábua, right in the heart of Portugal, between Viseu and Coimbra, and the minhoto (from Minho, northern Portugal) José Brandão. They are not serving hearty dishes – yet – but rather quick meals, grab-and-go type food: toasts, burgers, sandwiches, etc.

As forty three countries get ready to compete in the 63rd edition of the Eurovision Song Contest, the crowds have descended upon Lisbon. The city has the privilege of hosting this year’s contest because in 2017 the young Portuguese singer Salvador Sobral was crowned the winner of Eurovision with his melancholic love song “Amar Pelos Dois,” which was written by his sister, Luisa. Paying tribute to Portugal’s folk traditions, his stripped-down performance was a far cry from the kitschy bombast normally presented on the Eurovision stage. In spite of (or perhaps because of) the bad hairdos and costumes and the usually uninspired songs that range from camp to downright strange, Eurovision is one of the world’s longest running and most popular music competitions.

A fragrant Goan dish, vindalho is a fusion of the Portuguese vinha d’alhos (meat with wine and garlic) with Indian spices. We got a taste of this dish, with its flavors of cinnamon, cloves and vinegar, at a laid-back neighborhood association, where people of all ages gather to play chess, dance or share a meal.

It’s no easy task handling a 70-kilo longfin tuna or a 20-kilo corvina. But over the past few weeks, we’ve watched our favorite fishmongers in Lisbon’s Mercado da Ribeira do just that – looking more like weightlifters or wrestlers, they endeavor to fillet the big, fat Atlantic fish that usually make their appearance in April. Even more humble specimens, like mackerel, are also at their fattest (and tastiest) come spring. That’s the joy of feasting on spring fish and seafood in Portugal – so much is in season that you can’t go wrong. To get a better sense of this spring’s “gifts from the sea,” we visited some of our favorite chefs to learn about how they are building their menus around seasonal fish and seafood.

Most tascas’ walls are covered with tiles, framed family or hometown pictures and soccer teams’ scarves. But inside A Provinciana, located between the neighborhoods of Restauradores and Rossio, the main decorative objects are dozens of original handmade wall clocks. Some work, some don’t, but all have great meaning for Américo, the owner of this establishment that has been around for 70-plus years. “I built them. All of them. Every Sunday, our day off, I sit at my house building these clocks with what I have: old tiles, bits of wood, pieces of barrel,” he says, glancing proud at his creations.

“It’s good for tourists, not for us.” While this can sadly be said about many things, Anabela, the woman we are speaking to, is referring to the transformation of Mercado da Ribeira, Lisbon’s historic public market, where she co-runs a small grocery store. Originally built as a predominantly wholesale food, fish and flower market in 1771, Ribeira today shares its space with Mercado Time Out, financed by the venture capital firm that controls the publishing franchise in Portugal, which has occupied the central section of the market since 2014. Time Out’s concept: an “editorially” curated gourmet food hall. Selling the best of Portugal – from croquettes and custard tarts to seafood and steak – it is now a top attraction, with 24 restaurants, eight bars, a dozen shops and a high-end music venue.

Lisboetas are serious about their ginja, a liqueur made from a sour cherry of the same name. The fruit might not be so sweet but is fortunately well suited to being turned into this smooth drink, which is enjoyed both as an aperitif and digestif. Our Culinary Crossroads walk in Lisbon wouldn’t be complete without a tipple of the good stuff.

Forty years ago, José was the most popular boys’ name in Portugal. It had been the undisputed leader in that category for several decades. But trends change, and in 2017 José didn't even crack the top 20. So, it's quite possible that the future will bring an influx of restaurants named after Santiago, the top choice for the last two years. But as we write this there are still a lot of Zé(s) – the shortened form of José – around town. Zé da Mouraria is famous for its magnificent roasted codfish. Zé Varunca serves great food from Alentejo, the home region of this particular José. And the list goes on: Zé dos Frangos, Zé Carioca, Tasca do Zé and, of course, Zé dos Cornos.

Scan almost any menu in Lisbon and you’re bound to find bacalhau (salt cod) in some form. That should come as no surprise: Lisboetas have long had a taste for this preserved fish, which can be found in a number of traditional dishes. Yet despite being seemingly everywhere, there are very few spots that focus exclusively on bacalhau. A Casa do Bacalhau, as its name suggests, is one of them, using salt cod in almost everything it serves except dessert. Open since 2000 in the Beato neighborhood, the restaurant is housed inside the old stables of the Duques de Lafões palace, which was built after the 1755 earthquake.

Lisbon’s communities from Portugal’s former colonies provide the strongest link to the country’s past, when it was the hub of a trading empire that connected Macau in the east to Rio de Janeiro in the west. Though integral elements of Lisbon life, these communities can sometimes be an invisible presence in their adopted land, pushed out to the periphery of the city. With our “Postcolonial Lisbon” series, CB hopes to bring these communities back into the center, looking at their cuisine, history and cultural life. In this fourth installment of the series, we look at Lisbon’s Brazilian community.

Brasuca owes its existence to Mr. Oliveira da Luz, known to locals as Juca, a trade unionist who escaped from political pressures in his homeland in 1976 to settle down in the Portuguese capital. Two years later he opened this restaurant in Bairro Alto. It wasn’t the first kitchen serving Brazilian dishes in the district, as a few other tascas – particularly those with Portuguese owners who had connections to Brazil – had incorporated some Brazilian staples in their menus, particularly the feijoada, a dense meat and black bean stew, but it was the first Brazilian restaurant opened in Lisbon by a Brazilian.

Among the many bars of raucous Bairro Alto, Casa do Brasil is a steadfast nighttime institution for Lisbon’s Brazilian community, hosting concerts and cultural events in a non-profit capacity. This two-floor venue is the place to chat, drink, eat and dance to a myriad popular rhythms from the homeland, all performed live: the festive accordion-drone of forró, the fast, happy chorinho or 1960s bossanova, as well as samba, rock and maracatu. The grungy ground floor, which mainly functions as a bar and dance floor, also hosts poetry sessions, film screenings and gastronomic events. Usually held on Mondays, their dinners provide the ideal space for getting to know the regional specificities of Brazilian food – its 26 states occupy more than half the South American continent, meaning it will take more than a couple of visits to get a full sense of the national palate.

To describe something that is better than good, Portuguese speakers sometimes use the word espectáculo (show, spectacle) as an adjective. João Gomes, the owner of Imperial de Campo de Ourique, does it every five minutes. He practically trademarked the phrase “É um espectáculo” (It’s a show/spectacle), to the point that he has it embroidered on his apron. His wife Adelaide’s reads “A chef do espectáculo” (The show’s chef) – she’s the cook and a very good one indeed. Nuno, their son, doesn’t have an embroidered apron but he is also part of the show, waiting tables and managing orders effortlessly. Imperial used to be one of Campo de Ourique’s many outstanding tascas. Now it is probably the last one standing.

Our Culinary Crossroads walk in Lisbon wouldn’t be complete with a stop for the city’s iconic and delicious custard tart, pastel de nata. These ones were shot on a particularly beautiful winter day, when the sun was shining down on the City of Light.

In a market as diverse as Lisbon’s Mercado de Arroios, where people from all over the world shop, Mezze doesn’t seem out of the ordinary. But the small restaurant deserves a closer look: it’s not only one of Lisbon’s few Middle Eastern restaurants, but, more importantly, its staff is almost entirely made up of recently arrived Syrian refugees. For them Mezze represents both a link back to the country they left behind and a crucial aid for putting down roots in their new home. The idea behind Mezze is one that’s being tried out in other countries. Refugees, particularly those fleeing the war in Syria, are given the chance to earn a living and get established by sharing their culinary heritage, either by opening or working at a restaurant or catering business.

Nuno Mendes is excited. He’s standing at my kitchen counter, where laid out before him are pieces of half-moon-shaped dough, each encasing a juicy meat mixture. They’re about to go into a pan filled with bubbling oil. My mom, Lica, is nervous. She is sharing her mother’s recipe for pastéis de massa terra, a traditional Portuguese savory pastry, with the highly esteemed chef of Chiltern Firehouse and Taberna do Mercado in London. He has heard about her mouth-watering pastéis from a mutual friend and decided to see for himself just how good they are. Worried that the dough isn’t quite right, she drops in the first one and the pastry bubbles up crispy, as it should. When it’s finished, she gives it to Mendes, who takes one bite and says, “Wow, these are amazing!”

Lisboetas are stocking up on <em>bacalhau</em> (salt cod) for Christmas Eve. This one at Pérola do Arsenal is particularly festive looking.

With new restaurants popping up in this increasingly popular city and so many more disappearing due to rising rents, 2017 was a year of change – both good and bad – in the Lisbon food scene. We mourn those spots that have left us, but also celebrate the arrival of some exciting places helmed by a new crop of young chefs who are highlighting quality and local products and ingredients. Pies at Bel’Empada: Bel’Empada, a tiny restaurant and takeaway in Alvalade, a residential area in the northern part of the city, bakes the most delicious pies with a thin light dough that are bursting with flavor.

Downtown Lisbon grocery stores stock different kinds of corn, flour, schnaps, oils and more from the former Portuguese colonies – a reminder of that the city, which used to be the hub of a trading empire, still maintains deep-rooted links around the world.

For decades, Abílio Coelho has served shots of ginja, our favorite cherry liqueur and a Lisbon staple. Our Culinary Crossroads walk in the city isn't complete without it. 

It has the makings of a sitcom: two itinerant chefs, one Greek and the other Peruvian, meet in Portugal and decide to open up a restaurant devoted to their home countries’ cooking. Rather than pratfalls, though, we get Pita.gr, a charming restaurant where during the course of one meal we can feast on ceviche, fresh moussaka and tiropita (a Greek pastry made of phyllo dough, feta cheese, honey and sesame seeds), all at the same table. Having the chance to eat delicious food from both countries feels like a privilege in this corner of the Margem Sul (South Bank), half an hour’s drive from central Lisbon.

In summer, there are just a couple of things that lisboetas will queue for: the beach and ice cream. The city is blessed with good places for both, but between the two, we prefer the latter, which in Lisbon tends to be Italian-style gelato, as served in the most long-standing and successful shops in town. Tucked away in a corner of Restauradores, A Veneziana still has the same façade and is run by the same family as when it opened in 1936. The shop is small, with a big esplanada, or terrace, on which customers can sit and enjoy their treats.

Our Culinary Crossroads walk in Lisbon is sure to include a glorious sampling of the famous pastel de nata, the city's iconic and delicious custard tart. 

The Mozambican community in Lisbon may be small, but the city is blessed with several delightful restaurants serving the food of Mozambique – one of them even a neighborhood landmark.

Lisbon doesn’t have an official venue or association supporting or celebrating the Mozambican community and its culture, but there are several groups that organize events in different venues, such as OMM – Organização da Mulher Moçambicana, whose activities are aimed to promote women’s rights and sometimes include solidarity dinners – and the AAM – Associação dos Amigos de Moçambique, which is currently struggling to get a venue to develop their social aid projects and communal activities. One of the venues that often hosts such events is Casa Mocambo. Located on a steep residential road just east of the Graça neighborhood, it is spread out on two floors; the café and restaurant on the ground floor offer fusion Portuguese-PALOP food, with African-focused cultural events (including concerts, performances and poetry) taking place in the basement. Recently the venue exhibited the work of Malenga, a famous Mozambican plastic artist, to much fanfare.

Lisbon is a city that knows how to keep a secret. In the early days of World War II, German, American and British spies overran the capital – Portugal was officially neutral during the war – and many of the city’s bars and casinos were hotbeds of international (in)discretion. Later, just before the Carnation Revolution in 1974, many central cafés were meeting points for covert leftist associations. Today, the hidden bars in Lisbon are decidedly less cloak-and-dagger. Yet there is still a real sense of intrigue when you ring the bells of exclusive clubs, private cultural associations and former brothels, and step inside for a hush-hush drink.

Our Culinary Crossroads walk in Lisbon passes by some of the city's finest butchers, offering the choicest, most expertly-sliced cuts around.  

Every summer, sellers hawking bolas de Berlim – custard-filled doughnuts without a hole in the middle – throng to Portuguese beaches. Plodding across the boiling sand and ringing a bell to announce their arrival, they deliver these beautifully simple pastries to hungry beachgoers, many of whom associate a trip to the coast with the sweet treat. A slew of bolas are sold on the beach each year; the presumed number is almost as eyebrow-raising as the calorie content of a big fat bola filled with custard. It’s no surprise, then, that an app promising to be the Uber of bolas has been an immediate success.

The road from Nepal to Portugal might be a long one, but in recent years it has become surprisingly well trafficked. Since 2006, the Nepalese presence in Portugal has grown by approximately 400%, concentrated in particular in the metropolitan area of Lisbon, part of an Asian community that in relative terms is the fastest growing in the city. A tight-knit community, the Nepali immigrants often find work through compatriot networks, providing each other with mutual support as they settle into life in Portugal. The food industry in particular is an important gateway into local economic life, with Nepalese-run restaurants, groceries and mini-markets now dotting the Portuguese capital.

For a few weeks during June, large swathes of Lisbon turn into one extended outdoor cookout. It’s the festival of Santo António, Lisbon’s favorite local saint, and the city celebrates his memory by way of grilling up copious amounts of sardines, so much so that during this period the scent of sizzling fish rolls through the streets of the city’s historic neighborhoods like a bank of fishy fog. In these old-time neighborhoods, the festival also provides residents a chance to play caterer to the masses, with seemingly every local with a halfway decent charcoal grill setting up shop outside their home and grilling sardines for the revelers partying in the streets. The whole scene is a complete departure from the more staid rest of the year and it often feels as if these neighborhood grillers live for just this time, allowing them to play the role of guardians of Lisbon’s most important social tradition.

Shots of ginja, a delightful cherry liqueur beloved by many Lisboetas, are an essential component of our Culinary Crossroads walk in the city. 

Bread may be fundamental to Portugal’s food culture, but over the last few years the baked goods landscape in the country has begun looking increasingly uniform, with fake neo-classic franchising playing no small part in its decline. Although many old and family-run bakeries can’t keep up with the competition – especially in the cities – there are a few initiatives kneading a small revolution. Courses, workshops and experimental research are creating a new class of future bakers who often rework old techniques. Among them is 21-year-old Diogo Amorim. Gleba, his bakery, with its contemporary look and historic techniques, attracts customers from all over Lisbon. It opened six months ago in Alcantara, a neighborhood that shows traces of many past lives, from industrial working-class to the aristocratic.

These days, a good Portuguese-style savory pie is hard to find – even in Portugal. In a country with so many great examples, namely in Alentejo, Beiras or Trás-os-Montes, where pies (or empadas in Portuguese) are beautifully made, it’s disheartening that in Lisbon you’ll find mostly dull and dry versions or disappointing fillings within good pastry. Belmiro de Jesus, a native of Trás-os-Montes, one of the most remote and unspoiled regions of Portugal, always loved the empadas his grandmother would cook for special occasions or festive times of year, like Easter or the August village festival. So when he decided to open an empada-themed restaurant, he used hers as an inspiration but changed the format and developed a thinner pastry.

Though it’s an age-old method for preservation and flavor enhancement all over the world, the smoking of meat, fish, and cheese is not a notable tradition in southern Europe. In Portugal, in the old days, salt curing was more common – particularly for the national staple, cod. However, the presence of smoking traditions in the north, particularly around the Minho river, indicates the possibility that the Vikings’ favorite method for cooking fish may have reached all the way to the northeastern Iberian peninsula.

A snapshot from our Mouraria Street Party, which was held earlier this month in conjunction with Obscura Day. As one might guess, lots of fun was had by all!

Although Angolans are not known to emigrate en masse like their continental counterparts, they do form the second largest African diaspora community in Lisbon. The seventh largest country in Africa, Angola has undergone considerable upheaval, which has contributed to this. Violent civil conflict began after the country gained independence from Portugal in 1975 and continued – with a few interruptions – until 2002. Caused by a power struggle between two former liberation movements influenced by the larger cold war, this conflict has caused half a million deaths, significant displacement and severe damage to national infrastructure, stoking a steadily burning atmosphere of social instability and insecurity.

Although it opened four years ago, Shilabo’s has gone mostly unnoticed by many lisboetas – perhaps due to its minimal size (only 12 seats) or to the discrete nature of owner Santiago Afonso Julio. From his tiny open kitchen, he serves up just three or four daily dishes, indicated on the menu outside the door. Most are traditionally Angolan, such as the iconic national dish, moamba. The classic format is made up of stewed chicken pieces served with funge, the gelatinous porridge of cassava (or corn, in the southern part of the country), and can be prepared either with peanut butter or with palm oil. Afonso Julio’s version is a fusion of the two.

Order a plate of vindaloo in one of the many Goan restaurants around Lisbon and your local friend at the table may point out that the origin of this dish is, in fact, Portuguese. Even the name can be decoded back to the Portuguese vinho d’alhos (wine and garlic), he’ll say. But let’s be honest here, amigo, vinho d’alhos has about as much to do with Goan vindaloo as the croissant does with the cronut. Vinho d’alhos may have sailed off to Goa along with Vasco da Gama in the 15th century, but when it returned to Lisbon with Goan migrants in the 1960s and 70s, something had changed. It had gone Goan.

The menu at Com-Tradição might not be as revolutionary as the vintage posters on the walls, but it’s certainly democratic and affordable. After all, Com-Tradição is the restaurant of the Associação 25 de Abril, founded by the military men who planned the 1974 Carnation Revolution, the coup that ended Portugal’s fascist regime and restored democracy. Nowadays anyone can become a member of this non-profit association. Besides preserving the spirit of the revolution, it also aims to preserve documents and memories of this historical event. The association is located in a beautiful Bairro Alto old building, whose renovation and interior design were overseen by the renowned architect Álvaro Siza Vieira.