Tag: Lisbon

City guide: Lisbon

On By ediblereadingIn Features6 Comments

I first visited Lisbon in something like 2007, and loved it immediately. It was a scruffy, hilly, lively maelstrom of a city, zigzagged by bright yellow old-school trams, where the coffee was industrial, the pasteis de nata were ambrosial and street art was everywhere, as were beautifully grand, tiled houses. Octopus and salt cod were also everywhere, with either or both featuring on the menu of seemingly every restaurant I visited. I returned with a couple of bottles of vintage port – one of which is still in the garage and almost worth too much to drink now – and a fierce desire to go back. My then wife, put off by the scuzziness, was less keen to return.

I visited a couple more times, each time liking the place even more, and then, for over a decade, it never quite made the top of my list of places to visit. In that time, I saw more and more people discovering it for the first time and felt increasingly jealous and left out. I liked it before it was cool! I would silently protest at the screen of my phone, every time wondering why it had been so long since I travelled there.

People would ask me for recommendations for places to go in Lisbon, and eventually I reached the point where I only had one recommendation left that I had any confidence in, because the place had been going since 1950: more on that later. So I knew I was long overdue a return trip, and that finally happened last week.

Returning I was reminded of what a special place it is. Almost absurdly beautiful, with stunning views, gorgeous streets, a city on the river and right by the Atlantic. It was still sunny and warm in early December, although the Portuguese didn’t seem to think so: they were dressed for an autumn day and must have been mystified by the sight of me in shirtsleeves, shorts and sandals. I was too happy topping up my vitamin D to care.

Lisbon, I must say, wasn’t quite as I remembered it. It’s far more affluent and gentrified nowadays. When I first went it was a very poor city, and your money went a long way. Blame its increasing popularity, blame the much-discussed golden visa scheme, blame the Time Out Market if you like, but for whatever reason its character has definitely changed. That’s not a bad thing, it just makes it a slightly different experience to the one I recall. But some of that is also just the passing of time, so Lisbon having a craft beer scene and third wave coffee now is just about it being the year 2024 in Europe, not some red pill Lisbon has uniquely swallowed.

The other thing I didn’t quite remember was how hilly Lisbon is. Fuck me, but it’s so hilly. Google Maps ought to have an option where you say you want to walk from point A to point B and, even though Google Maps also tells you it will only take you 15 minutes, it then looks up your BMI and tells you to think again. Every day I felt like I’d walked 20000 steps when in reality I’d done a fraction of that, it’s just that so very many of them were up rather than along. Every now and again, on a walk, I would turn a corner, look up and think Seriously?

But not only that: the topography of Lisbon, somehow, is hill upon hill upon hill. The whole place undulates in a manner which makes you wonder how it was ever built at all. There were occasions where I honestly felt like I could travel from A to B to C and back to A without ever not going uphill: it was like living in an M.C. Escher drawing.

So there is beauty, and a castle, and countless miradouros, but that beauty comes at a price. When I last went to Lisbon I was eleven years younger and more supple, less weighed down by life and all the lovely meals I’ve had in the course of writing this blog. It might be a young person’s city, and I hate even being the kind of person who says that.

The best piece of advice I received from my friend Mike, who runs European tours in Lisbon often, was to make use of Bolt, which is like Uber but much cheaper. I rarely did a trip across the city that cost more than five Euros, and I tried not to think too hard about the underlying economy of a place where sitting in your car in traffic for half an hour, going relatively short distances around town earned you less than five Euros. Maybe the gentrification hasn’t trickled down to everybody: in my experience it rarely does.

It’s there none the less: Lisbon has the Time Out Market, which I didn’t eat at on this trip even though everyone says you absolutely should, and the LX Factory, which I did visit and is a bit like Bicester Village for hipsters. It’s very Instagrammable, but I imagine Lisbon is a very Instagrammable city all round. I didn’t get to the Alfama, the old slum district below the castle which I so loved eleven years ago, on this visit. Instead I wandered round Principe Real which is full of concept stores and wonderful boutiques and cafés and, crucially, is on the flat throughout: next time, I’m definitely staying there.

The way that Lisbon was exactly as I remembered was that the food and drink scene could match any city I’ve been to. I’ve often said, to anybody who will listen, that Portuguese food and wine is easily the equal of Spain’s but never gets the credit for it. Also, more even than Spain, Portugal’s food has never really taken off in the U.K.: with the exception of the restaurants of Nuno Mendes in the capital, it’s hard to think of other notable proponents. Here in Reading, multiple Portuguese restaurants – O Beirão and O Portugués – have tried and failed to gain a foothold.

Well, that’s a shame, because even on a relatively brief visit to Lisbon I ate so well (and had so many places on my shortlist that I couldn’t get to) that I could completely see how it remains one of Europe’s great gastronomic cities. And that also reflects in the fact that – and this is a huge compliment – I was asked by several people to write a city guide to Lisbon before I’d even got home. I was already planning to do one, because I packed an awful lot of good places into four days in the city, but I was also aware of all the places I hadn’t got to and really wished I could visit.

But I was surprised by just how many of my readers were off to Lisbon in the not too distant future: several of you told me you are going next year, and one reader told me that she is heading to Lisbon literally the day after this piece is published (I offered her a sneak preview of the list, in case she wanted to book anywhere in advance). Best of all, two of my readers actually touched down in Lisbon halfway through my holiday and, taking their lead from my posts on social media, ate at one of my favourite places. They were not disappointed, because it was the place that’s been going for nearly seventy-five years, that I first tried on my first visit seventeen years ago and have gone back to every time since.

The rest of the places in this guide showcase much more variety – traditional and modern, some authentically Portuguese and others more reflective of the melting pot the city is now. I had an absolute blast eating and drinking at each and every spot on this list, and if my guide helps some of you with your own trips, whether that’s next week, next summer or next winter, then I will be delighted. And if it persuades any of you to add this gorgeous, vital, hilly – very hilly, I can’t stress this enough – city to your list of places to visit, all the better.

1. Bonjardim

This is the place I recommend to everybody, the place I’ve been eating at on every trip to Lisbon since I first went, back in 2007. Once, on a holiday with my old friend Dave I ate there twice – on my first and last day in the city – and on this visit it was my lunch stop less than an hour after we checked in and dropped off our bags.

Bonjardim is tucked away on a little alley just off Praça dos Restauradores, not far from the train station and close to the top of the Baixa, the grid of streets that runs down to the river and constitutes Lisbon’s flattest district. It celebrates its seventy-fifth birthday next year and although the menu has a good range of fish, seafood and grilled meats, the only thing to have here, really, is the spit roasted chicken. Over the last seventy-four years they’ve got it down to a fine art.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a plate of smoked ham and a couple of glorious salt cod pasteis while you wait for the chicken to arrive, or that you shouldn’t drink a caneca of ice cold Sagres into the bargain. That all forms part of the anticipation, that and watching chicken turn up at neighbouring tables, knowing that it will soon be your turn. But when it does finally reach you? Well, it is glorious.

It never disappoints. Rubbed with salt and lemon, the skin is a papery, crispy, savoury miracle. But the meat underneath, which comes off the bone ridiculously easily, is sublime. And you’ll pick and pick and pick until the whole carcass is white and clean, because none of this can be wasted. They even do good french fries too, equally salty and utterly delicious.

But the chicken is the thing. It ruins all other chicken, that’s the only problem. It will be some time before you can enjoy a Nando’s again, and my attempts to chase this particular dragon, at the likes of Casa do Frango and Bébé Bob, has been an exercise in futility. I think deep down I always knew they would be, but I did it because even if there was a one per cent chance those places could match Bonjardim, it would be worth the gamble.

A whole roast chicken at Bonjardim costs a ludicrous seventeen Euros, and it pained me that I only got to eat there the once. Both subsequent days, when I took my chances at no reservation places, in the back of my mind I was thinking to myself it’s okay, because if they’re full I can just go to Bonjardim again. So of course none of them turned out to be full.

The mystical power of Bonjardim has not waned in the nearly twenty years that I’ve been going, and one of my favourite moments of the trip, even more so than eating there, was seeing Zoë eat that chicken for the very first time. We messaged our friend James, who himself made his Bonjardim debut earlier in the year on my recommendation. “It’s a biblical experience” came the reply almost instantly. “God tier chicken at excellent prices.”

My two readers who were in Lisbon at the same time as me went there for lunch on the Saturday, and put a picture up on my Facebook page. “God damn, that chicken is something else” said one of them; there is something about that chicken, it seems, that makes you take the Lord’s name in vain. But honestly if there is a creator, and I’m still unconvinced on that score, they should be honoured to be mentioned in the same breath as Bonjardim’s finest.

Bonjardim
Travessa de Santo Antão 11, Lisbon

2. Lupita

The pizza restaurant Lupita is one of the no-reservations spots I mentioned just now, and I am absolutely convinced that if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s literally just round the corner from the Time Out Market it would be impossible to get a lunchtime table there. As it was we still got lucky, turning up just before half one and managing to snag the only vacant table at the exact moment that it came free. When we left, about an hour later, there was quite a queue forming.

Normally I wouldn’t do any of that – turning up on spec, queuing and what have you – but I made an exception for Lupita because everything I had read suggested it was very special (and, of course, I had Bonjardim as my Plan B). And special it was, belying its no frills appearance, plain metal folding tables and stools.

The pizza was exquisite. I’m loath to use hyperbole, because I love pizza and have enjoyed great pizza all over the shop, from Bristol to Newbury, from Bologna to Paris, from Bruges to Northumberland Avenue. But if I’ve had a pizza better than Lupita’s I can’t remember it right now. The base was a marvel, light, puffy and chewy, with the look of a Neapolitan pie but with the droop-free structure of its transatlantic cousins. The toppings – guanciale, jalapeños, a feisty chimichurri sauce and a dusting of Parmesan – were out of this world. And that feeling, of being in the middle of something so outstanding, gladdened my heart.

If I stopped there Lupita would be worth a visit. But on the day I went they had a special starter which happened to bear my Italian porn star name, Puttanesca Pockets. Just imagine: something like a mini calzone cut into two bite-sized halves, each stuffed with olives, capers, tomato and anchovy, the best Breville you never had. I would try to recreate it at home, but I know it would never approach that level of genius. “That dish will be on my mind all day” said somebody on Facebook when I put a picture up: that makes two of us.

Oh, and they only do one dessert, a Basque cheesecake. Guess what? It, too, is superlative.

Lupita
Rua de Sao Paulo 79, Lisbon
https://www.instagram.com/lupita.pizzaria/

3. Jesus é Goês

My final lunch of the trip was at Jesus é Goês, just off the very swanky Avenida de Liberdade. Normally eating Indian food on a European city break is the last thing I would ever do, but Jesus é Goês is all about the food of Goa, a Portuguese colony for over four hundred years, so it piqued my interest. I spotted it on an episode of Somebody Feed Phil on Netflix; for the uninitiated, somebody always does, rather a lot, and yet Phil never shuts up. It’s strangely endearing and annoying at the same time,

The restaurant is the brainchild of the eponymous Jesus, who opened the place ten years ago, and I didn’t discover until halfway through my meal there, doing a little research between courses, that he sadly died last year. The place is now run by his partner, a lovely, kind and smiling hostess who took excellent care of us during lunch. You can book this place, I later discovered, but only via WhatsApp: we were the only customers in the whole place on a Saturday lunchtime, which slightly saddened and concerned me.

Having eaten the restaurant’s food, I can add mystified to that list of adjectives, because it really is wonderful stuff and, with the exception of Clay’s, probably the best Indian food I’ve had outside India itself. I started with the restaurant’s iconic “holy burger”, an intensely spiced, deeply complex morsel served on a spoon topped with a poached egg yolk and more spices. I was under strict instructions to eat the whole thing as a single mouthful so of course I did, and it’s as good a single mouthful of food as I’ve tasted all year.

Zoë was eating an equally terrific samosa packed to the rafters with spiced meat, and I insisted that we ordered another burger and samosa so she could know the same joy as me. It would have felt wrong not to be able to talk about the experience of tasting that holy burger with her again, later in the holiday, later in the year or just later in our lives.

The mains kept up that standard – I did recognise a couple of dishes like pork sorpotel from Clay’s regional menus in the past, but I had to try Jesus é Goês’ goat curry, almost as much a signature dish as the holy burger. The meat benefited from a long, slow cook but what really made this was the dark, glossy, phenomenally spiced sauce, poured onto rice or loaded onto a chapati. Zoë’s chicken cafreal, served on the bone – although it didn’t stay on it for long – was completely different and equally enchanting, the sauce with more fragrance and citrus, less smoke.

This felt like food for the soul, and not necessarily something I’d ever have expected to eat in Lisbon, let alone to love so much. It felt strangely moving to eat in Jesus’ restaurant, knowing that he was gone but that his food would be enjoyed by hundreds of people who never got to meet him. I’m glad I was one of them. A sign on the wall said “ASK JESUS FOR A RECOMMENDATION”: this might be the only time I’ve ever put my faith in Him.

Jesus é Goês
Rua São José 23, Lisbon
https://www.instagram.com/jesusegoesoficial/

4. Prado

Prado was my Fancy Meal of the trip. I invariably do one on most holidays, where there’s an à la carte menu but I allow myself to be persuaded by the tasting menu. From there it’s only a momentary lapse before you’re signed up for the wine pairings, too, the whole nine yards. It’s a slippery slope, and at the bottom of it is an evening where you’re cosseted and indulged and don’t have to make a single decision again. And to do that in this tasteful space with its inventive menu, beautifully chosen Portuguese wines and well-judged service – well, it was no hardship at all.

The tasting menu, I will say, was made an easier choice by the fact that Prado’s à la carte wasn’t really an à la carte in the true sense, instead being a list of small plates with a recommendation that you order something like four per person for sharing. So you’re going to end up with something like a tasting menu whether you like it or not, and although I found that a tad irksome I did manage to get over it. The tasting menu is 75 Euros here, to give you an idea, but I suspect that curating your own small plates playlist would probably cost there or thereabouts.

It’s a minor quibble anyway, because the food was brilliant. Prado is Portuguese for meadow, it turns out, and Prado prides itself on taking a farm to table approach, although that didn’t quite square with a menu which leant very heavily on fish. But no matter, because so much of what I ate was imaginative, original and just plain fun. Beef tartare came sandwiched between leaves of grilled cabbage, octopus was served on a skewer, zhuzhed with the addition of a chorizo emulsion. Even the bread was lifted by a pot of spreadable pork fat, shot through with garlic.

Every dish was fascinating, a real beauty pageant of cracking creations. Hard to single out anything, but marinated mackerel served in a chilled, fresh soup of green apple and green olive was a combination I could never have conceived of in a million years yet loved eating. I adored Prado’s John Dory, spiked with pil pil and served under a dehydrated kale leaf. Oyster mushrooms, served in a goat’s butter sauce, lardo draped on top were a proper delight, as tasty as they were beautiful: it was just a shame that the garlic-laced pork fat earlier on meant we hadn’t saved any bread for mopping.

I thought the Alentejano acorn fed pork, served ruddy pink with potato purée was probably the weakest course of the meal, but Prado saved the day with an outrageously good dessert – a brioche with a sweet, burnished, caramelised crust, served with exemplary coffee ice cream and a sauce which went perfectly with the glass of Madeira we were given to polish off proceedings. Two hours and a couple of hundred Euros very well spent, even if the rest of the meals of the trip were, by comparison, far less rarefied.

Prado
Travessa das Pedras Negras 2, Lisbon
https://pradorestaurante.com/index2.php

5. Trinca

Trinca is nothing to look at from the outside – I almost walked past it without realising it was my Friday night dinner reservation – and inside it’s a plain and unprepossessing room. But it was an absolute riot – a small, intimate place that felt more like a neighbourhood restaurant than anywhere else I ate in Lisbon.

The menu is on a chalkboard and changes all the time, and to say it jumps around is to put it lightly. The cheese was traditionally Portuguese, the textbook focaccia we had with it less so. And then there were grilled leeks, almost more like Spanish calçots, served with a ginger hollandaise and Jerusalem artichoke crisps, a dish that was truly a citizen of the world. Not international enough for you? How about fregola topped with shiitake mushrooms cooked in ponzu and glazed with gochujang?

That’s before I get onto our main courses. Octopus – so far, so Portuguese – but in tacos. Or tacos with confit Iberian pork topped with a zingy salsa verde and (a masterstroke, this) pork crackling. But just to throw one last cuisine in, we also tried Nepalese pork belly, simply spiced and grilled, accompanied by a cucumber salad singing with sesame. A menu like this shouldn’t work, and paradoxically that’s exactly why it did.

No dish cost more than fifteen euros, many of them cost a lot less. The most expensive red on the wine list, which was biodynamic and very pleasant indeed, cost a shade over thirty euros. A more different experience to Prado is hard to imagine, but it was an equally valid one. I left this neighbourhood restaurant full, happy and deeply envious for all the locals there, who clearly lived in its neighbourhood.

Trinca
Rua dos Anjos 59C, Lisbon
https://www.instagram.com/restaurantetrinca/

6. Tapisco

Arguably Lisbon’s two most famous chefs are José Avillez and Henrique Sá Pessoa. The former has two Michelin starred Belcanto and a raft of other restaurants across the city – Cantinho do Avillez, Bairro do Avillez and so on. In case that wasn’t ornate enough, Bairro do Avillez contains three different restaurants, or eating areas. What’s the Portuguese equivalent of a Russian doll? Anyway, he has something like sixteen restaurants in total, and I found the whole experience of trying to pick one exhausting, so I gave up.

Sá Pessoa, on the other hand, has a much narrower portfolio. There’s Alma, which is double starred, and Tapisco, which is his more affordable, casual restaurant on the edge of Principe Real. I went to Tapisco on my last evening in the city and had a really enjoyable meal full of well executed versions of Portuguese classics. My cuttlefish, simply battered and fried with a coriander mayonnaise was simple, unshowy and a proper pleasure, and Zoë’s tuna tartare with avocado and little wasabi pearls was equally gorgeous.

For our main, we both gravitated to the same thing, arroz de pato, a deeply savoury daydream of a dish, rice studded with shredded duck, topped with dried duck and smoky sausage, dotted with aioli. This was not a dish to share, it was a dish where you jealously guarded your own personal skillet, spooning and enjoying and worrying about the point in the future when you could spoon no more.

I had arroz de pato once at O Portugués once, back when I was reviewing takeaways. Now I know what this dish can be, I would be reluctant to order it again – although, that said, De Nata have it on their menu. Surely it’s worth a try?

Tapisco also, by the way, does a chocolate mousse with olive oil and salt which even managed to supplant Thames Lido’s in my affections. Who needs two Michelin stars anyway?

Tapisco
Rua Dom Pedro V 81, Lisbon
https://www.tapisco.pt/lisboa_en.html

7. Senhor Uva

I did my homework wrong on Senhor Uva: I thought it was a natural wine bar where you could snack if you wanted to, the perfect spot for a pre-dinner drink on our final night. It’s out in Estrela, at the end of the iconic 28 tram route, so if you timed it right you could potentially combine them.

But actually, Senhor Uva is part wine bar, part restaurant. And the restaurant part is a selection of almost entirely plant-based small plates. Having booked a table, we then hastily sent an email saying that actually we just wanted wine and a few pre-dinner snacks. Would that be okay? we asked. And if it wasn’t, we said we’d completely understand them cancelling our reservation.

Well, we didn’t get a reply but on arrival they knew exactly who we were and what we were after, and they looked after us superbly. Nothing was too much trouble, and they selected and recommended glass after glass of striking, elegant wine while letting us pick whatever small plates we wanted.

And all the small plates were excellent – one was a couple of local cheeses with handmade crackers and a sweet fruit chutney, another was potato, leek and broccoli skewers with a deep delicious sauce. A third, maybe the best, was grilled courgettes with poppadom shards and a moat of stunning ponzu sauce. When every dish was set down in front of us we were told its ingredients, and told it was made with love.

By the end of the third glass I wanted to live in a parallel universe where we’d never booked a restaurant that night, where we just stayed there in that stylish space, seemingly hewn out of the hillside, drinking more wines, eating everything on the menu, enjoying the chatter from the neighbouring tables (much of which, I have to say, was in English).

Senhor Uva has clearly done well enough to expand into a larger space on the other side of the road, and that’s where the kitchen was. As the light dimmed and we saw the room opposite glow, the regular to and fro of staff from there to here carrying food, I thought that this was what the best of life was about – travelling, finding spaces like this, being transported and getting lost in a reverie that this was somehow your place.

How I wish home had anywhere even remotely like Senhor Uva. How I wish I’d had longer there. You will never, I suspect, hear me say this again about somewhere with an exclusively vegetarian menu, so make the most of it.

Senhor Uva
Rua de Santo Amaro 66A, Lisbon
https://senhoruva.com

8. Manteigaria

Everyone will tell you that the place to go for pasteis de nata is Pasteis de Belem, a tram ride away. People queue to get in, and you eventually grab a table in one of its tiled dining rooms, and you scoff egg custard tarts fresh out of the oven, slipped onto your plate and dusted with cinnamon. After that you do the Tower of Belem, look round the Jéronimos monastery, take your pictures of the Monument to the Discoveries and take a tram back in to the centre. You’ve eaten well, you’ve seen sights, it’s a day of tourism well done.

And all that’s true. I’ve been to Pasteis de Belem, several times, and their pasteis are a revelation if you’ve never had them before. But for my money Manteigaria’s, from their gorgeous site on the edge of Bairro Alto, more than matches them. So go there instead if you’re tight for time, or want to stay central, or just trust my judgment, and you won’t be disappointed. They are warm and perfect, the pastry with just the right amount of flake and the custard with absolutely the right amount of wobble.

I have a feeling pasteis de nata anywhere in Lisbon are good – I even had a decent one at the airport before my flight home – but you may as well start at the top so you set the standard. Also, once you’ve done that I have good news for you: De Nata’s pasteis are really not that far off, and a much shorter trip away.

Manteigaria
Rua do Loreto 2, Lisbon (and in the Time Out Market)
https://manteigaria.com/en/

9. Nannarella

I always seek out ice cream on my holidays, because I associate ice cream with holidays. And normally I would recommend you Santini, a Portuguese chain, because I had their ice cream in Porto many years ago, and liked it a lot.

But Nannarella, another discovery from Somebody Feed Phil, is a level above that and up there with anything I’ve had in Bologna, Granada or Malaga. It’s a little bit in the middle of nowhere – sort of between Estrela and Principe Real – but it’s worth seeking out if you even remotely love ice cream like I do; as it happens, I took a Bolt there specifically to try it out.

Zoë thought that was a bit nuts, but once we were installed on a park bench and she was eating a ball of gianduja ice cream bigger than a baby’s fist she soon changed her tune and told me I was right all along. Since that almost never happens, it’s one for the memory banks.

I loved Nannarella’s chocolate ice cream which was on the darker side and a real work of art, but I especially loved the fior di latte, an ice cream I’ve never seen outside Italy. The confidence to do that – to make an ice cream that just tastes of itself, no vanilla, no nothing – speaks volumes about the place. And it’s completely justified.

Nannarella
Rua Nova da Piedade 64A, Lisbon
https://www.nannarella.pt/en

10. Fabrica

Fabrica was my go to coffee place in Lisbon, a choice made easier by the fact that they have branches all over the city – all of which look slightly different, all of which are very stylish and all of which serve excellent coffee.

So I enjoyed their spot just behind Praça do Comércio in the heart of the Baixa, and I also really enjoyed the massive pain au chocolat I ate there. I loved their branch on the bustling street of Rua das Portas de Santo Antão, and I adored their little coffee van in Principe Real, just around the corner from EmbaiXada, a beautiful mall of concept stores housed in a nineteenth century Arabesque palace (this is a food and drink guide but honestly: go shopping there, it’s amazing).

My favourite spot, though, was the one in Chiado, on Rua das Flores, on a steep hill a short stroll from Manteigaria. I know the done thing is to have your pastel de nata with a coffee, but Fabrica is a great advert for just eating the egg custard tarts up at the bar and then working off a fraction of the calories heading down the sloping street for exceptional coffee.

Fabrica
Rua das Flores 63, Lisbon (and other locations across the city)
https://fabricacoffeeroasters.com

11. Dramatico

Dramatico is such a beautiful spot that it’s almost tempting to recommend it for that alone. It’s a little space – again, almost hewn out of the side of a steep hill – picture perfect with white Mondrianesque windows, a lovely showcase for coffee and brewing on one side, and a handful of tables the other. The picture above doesn’t do it justice: it’s absurdly fetching.

It’s a little out of the way, just off from Principe Real and across from the botanical gardens, and our Bolt struggled to find it, leaving us gladly with a downhill stroll rather than an uphill one. But the one frustration about it is that because it’s good, it’s popular, and because it’s popular and small, it’s very difficult to grab a table.

Normally I wouldn’t mind that so much, but the room was full of Americans – it’s always Americans – with vocal fry so bad that they belonged in a burns unit: I’m afraid it brought out my inner Sam Loudermilk.

Add in the fact that the café only seems to open until 2pm, and sometimes not even that, and the owner is capricious at best and sometimes just shuts for a two week holiday because he can, and… well, I realise this might not be the best sales pitch in the world. But in warmer months I think they have a bench outside, so there’s that.

And it was the single best coffee I had on the trip, and one of the best lattes I’ve had in quite a while. So maybe the owner can do what he likes and, if the worst comes to the worst, you can sip Dramatico’s magnificent latte on a bench in the botanical gardens. If you did, I suspect you’d forgive the place almost anything.

Dramatico
Rua da Alegria 41E, Lisbon
https://www.instagram.com/dramatico.lisboa/

12. Cerveja Canil

I don’t know how mature the craft beer scene is in Lisbon, but on aesthetics alone I’d say Cerveja Canil is similar to other craft beer places I’ve been to in Europe – black walls, basic furniture, people having a terrific time. This branch is in the heart of the Baixa (they have a second off Avenida da Liberdade) and was humming when we turned up for a pre-dinner drink. A big loud group of Brits had discovered it too, but once they – and the U.K.’s seemingly unique brand of toxic masculinity – cleared out, it became an extremely agreeable place.

Canil is a brewpub, and offers about a dozen of its own beers in a real variety of styles, so not just different iterations of hazy pales but also porters, brown ales and ESBs. Their pale ale was far better than its middling Untappd ratings would have you believe, but I also really enjoyed their guest beers, by Letra and local microbrewery Mean Sardine.

In marked contrast to so many beer places in the U.K. (and definitely in Reading), Canil also has the beer snacks down pat. I particularly enjoyed a goats cheese croqueta with honey, resting on a completely unnecessary carpet of rocket. Beer and croquetas are such a perfect match: I wish Phantom or Double Barrelled would get on the phone to Caversham’s Miss Croquetas and make some kind of arrangement.

Cerveja Canil
Rua dos Douradores 133, Lisbon (also at Rua da Santa Marta 35)
https://www.cervejacanil.com

13. Sputnik Craft Beer

Sputnik was the other beer place I tried on this trip, out of the centre somewhat but just round the corner from Trinca. Another proponent of Tollix stools and walls somehow darker than black – a look that always reminds me of seeing Darwin Deez live at the Boilerroom in Guildford back in 2015 – it was nonetheless a really lovely craft beer spot with great service, an excellent range of beers and a well-stocked, interesting fridge.

Unlike Canil, Sputnik does not brew beer itself but its twelve taps had an excellent range including local breweries Dois Corvos, Fermentage and Mean Sardine (disappointingly it also had a single beer by Brewdog, for people who haven’t yet got the memo about Brewdog).

But the fridge also had some real wonders, including more cans from local breweries and a few other Iberian classics like Barcelona’s Garage. I squeezed more drinking in than was probably wise, and left with a couple of bottles of barrel aged imperial stout to take home and pop in the garage.

All that aside, the thing I really loved about Sputnik was how inclusive and unhipster it was – pretty much every table there was a different demographic, including shabby, middle-aged me, and I was reminded that the way to be cool is to not give a shit whether you’re cool or not. In that sense, I would say that Sputnik is pretty cool, not that I’m any judge of that.

Sputnik Craft Beer
Rua Andrade 41, Lisbon
https://www.instagram.com/sputnik.lisboa/

(Click here to read more city guides.)

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Takeaway review: O Português

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As of March 2023, O Portugues is closed until further notice.

Many years ago, in another life, I was spending a long weekend in Lisbon (remember when we used to have those?) and I had the good fortune to go on a food tour hosted by the journalist and writer Celia Pedroso. Every city – every country too, for that matter – should have an advocate like Pedroso, and anybody who went to Lisbon thinking that Portugal was all peri-peri chicken and egg custard tarts would have had their mind absolutely blown by a few hours in her expert company.

It turned out that Portugal had cheese and ham that could rival anything from Spain, had not only port but also wonderful rich red wines and fresh, almost effervescent vinho verde. We sat in a restaurant called Tagide, looking out over the city, trying petiscos, Portugal’s take on small sharing plates, which were every bit as delicious as any tapas I’d eaten in Andalusia. Then there was ginjinha, a cherry liqueur sometimes served in – just imagine this – an edible chocolate shot glass. Throw the aforementioned chicken and pasteis de nata into the mix, and you have the makings of a wonderful, unsung cuisine.

I came away from that afternoon thinking that Portugal, so often overshadowed by its Iberian cousin, might be the best-kept food secret in Europe. It’s well-kept enough, for some reason, that Portuguese food has never quite made it to these shores; London has never had a Portuguese invasion the way as, say, Peruvian food some years ago and, closer to home, in nearly eight years of writing this blog I’ve only ever reviewed two Portuguese restaurants. Both of them left me a bit baffled, to put it lightly: was it just that the food didn’t travel well?

All of this made me very curious indeed when the old Bart’s Steakhouse site next to Palmer Park, which was Colley’s Supper Rooms for many years, reopened as O Português. All the early signs pointed to a hearty, authentic Portuguese restaurant, and the restaurant’s social media output – all bilingual – suggested a wide and interesting menu, ever-changing daily specials and huge amounts of support from the local Portuguese community. With the exception of Deliveroo-only London imports like Burger & Lobster and Rosa’s Thai, O Português is probably the restaurant most readers have told me they want me to check out. They’re on JustEat, so on a quiet weekday lunchtime I sat down to pore over their menu and decide what to order for dinner.

Researching the menu was an awful lot of fun and involved having JustEat open in one browser tab, Google in another. It was both an education in Portuguese food and a reminder of how little I knew about it. The menu had a selection of just under ten starters, most of them hovering around the seven pound mark, and a wide range of main courses ranging from ten to twenty pounds. Some had descriptions, some didn’t, but I hadn’t heard of much of it and the more I researched the hungrier I got. Did I fancy arroz de marisco, seafood rice that might rival a paella, or bacalhau a bráz, a sort of salt cod scrambled egg dish with matchstick potatoes? 

Everywhere I looked a different genre of gastronomic temptation was waving from the menu, shouting “pick me!”. And of course, the problem with looking up all these different Portuguese specialities was that Google always seemed to throw up the platonic ideal of each dish, a picture of every single one as its absolute best self. It partly wanted to make me order from O Português, it very much made me want to hop on the next plane to Porto and, perhaps most of all, it made me hope that ordering from O Português would make me feel less sad about the fact that I couldn’t so much get on the RailAir, let alone fly to Portugal at the drop of a hat. 

I deliberated, I horse-traded with my other half Zoë and we placed an order for that evening – two starters and two mains, coming to just over thirty-six pounds, including delivery and service charge. Then we got on with our day, but every now and again, on our afternoon walk, I would remember that I had this takeaway to look forward to and I thought what I always think with these review meals: I hope it’s good.

We’d ordered our food to arrive at seven pm, and the JustEat experience was pretty efficient, painless and slightly early. We were told at just before twenty to seven that our rider was on his way, and he pulled up outside the house barely five minutes later. Most of our food was in foil containers with cardboard lids, all recyclable, and one dish we’d ordered was in polystyrene. At the time I thought nothing of it, but later Zoë said “considering it’s less than ten minutes down the road it’s just not hot enough” and, on reflection, I tended to agree.

O Português’ starters mostly read like unpretentious bar food and I was excited about trying them. The first of them, pica pau, was thinly cut pork or beef in a spicy, beery gravy with pickled vegetables: the name translates as woodpecker, and the idea is that you pick away at it with a cocktail stick while drinking a cold Super Bock (or, in my case that evening, a beautiful bottle of Alhambra 1925, a birthday present from a friend). 

That sounds fantastic in theory, but O Português’ version was a bit challenging in practice. There was plenty of beef, most of it reasonably tender, but I didn’t detect any spice and next to nothing you could describe as gravy. Instead, there was a lot of pickled cauliflower and carrot, so much so that the sharp tang of vinegar was the main detectable flavour of the whole lot. I was inclined to give O Português the benefit of the doubt: I suspect this dish was reasonably authentic and probably just not for me. But I love pickles and I still found this a bit acrid; Zoë, who despises vinegar in all its forms, couldn’t cope with even a forkful of this dish. Strangest of all, it was a lot of food for six pounds fifty: if you liked it, you’d describe it as amazing value. If you didn’t, it was just cheap.

Fantastic in theory probably also sums up the other starter we had, another iconic Portuguese dish and again, meant to be robust rather than fancy. I had been tempted by the prego no pau, a “nailed” steak sandwich with garlic – apparently – literally hammered into it, but instead I went for bifana, which is probably the national sandwich of Portugal. And again, some of the problems with it may have derived from the disconnect between reading all about how amazing these could be in theory and then eating O Português’ in practice. 

In the wonderful theoretical world of the internet, the pork loin used in a bifana is thin and marinated, soused in flavour. In the real world of the polystyrene container in my living room, the pork was thicker, drier and, it seemed to me, ever so slightly overcooked. There was a good pungent waft of garlic underneath the pork, but it felt like it had been added afterwards rather than cooked alongside it. Perhaps if I’d had this in a tasca somewhere in the Bairro Alto, I’d have loved it, but on my sofa it lacked that power to transport.

Zoë liked it more than me – “thank god for bread and pork” were her exact words, but that might be because she had so little time for her main course. She had gone for the frango grelhado, grilled chicken, thinking that it was a classic Portuguese dish and relatively easy to get right. Now, ordinarily in these takeaway reviews Zoë plays a relatively minor role. On this occasion, however, I’ll have to quote her extensively, because she disliked her dinner so much that I ended up resorting to grabbing my phone, opening the Notes app and taking dictation at numerous points throughout the rest of the evening.

“It’s a mirage” she started. “It looks like it’s going to be a delicious baby chicken, like the ones from Bakery House, but actually it’s just a carcass covered in tasty skin.”

The forkful Zoë had let me have taste indeed have a tasty coating and I’d rather liked it. I wasn’t sure it was better than Nando’s, and it definitely wasn’t better than the best roast chicken I’d had in Lisbon, but it wasn’t terrible.

“You know that bit of chicken I let you try? That was most of the meat there was on the whole thing. It had more bones than Cemetery Junction. And another thing: it tastes to me like it’s been reheated. It feels like a quarter of chicken you’d get from a chicken shop.”

I supposed it was possible. I knew, for instance, that Nando’s precooked its chicken before finishing it on the grill: perhaps O Português did likewise. As if to prove her point, she lifted the whole scrawny thing up. It dangled uselessly from her fork, as if from a gibbet.

“It’s tough in places. I think it’s been reheated. It’s the chicken I feel sorry for. If it’s going to die, it should at least give somebody some pleasure. And the chips are just cold and hard.”

They’d looked pretty decent and home made on the plate, but apparently not.

“What about the rice?”

“It’s okay, but it’s rice. How wrong can you go with rice?” 

She had a point.

I’d picked my main having scrolled through O Português’ social media and when it turned up, it definitely looked the part. Arroz con pato, or duck with rice, sounded really promising. And again, it was a huge portion – tons of rice with what looked like shredded duck leg tumbled through it, and crispy slices of chourico and what looked like smoked pork on top. I mean, on paper, how good does that sound? And even looking at the picture below – well, it does look the part.

And yes, in theory, this dish should have been a standout. But there’s that word, theory, again: in reality it somehow managed to be less than the sum of its parts. The chourico was lovely and smoky (you smelled it the instant the lid came off the foil container), there was plenty of duck and even the smoked pork – which I’d normally approach with caution – was salty and tasty. But somehow, none of that flavour had made it into the rice and so the whole thing was heavy going. 

And again, portion size and cost made for a confusing combination – this dish was eleven pounds, was far more food than I could physically eat and wasn’t tasty enough that I was remotely disappointed about having to leave some. If you liked it, it would be phenomenal value. It seemed especially odd compared to the chicken dish, which was also eleven pounds but, even by comparison, poor value. Poor value compared to Bakery House’s wonderful boneless baby chicken too, come to think of it.

Later, when we were emptying quite a lot of our dinner into one of Reading Council’s exciting new food recycling caddies, she pointed to a clump of something beige in the foil dish. “See that? That’s where I spat a chip out.” I’ve had some iffy chips in my time, often bad enough that I’ve not bothered finishing the portion, but spitting one out isn’t something I’ve ever had to do. The meal left a disappointment which lingered for the rest of the evening, only slightly redeemed by eating some phenomenal chocolate brownies (another birthday gift, as it happens).

I’ve really not looked forward to writing this review, and I’ve rarely taken less pleasure in saying that somewhere wasn’t my cup of tea. I so wanted to like O Português, and I very much wanted to be reminded of everything I love about Portugal. And I find myself in a difficult position because, despite having visited that country several times, I couldn’t even begin to tell you whether the dishes we ate were authentic. It might be that they were, and that I like Portuguese food less than I thought I did, or that they weren’t. 

Or it could just be that the restaurant just had an off day. I don’t even know, really, which is the best case scenario, out of those possible outcomes. I’m sure that O Português has enough of a customer base that this is no skin off their nose, but I still feel sad that I can’t recommend them. I wished that everything I had eaten had been smaller, better and more expensive – and wanting all three of those things from a restaurant, all at once, is just not how it should be.

All I really know is that a small independent restaurant, pretty much the only one of its kind in Reading, cooked a meal I very much struggled to enjoy, and a large part of me dearly wishes this week’s review had reported different news. We still have no tapas restaurant since the sad departure of I Love Paella, and I’m yet to find a Portuguese restaurant in this country that feels like it does their food justice. If you want chicken perfected on a grill, Bakery House remains the place to beat. And if you want the closest thing to Portuguese food here, I’m afraid you’ll have to head to Nando’s. Nando’s isn’t Portuguese either – it’s South African, as a matter of fact – but you probably knew that already, didn’t you?

O Português
21 Wokingham Road, Reading, RG6 1LE
0118 9268949

https://www.facebook.com/OPortuguesInTown
Order via: JustEat

Feature: Dining elsewhere

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This might be hard for you to believe, but Reading isn’t perfect. Even I, with my bad habit of standing on the virtual soapbox and shouting about its best bits, know that. I’ve talked in the past about all the types of restaurants I’d love to see open in Reading, from indies to (some) chains, but this week instead of a review I thought I’d go one step further and talk about some of my favourite restaurants outside Reading. These are places I would love to pick up and plonk somewhere in town, even if I know in my heart of hearts that they wouldn’t necessarily fit in.

This is by no means a list of the best restaurants anywhere, by the way. Often your favourite restaurant isn’t necessarily the best – the food might not be as flawless, the service might not be as polished, but simply put your favourite restaurants are the ones where you have the best times. Your mileage, should you ever get to one of this lot, will undoubtedly vary. And it’s not definitive, either: I missed out countless places in the interest of limiting this to half a dozen, including little bistros in Paris, sweet sun-kissed tavernas on Greek islands, Michelin starred joints deep in the Cotswolds and establishments from Toronto to Glasgow, from Prague to Istanbul. Loving restaurants is a wonderful thing, I think. Loving lists the way I do also brings a lot of joy. But trying to combine the two, it turns out, is rather an agonising pursuit.

Pierre Victoire, Oxford

(Photo courtesy of TripAdvisor)

Reading doesn’t really have a proper French bistro. A few places have come close (and Brebis is only a train ride away) but you’d hope a town the size of Reading could sustain somewhere like Oxford’s Pierre Victoire. Originally part of a now defunct chain (which at one point included Reading, so maybe we don’t deserve another after all) this place has thrived by offering some great classics, an amazing value set menu (where starters and desserts are only two quid each. No really) and proper French service – you know, the sort where they always seem slightly amused by you but want to charm your socks off none the less.

Despite being a pretty big restaurant, getting a table here is a real challenge unless you’ve booked ahead (which I singularly fail to do) so I sometimes end up eating here at lunch instead of dinner, just to make sure I do get to try it. On my most recent visit I tucked into a gorgeous quenelle of smooth chicken liver pate followed by a big stainless steel pot of moules marinière with skinny fries. I also nicked some of my companion’s potato rosti (sitting underneath a splendid, crispy confit duck leg) which would have been worth the price of admission alone. Lunch for two, including a crazily reasonable half bottle of Côtes du Rhône, came to thirty-six pounds. Thirty-six pounds! The tables are all squished together – which normally would annoy me, but here I like it because of the people-watching potential – and I never leave without wishing I could put Pierre’s in my pocket and bring it back on the train with me. Reading could really do with a little more ooh la la, n’est-ce pas?

Great Queen Street, London
Great-Queen-Street-Interior(Photo from the restaurant’s website)

I know that London is arguably the most exciting dining scene in the world right now. I know that every cuisine is represented, to dazzling effect, and that every month new places open, shifting the dynamic of the place ever so slightly. It must be lovely to have all that on your doorstep to choose from, from the high end to street food with every permutation in between. I know all that, and yet – and I know this will make me sound like a hick from the sticks – I have had so many disappointing meals there you would not believe.

I follow the critics, I ooh and aah over the meals (both the pictures in the papers and the ones they paint with their effortless sentences) and yet I’m so often underwhelmed. Whether it’s a neighbourhood restaurant a little off the Tube network, an old stager offering faded but charming grandeur or Michelin starred luxury on the top floor of some tall building, I often end up on the train back from Paddington thinking “what am I missing?”. Probably a lot, but what it means is that when I do go in I want to find somewhere central, reliable and decent that I can book in advance, where I won’t have to queue round the block for hours or spend two hours pretending I’m having more fun than I am.

At the moment, for me, that place is Great Queen Street. Just off Drury Lane, part of a group which includes legendary Waterloo gastropub The Anchor & Hope and Oxford’s Magdalen Arms. It’s just perfect – dark, clubby, welcoming and totally disinterested in being cool. The menu is the kind of unpretentious list where you want to order practically everything and the wine list is full of inexpensive delights (plenty from the Languedoc, I’m happy to say). Last time I went, I shared a chicken, leek and tarragon pie, all rich creamy filling topped with flaky pastry but with that beautiful slightly soggy layer just beneath, like a business class Fray Bentos, and I liked it so much I nearly wept. I would say that once you eat there, you’ll never go back to Sweeney and Todd – but to be honest you could say the same once you eat at Sweeney and Todd.

Bosco Pizzeria, Bristol

Despite discovering (if that’s even the right word, seeing as loads of you told me you loved it but just didn’t want me telling everyone) Papa Gee last year, I am still yearning for a comfy neighbourhood pizzeria. Well, I sort of found one, but the problem is that it’s on the Whiteladies Road in Bristol. And I always seem to end up there when I visit Bristol, despite it being a city with so many amazing restaurants (Wallfish in Clifton, for one, or the wonderful tapas restaurant Bravas). It’s not even Bristol’s coolest pizzeria – the up and coming Flour And Ash has taken that title – but it remains one of my favourite places to eat.

I’m normally there for lunch, but it’s the kind of restaurant that has perfected offering something for everyone, whether it’s small groups, dates or family outings. The menu is brilliant, with great antipasti (especially the burrata and coppa – to be honest I could gladly live off some combination of those two) leading up to the genuine highlight, the pizza. The base is light, chewy, ever so slightly charred and bubbly. The toppings are simple but steer clear of cliché. And – no small thing this – I love the service. It’s tattooed, passionate and informal (or, in a word, “Bristol”). I do rather collect pizzerias, especially abroad (La Briciola in Paris, Linko in Helsinki, I could go on) but there’s something about Bosco. Writing this now I can imagine sitting at a window table with some montepulciano, waiting for my pizza to arrive. And as much as I love Papa Gee, its slightly down at heel style and all, I’d love to see somewhere like Bosco dropped into one of the empty sites in the centre of Reading. That would be gert lush.

Bodegas Castañeda, Granada

Granada is the true home of tapas, where every alcoholic drink is accompanied with a small plate of free food, be that a basic wedge of tortilla or a helping of salty, crumbly manchego. If you love food then that alone is reason enough to visit, even without a visit to the beautiful Alhambra, the stunning Moorish fortress which stands sentinel over the city from its position at the top of a very steep hill. Well, that and the sherry. And the wine. And the more sherry.

Anyway, Bodegas Castañeda is in the heart of the city (one street along from, confusingly, an inferior establishment with almost exactly the same name) and, for me, it epitomises eating in Andalucia. Yes, there are still free tapas (the habas con jamon, broad beans with rich, savoury nuggets of ham, for instance) but the clientele here knows that the stuff you pay for is worth the jostling at the bar, which runs almost the entire length of the shallow, wide room. The staff, a wry bunch of super-efficient, slightly hangdog aproned men, serve sherry from large casks, pouring with a flourish that is more for entertainment than taste, and watching them work as a unit always fills me with admiration (and, probably more importantly, gratitude).

You need your wits – and your elbows – about you to eat at Bodegas Castañeda, but the rewards are enormous: simple, savoury slices of the delicious jamon that hangs over the bar, thick pieces of mojama – cured tuna – topped with almonds and drizzled with olive oil, the saltiest bacalao draped over the smallest slices of bread, an embarrassment of riches. My mouth is watering now, something of a Pavlovian reflex which I get almost every time I think about Granada. All that and you can eat and drink like royalty (and get royally sloshed) at Bodegas Castañeda for less than forty euros, provided you’re happy to muck in and try speaking a little Spanish. Believe me, it’s worth the effort.

Bonjardim, Lisbon
BonjardimI love Lisbon so much, and it has a much underrated food scene. Of course, there are the famous egg custard tarts and the port – everyone knows about those – but there’s so much more to it than that. Beautiful seafood, surprisingly good cheeses, petiscos that give any tapas out there a run for its money and my personal favourite, ginjinha, a rich sticky cherry liqueur sometimes served in (and you might want to brace yourself for this bit) an edible chocolate cup. Drink the liqueur, destroy the evidence, eat some chocolate into the bargain: trust me, some messy nights can begin this way.

Despite that, my favourite restaurant in Lisbon is in many ways one of its most basic. Bonjardim isn’t far from Rossio station, with a restaurants and tables on both sides of a little alley. It’s known as “Rei dos Frangos” (the king of chickens) and they aren’t kidding, because that’s what you order if you know what’s good for you. A whole spit-roasted chicken for two turns up with some slightly unnecessary chips, and it’s the most glorious, amazing, intoxicating thing. The skin has been rubbed with lemon, salt and oil until it’s almost brittle with the intense taste of wonderful crackling. Underneath, the meat is perfect; there’s a little pot of peri peri sauce you can brush on, if you feel that way inclined, but I’ve never seen the need. You just sit there, in the evening warmth, eating chicken and drinking wine or a frosted pint of Super Bock, watching the hawkers and the buskers wandering past on a seemingly eternal loop. Maybe we won’t ever get the weather, and it’s probably just my fanciful imagination, but I can picture something like this on Queen Victoria Street.

Can Paixano, Barcelona

I could have picked so many places in Barcelona for this piece. One of the finest meals I’ve ever had was in its Michelin starred restaurant Cinc Sentits, a meal so amazing that I wrote down every single course I ate in the tasting menu and for months after I could just get out the piece of paper, look at it and sigh. But last time I went, I found the strangest thing – the less informal a place was, the more fun I had.

So although I enjoyed the proper old-school glamour of the “rich man’s paella” at Set Portes, the real delights came from the stand-up tapas joints, places like El Bitxo and the venerable El Xampanyet, where the waiters effortlessly swish from table to table offering to top you up with cava (and people think the Italians have a monopoly on offers you cannot refuse). This reached its apex at Can Paixano, a little bar on the edge of the old port on a seemingly lifeless sidestreet – a long thin room with no discernible furniture where people jostle at the bar for saucers of cava at little more than a Euro a glass. Meat hangs from the ceiling and the no-frills menu behind the grill tells you what’s on offer. You order some chorizo or morcilla and sip your drink (slightly off-dry rose cava for me, since you asked) while it’s sliced and grilled or fried in front of your very eyes. Last time I went, a group of young Irish chaps were there, clearly unable to believe their luck having chanced upon the place completely by accident. I bet they were wishing their home town had somewhere a little like Can Paixano: I know I was.

So, those are some of my favourites. Why not chip in in the comments section and let me know some of yours?