Let’s get down to it: Lisbon has excellent food. Everything I’ve eaten thus far has been a delight.
Everywhere you go here, there are restaurants of every nationality next to Portuguese fare. There are obscene numbers of cafes and gelato shops. The waterfront has unbroken rows of seafood restaurants that run for many city blocks. There are shops just dedicated to putting things on French fries (and yes, I ate some piri-piri French fries for dinner one night).
Many of the restaurants, especially in the high-traffic areas, have front door hosts who will run after you with a menu if you attempt to walk past. They are sharks, attracted to motion. If you make eye contact, you will be hit with a rapid-fire hard sell on every dish in the restaurant. NYC stock traders are tamer than these restauranteurs.
Yesterday for lunch, we were the focus of one such shark attack. After some negotiation and a look at the menu, we succumbed to the restaurant’s charms. I also fell to a couple of upsells. Thankfully, it all worked out to be an excellent meal:
- Bolinhos de Bacalhau, a codfish fritter that is something like a giant hushpuppy
- A very large octopus tentacle
- Cataplana peixe com marisco, wherein I received a vat of spicy red stew consisting of fish, shellfish, peppers, and potatoes
- A bottle of dry white wine
- Two tiny shots of white port, which the waiter brought to us as a surprise at the end
Today for dinner, we found that we had/hadn’t learned our lesson. Near the triumphal arch, we were pulled in by a restauranteur with a similar seafood menu. We were lucky again, because we were seated upstairs on a balcony over the busy promenade, dining alone in the room until a second family came up at the very end. (Most other diners were eating on tables in the middle of the square.) We wound up with some very nice calamari, a large cross-section of cod, and a plate full of cuttlefish (!). Cuttlefish, we learned, is very similar to octopus in terms of culinary experience. We also discovered an inexpensive lemon radler that goes very well with seafood.
Outside of the seafood experience, we found a divine crepe shop about a block from our hotel. Run by an older couple (a French woman and an Argentine man), the cafe serves a dizzying array of savory and sweet crepes. I ordered a crepe with almonds, dark chocolate, banana, and whipped cream. Fes had a savory crepe containing tomatoes, tuna, and at least one fancy cheese.
The crepe joint also had dirty chai, which is masala chai mixed with foamed milk and a shot of espresso. I wasn’t sure how that would work out, but I’m planning to go back tomorrow for another one. (The shop is named Chez Bea, by the way.)
Another discovery we made today was ovos moles, a traditional Portuguese pastry that is a light pastry shell filled with sweet cream made with sugar and egg yolk. They usually come in certain shapes, like barrels, shells, and fish. We got fish, to go with my sardine scarf and sardine earrings.
The verdict on ovos moles is that they are very tasty and extremely eggy. The insides are concentrated egg yolk. I didn’t know things could be even eggier than regular egg yolks.
Finally, walking in the neighborhood north of the triumphal arch, we found a straight-up candy store, which sold every type of gummy candy you can dream of. Giant gummy bananas. Life-size gummy frogs. Gummy strawberries the size of your hand. Hot pepper gummies. Fes dove in like, well, a kid in a candy store.
We had a gummy tasting when we got back to the hotel tonight. I most enjoyed my gummy frog.
For as good as the candies were at that place, they also had the thing that horrified me most today, even more than the flea market dildos:
I am so sorry you had to see that. It lives in my brain now, so I had to share my misery. Mea culpa.
As an apology, I offer this bit of wisdom, seen yesterday on a streetside:
