Lisbon is the capital city of Portugal and has essentially become the capital city of fine food and drink.
It has more Michelin starred restaurants per capita than London! With 10 for a population of around 500,000 in Lisbon vs 71 for a population of nearly 9mn in London.*
So here are just three choices on where to eat and drink in Lisbon!
Time Out Market
Yeah yeah, it's been done to death. Everyone knows the Time Out Market, and with good reason. Nowhere else will you find a food hall with more gourmet choices for food and drink than here, not far from the banks of the River Targus.
Time Out is a site that this blog takes some inspiration from, so look out for the Just Three Choices Market one day. But for now, make do with a place that has kiosk type outlets for actual named chefs, alongside many other cuisine choices, from the staple cod cakes and pastel de natas, through to more esoteric options like octopus hotdogs.
Be sure to try the wine bar in the middle of the hall, a great selection of choices, with the bartenders more than happy for you to try variations of what you might want to order to be sure you're happy. Not just happy for you to do it, but actually insist! Which was fun for your writer given I was ordering a white, rose and red on one particular evening 😀.
By The Wine
Five minutes north of the famous 'Pink Street', is By The Wine, a bustling wine and meat bar that has some of the best charcuterie your writer has ever tasted. Watching the staff there take time to finely carve meat directly off a pig's leg with such finesse is borderline mesmerising. Apologies to the vegetarians and vegans reading this... 😬.
This place also has sommeliers that know their stuff with the extensive wine menu (which is probably a really fun job) and will talk you through the wine list and also let you have a taste before committing to purchasing a glass (although most of Lisbon seems to be like that!).
Ordinário
Can you get anymore hipster than a cafe attached to an art supply store? Maybe if that cafe serves low rent beer and has a graffitied toilet room with tattooed staff. Which Ordinário has all of, and its awesome because of it.
This is probably the single coolest place to chill in the sun (or the shade), whilst watching the world go by overlooking the River Targus.
The coffee is strong, the beer is cold, the eggs are scrambled to the right consistency. Go here, and reeelaxxx.
*It's worth highlighting that the actual resident population probably aren't the people going to those restaurants given the average salary of the Portuguese, and the tourist numbers is Lisbon far outstrip actual population by about seven to one pre-Covid, and roughly three to one during the height of Covid in 2020. It's a bit of a sad story in hyper gentrification due to the impact on some locals, but this gentrification and tourism is partially responsible for Portugal being able to navigate the fallout of economic downturns of late. It's a bit of a case of the needs of the few versus the needs of the many, and like most complex issues, there's no right or wrong side to it. The detail is a bit out of scope for this particular blog piece, but The Guardian covers it in this article.