10 Portuguese Delicacies You Can’t Miss in Lisbon and Sintra
Portuguese food is built on a few very good ingredients cooked without fuss: salt cod, sardines, pork, bread, olive oil, eggs and a great deal of sugar. The problem for a visitor is not finding it, it is that there is more of it than one stomach can hold in a week. These are the ten snacks, pastries and small dishes we tell guests not to leave without trying, where they come from, and where around Lisbon and Sintra we go for them.
1. Pastel de nata
The custard tart, invented by the monks of the Jerónimos Monastery in Belém and sold since 1837 by the bakery next door, now called Pastéis de Belém, which still guards the recipe. A good one has a crisp, layered pastry shell and a custard that is set at the edges and just wobbling in the middle, with the top blistered dark. Eat it warm with cinnamon. Belém is the original; Manteigaria in Chiado is the best in the centre, and any bakery with a queue of locals at 8 am is a safe bet.
2. Pastel de bacalhau
Salt cod, potato, egg, parsley and onion, shaped into an oval with two spoons and fried. Every tasca has them on the counter, and they are the standard thing to order with a glass of wine while you wait for a table. Avoid the tourist versions stuffed with cheese; the plain one, warm, is the real thing.
3. Bifana
Lisbon’s sandwich: thin slices of pork marinated in garlic, white wine and paprika, simmered and stuffed into a soft roll, eaten standing at a counter with mustard and a small beer. The classic address is O Trevo on Praça Luís de Camões in Chiado, but any café with a pot of pork simmering on the counter will do.
4. Croquete
The pastel de bacalhau’s meaty cousin: a cylinder of slow-cooked beef, breaded and fried, sold in the same glass counters. Alongside it you will usually see rissóis (half-moon pastries filled with shrimp) and chamuças, the samosas that came back from Goa and Mozambique. Order a plate of the three with a beer and you have a Lisbon lunch.
5. Sardinha assada
Grilled sardines, on bread, at a street party. From June to August, and above all on the night of Santo António on 12 June, the old neighbourhoods of Alfama and Graça smell of sardines on charcoal. They are only good in those months, when the fish is fat; out of season, order something else. Eaten with your fingers, with boiled potatoes and a pepper salad.
6. Travesseiro de Sintra
Sintra’s own pastry: a rectangular pillow of puff pastry filled with egg and almond cream, dusted with sugar, and served warm. It was created at the Piriquita bakery in the village in the 1940s and is still best there, eaten on the spot. Every one of our Sintra tours stops for one, and most guests go back for a second.
7. Queijada de Sintra
The older Sintra pastry, documented since the 13th century: a small tart of fresh cheese, sugar, egg and cinnamon in a thin crisp shell, sold in paper-wrapped stacks of six. Lighter than a pastel de nata and easier to carry home. Look for Queijadas da Sapa on the road into the village.
8. Pão com chouriço
A bread roll baked with a piece of smoked chouriço sausage inside, sold hot from wood-fired ovens at markets and fairs. It is the snack you smell before you see it, and the best version is at the medieval fair in Óbidos or from the bakeries along the road to Fátima, where we stop on the Fátima, Batalha, Nazaré & Óbidos tour.
9. Ginjinha
Not food, but you cannot list Lisbon snacks without it: a sour-cherry liqueur served in a shot glass, with or without a cherry in the bottom, from tiny standing-room bars around Rossio. A Ginjinha, on Largo de São Domingos, has been pouring it since 1840. In Óbidos it is served in a small chocolate cup, which you then eat.
10. Moscatel de Setúbal and Azeitão cheese
South of the river, on the Arrábida peninsula, the local pairing is a sweet fortified Moscatel wine with a small round of Azeitão sheep’s cheese, so soft you eat it with a spoon, and a tortas de Azeitão sponge roll. It is the end-of-day tasting on our Magic Arrábida tour and the reason many guests take a bottle home.
Where to eat them all
You could tick off most of this list in one long walk through Baixa, Chiado and Alfama, and the rest on a day out of the city. If you would rather have someone who knows which counter has the freshest pastéis and which bakery in Sintra still makes them by hand, that is part of what our guides do on every tour, whether it is a private Lisbon tour or a day in Sintra.