LoveBites in Lisbon

Almost six months ago (I know a really delayed post - apologies!) Adam and I embarked on a trip to Lisbon in Portugal for a long weekend.  After a days worth of research (we booked this only a week in advance) I had found that Portugal was obviously very famous for its seafood, sweet pastry treats and red wine, all culinary delights I like to dabble in. I had found a couple of great reviews on dining in Lisbon and noted these particular restaurants in my travel notebook. We soon arrived in search of sun and beach and found ourselves in a hotel a little on the outskirts of the city centre, rather a long walk or a cheap €5 taxi ride which we tended to do most times.

We arrived mid afternoon and the first thing I devoured was an ice cold Sagres beer straight from the tap. Its light, smooth and refreshingly cold flavour made it an ideal beer for me and needless to say I had a good few more of these on this trip. We then went for a bit of a wander (this time we actually walked to the city centre) and settled in to a tourist trap restaurant close to the Ministry of Justice where we dined on Sangria and a Portuguese antipasti as the skies clouded over and bucketed down for a short while. After a good few euros later we decided to head back to the hotel and regroup for our evening outing.  We chose to dine in one of the restaurants I had looked up on our first night as I had read quite a few good reviews on this one and even the hotel staff were enthusiastic about our chosen venue for the evening - Sacremento in the Chiado district.

We arrived a little too early for our meal at 9pm and were seated in the smoking bar lounge area (the Portuguese follow the same tradition for most of the Mediterranean by eating rather late). On entering the restaurant I had the feeling that we were entering into an exclusive. Our coats were taken by the welcoming waiter, the lightening was suitably dimmed, the diners were dressed in all sorts from casual jeans to some very short mini dresses and the cocktail list looked dreamy. We made good friends with the bar tender and downed another Sagres whilst we waited perusing the surroundings of our venue.    The ceilings were low in the lounge bar and separated by ancient archways that looked like they had been restored. After further research in the menu I read that Sacramento is actually housed in the restored ruins of the Valadares Palace which was built in the eighteenth century. This combined with the fuchsia pink, deep red and brown colour scheme and candles creating some mood lightening made for an enticing and romantic evening.

The restaurant offers a modern approach to Portuguese cuisine and there was plenty on the menu we wanted to try. After ordering we saw our neighbours getting what seemed like special treatment - they had a waiter deboning a suckling pig shank immaculately with a spoon and fork and placing the meat perfectly on the bed of spinach. After oogling at this culinary show we were immensely disappointed we did not get this for our choices! However we were not so disappointed once our own food arrived. We shared garlic prawns to start which were rich in garlic and heavily oiled. I then had a delicious plump cod kebab with grilled zucchini and cherry tomatoes served on a bed of luscious fluffy potato mash. The cod was thick and melted in my mouth, combined with the juicy tomatoes and mash it made for a perfect dish. Adam chose a roasted duck leg with a rice and vegetable rosti. He was a bit disappointed in his chosen dish (especially after seeing our neighbours!) as his rosti and duck were a bit dry. Needless to say after this and a lovely bottle of Portuguese red we were rather full from our days eating activities and decided to call it a night prior to dessert.  Our experience of Sacramento was exactly what we were after. Great attentive service, great decor and mostly delicious food and a great start to our holiday.

Our second day in Lisbon we departed on a day trip to Sintra to visit the magical Pena Palace. Here in Sintra we wandered the tiny pavement streets and here we were introduced to travesseiros, a special pastry of Sintra. These little sweet treats involved a long rectangular shaped pastry injected with an egg and almond custard, and covered in sugar. Despite struggling to get into the bag of our travesseiro we were rather taken with these tasty treats and almost succumbed to getting another one!

Our next culinary experience involved a local restaurant in the countryside en route back to the coast. Here we were surrounded by Iberico Pork legs hanging from the ceiling. We were dining with some Brazilian travellers who advised us we should pay extra to try the shaved pork (much like what we know of parma ham or prosciutto) and melon. This was one of the highlights of the trip - having never tried shaved ham and melon before both Adam and I were completely blown away. This black pig had the most amazing smoked flavour and melted in your mouth. Combined with the juiciness of the melon, the sweet and savoury flavours complimented each other and swelled with succulence in your mouth. We seriously could not get enough of this and vowed to try this again in other Mediterranean countries!! Adam went on to try a and I had a locally caught and cooked piece of cod. This was the biggest cod fillet I had seen, grilled in garlic butter and garnished with fresh parsley and lemons. I stupidly started with the smaller end of the fish and by the time I got to the best part I couldn't even finish it! Must to my immense disappointment. Unfortunately I did not take photos of this meal due to dining with strangers (I did not want to embarrass Adam!) however I did manage to get a few snaps of the pig legs dropping from the ceiling.

One of the other specialities of Lisbon is the Patris de Belem. These tasty morsels are a traditional sweet treat derived from the early nineteenth century during the Liberal Revolution when someone from the monasteries that were being shut down offered to sell these sweet pastries to make some money. These pastries became so popular they are now sold in a resident shop that started in 1837 and is still running to this day as an attraction for both locals and tourists.  The pastries are round custard tarts grilled so the top of the custard has a ever so slight crunchy film on the top and then sprinkled with icing sugar. These pastries are so good that we certainly went back up for more! And definitely worth the 20 minute train journey from Lisbon city centre.

The next restaurant chosen for dinner Largo (also in the Chaido district) did not live up to the reviews I had read. This place sounded amazing, with creative fine dining, good reviews and to top it off it had a fish tank in the wall filled with jellyfish! Unfortunately when we arrived we were seated in the mezzanine (disappointingly not near the jellyfish). We were placed in the middle table of two other couples, one old and one young, the scene felt a bit awkward to say the least. There wasn't many places to look other than the people to your left and right as you were seated so close to both of them. We found the service to be inattentive, we were left waiting for our bottle of wine and sparkling water for almost ten minutes, and we could clearly see other tables getting better service than us. The food was uneventful as well, the highlight of the meal being probably being Adam's main dish which I am even struggling to remember now whilst looking at my pictures.

We settled on two savoury courses and a dessert to share. I went for a very thin unexciting pumpkin soup garnished with crostini, chives and the tiniest amount of pancetta, followed by a bland yellowy saffron risotto with two scallops garnished with caviar. I am a fan of risotto and this one was cooked well however the whole dish together felt like Goldilocks porridge gone wrong. Adam's starter sounded plain but was a bit more interesting, a linguine watery pesto with three maybe four 'tiger' prawns which definitely had the roar taken out of them. He followed with what I believe is a pork dish with a barley, chickpea, mushroom and bacon broth. We both remember this being tasty, the flavours and the textures complementing each other nicely.  The dessert I think was a salted caramel cream with some type of chocolate cheesecake or pud? Clearly wasn't good enough for me to remember that well. For a restaurant that had good reviews I am sad to say the overall experience felt plain and expensive, and was absolutely nothing compared to Sacramento which was so good we ended up going again the following night!

Our second experience of Sacramento was still very good - the waiter remembered us from the night before last and invited us to try some of his gin cocktails much to our liking. To be honest the desserts of crème brulee and a lemony spongy type traditional Portuguese thing were nothing to go on about. The mussels to start with in white wine were soft and with a good kick of sauce. But the best part of the meal was the long awaited pork shank. We had advised the waiter we were intrigued to see the spoon and fork trick once again and we were not disappointed, the red wine flowed the pork was devoured and good times were had.

Our first experience of Portugal was a gooden. I am a sucker for their beer, red wine, sweet pastries, seafood and pork. We had some great meals and some not so great meals, the food varied in price but was mostly reasonable. Overall it was an experience we thoroughly enjoyed and I look forward to exploring more culinary specialities that Portugal has to offer in the near future.