Lisbon and Portugal in general are known for offering delicious, rich cuisine based on working with simple products.
The Portuguese love and showcase quality products, especially fish, which they adore (cod, sardine, sea bass, sea bream, etc…). Naturally, restaurants follow these natural culinary affinities by offering many dishes based on these ingredients.
Lisbon, as the capital, reflects this typical cuisine but offers the advantage of providing other choices, within easy reach (or rather, within walking distance!).Voyage à Lisbonnehas an unwavering principle: to offer in its personalized programmes addresses that respect the local culture and showcase Portuguese heritage and know-how. We thus offer both typical tascas and more modern establishments. But each of them meets this essential criterion: making you savour Portugal on the plate.
We’ll therefore set aside here restaurants whose cuisine is exotic (Asian, Indian, American, Mexican, etc…). For your information, if you’d still like the best addresses for these world cuisines in Lisbon, don’t hesitate to contact us so we can include them in your personalized programme,here.
We’ll divide our article into two parts: traditional Portuguese-cuisine restaurants and modern restaurants whose cuisine draws on Portuguese flavours to offer unique and original dishes.
1 – THE BEST TASCAS IN LISBOA
We’re going to disappoint you a little in this paragraph: no address will be revealed here!
Don’t leave — as a visitor, it’s important to understand why these addresses must be recommended by word of mouth,and why we only share them with our clients: if we want to preserve a city’s authenticity,if we want to keep that “little local restaurant that looks unremarkable from the outside but is a real treasure”, it’s essential that it doesn’t appear online.
Which, you’ll agree, is difficult today. ButVoyage à Lisbonnepositions itself against mass tourism, unfortunately created not by travellers themselves but by external circumstances: the city’s tourism policy, excessive advertising, activities created for tourists and fuelled by travel agencies whose profitability goal is incompatible with quality tourism, tourist-trap restaurants with mediocre food and rushed service, etc…
As a traveller, what we love is precisely taking our time, discovering a city for what it has to offer and not for what it wants to sell at all costs.
Our position is therefore firm but healthy: a city’s soul is preserved only through the efforts of tourism stakeholders, its residents and its local policy. We choose to protect these tascas (traditional restaurants) from tourist invasion by taking care to book a table only for small groups and couples who share the same travel ethic 🙂
Which we’ll be delighted to do for you if you entrust us with organizing your stay in Lisbon!
2 – ESTABLISHMENTS OFFERING MODERN CUISINE, INSPIRED BY TRADITIONAL PORTUGUESE CUISINE
Here it’s much easier to reveal a few exclusive addresses, as these restaurants already have international-facing communication.
Here we’ll share 2 establishments among the providers Voyage à Lisbonne is delighted to work with, which also give you exclusive benefits :
Bairro do Avillez
It’s a magnificent establishment, both in terms of decoration and service quality, but also and above all, of the cuisine!
Located in the heart of the city, this restaurant respects the tradition of the typical tasca while bringing new flavours and continually seeking to reinvent the flagship dishes of Portuguese cuisine.
The venue in which it operates hosts three different concepts, belonging to the same establishment:
- the first is more of aconvivial spotwhere you share tapas with friends or colleagues,
- the second is theBairro do Avillez restaurantproper, located under a magnificent glass roof, with the kitchens open to the dining room (which lets customers admire the preparation of the dishes),
- the last is acrazy concept, where the most intrigued travellers will enjoy themselves (gourmet cabaret with a tasting dinner/show)
Voyage à Lisbonne works with this establishment because its Chef is a lover of Portuguese gastronomic culture, he wishes to extend its reach as widely as possible.
It’s an indescribable treat, andVoyage à Lisbonnehas a delicious surprise in store for you on arrival 🙂
Bastardo
Yes, it is indeed an almost literal translation that you can guess from the meaning of the restaurant’s name: bastard.
As you’ll have understood,this is a humorous name, precisely to highlight the blend of a traditional cuisine revisited with a modern twist that this establishment offers. “Bastardo” is, as they like to define themselves, theillegitimate child of Portuguese cuisine !
The venue is located on the first floor of a hotel facing Praça do Rossio, so perfectly central, and is areal delight from every point of view : the decoration is subtly craftedto make it a convivial and original place,the cuisine is, as mentioned above,absolutely excellent, flirting between the traditional and the modern, the original and the essential, andthe service will meet all the demands of a lover of fine food and good wines !
As a complement to this article, you can also read our article on “where to taste good Port in Lisbon?” to discover all the best addresses for wine tasting (and Port in particular!)
