Lisbon – A Feast of Many Nations

As Portugal’s economy strengthens, more visitors are supporting restaurants old and new. (@IshayGovender), For Business Day, May 2018

Strewn across the Seven Hills, Lisbon’s azulejo (ceramic tile)-covered buildings stack together forming countless arches through which the famous yellow eléctricos, or trams pass, rickety over the cobblestones that are shiny with wear.

The city’s transformation, immediately evident in the towering cranes to rival Manhattan (or Camps Bay) bending over these once-dilapidated buildings, transforming them into hotels or luxury apartments for short-term rentals, is fairly recent. Until 2015 Portugal was in the grip of an economic crisis after the catastrophic crash of 2010.

One of the sectors to recover, hand-in-hand with tourism, has been the restaurant industry. Now it’s common to stand in two-hour queues at the height of summer for bowls of ceviche at chef Kiko Martin’s A Cevicheria in Príncipe Real’s hip Rua Dom Pedro V; to three-month waiting lists for a table at lauded chef José Avillez’s Michelin two-star restaurant, Belcanto; or to swig beer-while-you-wait bought with plastic booze tokens at the no-reservation ticket system Cervejaria Ramiro, the city’s shrine to the finest seafood, in a working man’s tavern. From trendy to old-school, meat-eaters to vegans, in Lisbon there’s a restaurant or hole-in-the-wall diner to suit your taste and budget, and reciprocally, a market to support it, it would seem.

The Lumiares Hotel [from €246 (R3600) per room, sharing in the off-season] is a new star in Lisbon’s accommodation scene in the gentrifying neighbourhood of Bairro Alto, where many older locals still live and work, and bars and clubs serve the night-time crowds. In this converted former 18^th Century palace, guests can enjoy the privacy of apartment living combined with the service, including room service, of a regular hotel. Adjacent to the rooftop bar that looks all the way to the fortress of the commanding São Jorge Castle on the hill, is Lumni by veteran chef Miguel Castro e Silva where he serves what he calls “terroir-based food with a story and a history” in a slick setting.

“Remember, traditional Portuguese food was meant to feed the peasant, the farm-worker, to give them energy for a long day. Most of our popular dishes are a derivative of that,” he explains, saying he prepared fish tartare more than 20-years ago, long before the rest of the world embraced ceviche.  Dishes on the menu are some of his oldest, and still en vogue, like sea bass with orange and fennel, chestnut soup with dumplings and a porcini risotto that exemplifies the skill needed to make deceptively simple food exceptional. [An 8-course tasting menu goes for €56 (R820) per person]

Lisbon – A Feast of Many Nations

There’s a twinkle in his eyes. “People have short memories,” Castro e Silva says. “And this current economic recovery is very new. When you’ve been in the industry as long as I have [over 26 years], you understand that fashions come and go. Weather, price, the temperament of the people, they play a part. But solid cooking skills are evergreen.”

At one of Lisbon’s newer restaurants, Prado, meaning ‘meadow’, chef Antonio Galapito, just 27, has returned home from a number of years working under famed chef Nuno Mendes in London. His return signifies a sign of the times, as restaurants, and opportunities for younger people who left during the crisis, mushroom in neighbourhoods across Lisbon. It’s hard to imagine that the sunshine-filled space filled with jungle-like potted plants you see in cheerful Instagram posts, was once a fish factory. It sort of comes full circle when Galapito speaks passionately about the in-season Portuguese sarda (a type of mackerel) and meagre (like sea bream) on the current menu.

Prado’s team has managed to delight Lisboetas in another way too – there’s plenty greenery on the plates. Sharing portions studded with seasonal fish and vegetables (the latter, a rare sight at Portuguese restaurants), arrive as they’re ready. “Personally, I like the combination of meat and salad, or fish and vegetables,” Galapito says.

Delicate clams are cloaked in a smoked butter sauce with wilted chard, coriander and fried bread; the fish dishes come with radish and ferments (there are experimental jars on the counters) and, the most surprising: a dessert of barley “rice” pudding with salted caramel is enriched with mushroom dust. Natural wine, ethically butchered meat, fairly paid farmers, the young chef lists Prado’s philosophy but emphasises that you can’t call what they do typically “Portuguese” food. [Expect to pay about €65 (R953) with wine, for two for dinner]

What constitutes Portuguese food? Every chef I speak to tells me about Portugal’s golden age of The Discoveries, when this tiny sea-faring nation was the king of trans-continental voyage. It was Vasco da Gama who brought chillies and tomatoes to India from the Americas. Maize arrived in West Africa in 1502 via the Portuguese too. Clues can be found in Portugal’s heyday of exploration, compounded by its (unforgivably violent) colonial past – Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Macau and Goa, for example, all bear traces of Portuguese rule and in return, have influenced the local food to this day.

“Due to our extensive travel, we brought a lot of influence and we’ve left a lot of influence,” José Avillez explains at his popular Bairro do Avillez complex of four restaurants, including the closed-door cabaret Beco, housed in a former church in chic Chiado. He notes the Arab impact on cookery, especially in the Algarve in the south. Take almonds, oranges, coriander, carob, dried apricots, raisins, sugarcane and saffron. “We use cinnamon in our cooking like no one in Europe, except a part of Spain that was influenced by the Arabs too,” Avillez says.

“And rice?” he asks. “The Portuguese serve white rice as a side like Asian countries. We’ll eat rice with fish, with meat, and to share. In Spain and Italy they only have it in a main dish, like paella.” He goes on to explain that Portugal shares some similarities with Mediterranean countries, though it’s situated along the Atlantic Ocean. “Olives, bread, tomatoes, wine – the things of the Mediterranean diets, we have it here. But when you travel around the country – the Algarve, the centre, the north, you’ll find so many ingredients that you only get there.”

Portugal may be small, but the rich and diverse composite of regional produce and livestock make it difficult to outline a singular Portuguese cuisine. There are dishes that have won the foreign visitor’s heart over the years – grilled sardines, buttery €1.50 (R22) custard tarts, warming caldo verde (a soup of potato and collard greens), açorda (a bread, garlic and egg stew) and garlic-studded prego (tender beef sandwiches). We’ve come to appreciate the egg-rich confections with their roots in Portugal’s convents.

For chef Henrique of Alma, a one-starred Michelin restaurant (now located in Chiado, Lisbon), it began as a Portuguese contemporary kitchen, one of the first back in 2009 to “democratise fine dining to make it more accessible.”  Sá Pessoa’s overall goal is to showcase the creative side associated with the roots and traditions of Portuguese cuisine, he says. “At Alma we show the modern, cosmopolitan side of the kitchen, but at the same time always drawing on our established culinary traditions.” [Five-course seafood tasting menu €100 (R1466) per person]

Sá Pessoa adds that it’s an exciting and gratifying time to run a restaurant in Lisbon: “We’ve made our errors as a nation, but I am very proud to be in Portugal at this great moment and to be part of a group of chefs that are changing our gastronomy.”

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