Tascas Are the Finest Locations to Eat in Lisbon, Portugal

what a bistro is. If hard-pressed, you possibly can most likely outline trattoria, too. However how a few tasca? 

That query was on my thoughts as I ate lunch at Tasca do Gordo (or “Fatty’s Tasca”), a no-frills canteen on Lisbon‘s waterfront. Housed in a windowless concrete constructing, the inside was simply as plain: white tiles, vibrant lighting, pink plastic chairs. However the place was filled with development guys, workplace staff, households, and buddies on lunch dates. 

“Tascas are for sustenance, not for opulence,” mentioned the meals historian and chef André Magalhães, who’s my go-to once I need to be taught extra about Portuguese delicacies. He was drizzling chili oil over dobrada — tripe braised with white beans and served in a terra-cotta bowl. Between bites, Magalhães gave me a fast lesson on the tasca’s humble beginnings. 

In 1755, he defined, Lisbon was flattened by an earthquake, which was instantly adopted by a tsunami. To rebuild, laborers had been recruited from Portugal’s far north and Galicia, in northwestern Spain. They got here in nice numbers. Over time, a few of these working as carvoeiros, or charcoal distributors, opened retailers that offered wine and, finally, one-pot dishes, just like the tripe and bean stew Magalhães and I had been having fun with. And so the tasca was born. 

“Any one who wanted to rely his pennies would go to a tasca,” he mentioned.

In the course of the twentieth century, tascas dotted each neighborhood of Lisbon, serving as inexpensive lunchrooms for the working class. Additionally they grew to become related to homestyle Portuguese cooking, utilizing on a regular basis elements like salt cod, sardines, and potatoes. In latest many years, as native tastes have expanded and financial forces have squeezed the underside line, the common-or-garden tasca has discovered itself below risk. However whereas their numbers have dwindled, a brand new technology has come to understand these unpretentious eating rooms — and is searching for to maintain the custom alive.

I wished to be taught extra about these beloved institutions, so I reached out to Ricardo Dias Felner, a Portuguese meals author, who steered lunch at his native hang-out. Adega Photo voltaic Minhoto, which is positioned subsequent to a fireplace station in Alvalade, a quiet residential space not removed from Lisbon’s airport, had clearly been renovated sooner or later — it now has faux bricks and plastic crops. But it surely retains basic touches: a dessert case, paper protecting the tables, cheeky service, and a handwritten checklist of the day’s specials.

“Tascas know easy methods to take one thing low cost and make it tasty,” Felner mentioned as we studied the menu. There was costeleta de novilho no churrasco (grilled beef steak), ensopado de borrego (lamb stew), and choco frito com arroz de feijão (deep-fried cuttlefish with rice and beans). He identified that Mercado de Alvalade, a terrific meals market, was steps away. “Tascas don’t have plenty of storage, in order that they go to the market daily,” he mentioned. 

Since that market is understood for seafood, we ordered the grilled sardines. I mimicked Felner and tore open a chewy Portuguese roll, topping it with the fish, drizzling it with olive oil, and consuming the salty, smoky bundle with my fingers. 

On Felner’s suggestion, I subsequent went to A Provinciana, a century-old spot close to the historic Rossio prepare station. With its hanging legs of cured ham, conventional tile work, a scribbled menu taped to the window, and wall of cuckoo clocks, this place had the country look down. 

“It’s a conventional institution, owned by a household,” mentioned my waitress, Carla Fernandes, who wore a bata — a light-blue checked apron that’s virtually a standard-issue tasca uniform. Her mom was within the kitchen, and her father was behind the bar. 

I ordered the galinha de cabidela (hen simmered in hen blood and rice), a dish that traces its roots to northern Portugal. I paired it with a small pitcher of pink wine from Beira Inside, the household’s ancestral homeland, additionally within the north. Dessert was a slice of white melon often known as branco do Ribatejo, which was served with a free shot of a do-it-yourself natural liqueur from an unmarked bottle and a thumbs-up from Carla’s father, Amérigo. “Fixe?” he requested. “Was it cool?” 

Not all family-run tascas are this heat and fuzzy, I got here to be taught. O Cantinho do Alfredo is a tiny restaurant within the residential neighborhood of Campolide the place the usual greeting is a gruff “How many individuals?” But the harried tone and fossilized ambiance — light tile flooring, creaky fan, dusty bottles — had been unlikely precursors for what turned out to be my most scrumptious tasca meal but. 

I used to be joined by Alexandra Prado Coelho, a veteran meals author at Público, considered one of Portugal’s main newspapers, who urged me to strive a basic dish, iscas à Portuguesa — skinny slices of pork liver marinated in white wine, garlic, and bay leaf. The dish emerged from the kitchen trying nearly off-puttingly plain: just a few ungarnished slices of liver and a few boiled potatoes on a stainless-steel platter. However the liver had been seared to perfection in lard and expertly seasoned, so the dish was a triumph of simplicity. 

Issues acquired even higher with dessert. We went with peras bêbedas, or peeled pears stewed in pink wine, sugar, and cinnamon sticks. The wine discount imbued the pears with a purple, syrupy sheen, and had been tender sufficient to eat with a spoon. 

Over the blare of a Nineties-era TV mounted within the nook, I requested Prado Coelho in regards to the outlook for tascas. “The actual ones are disappearing,” she mentioned. “They was in each neighborhood. Now there’s just some that survive.”

Just like the earthquake-tsunami again in 1755, Lisbon is present process one other seismic shift. The twin forces of tourism and gentrification are ramping up the price of residing, making town one of the vital costly in Europe in relation to common native salaries. Household-run eating places are struggling to pay ever-increasing rents, payments, and wages. But Prado Coelho expressed some hope that enterprising younger cooks had been serving to to replace tascas for the following technology. 

To pattern this new breed, I took her lead and went to O Velho Eurico, a buzzy restaurant on a small cobblestoned junction in Mouraria, considered one of Lisbon’s oldest neighborhoods. I arrived on the tail finish of lunch service on a Wednesday, when Zé Paulo Moreira da Rocha, the chef and proprietor, was prowling the eating room wielding a squirt gun loaded with bagaço, Portugal’s model of grappa. Though this has turn into one thing of a ritual on the restaurant, he managed to ship extra booze onto my eating companion’s shirt than into her mouth. 

In 2019, when the 21-year-old Rocha took over O Velho Eurico, the earlier house owners had one situation: that he hold the institution’s authentic identify. The son of restaurateurs himself, Rocha opted to retain just a few different parts, too, together with a tiled mural that depicts the previous proprietor on the grill. However many different issues about O Velho Eurico really feel completely trendy. 

The partitions are lined with graffiti, plates are mismatched, and basic dishes like a bacalhau salad are elevated. Within the conventional preparation, salt cod is soaked in water and squeezed dry by hand, then served with sliced onions and olive oil. At O Velho Eurico, it took the type of snowy flakes of cod in a wealthy cod gelatin speckled with inexperienced drops of leek-infused olive oil.

Only a brief stroll away, I discovered one other trendy take. “Persons are not right here simply to eat — it’s sort of an occasion,” mentioned Pedro Monteiro, the proprietor of Tasca Baldracca, as he flitted from desk to desk pouring photographs from a large inexperienced bottle of a do-it-yourself fig-leaf liqueur. A local of Brazil who was impressed by the casual, boozy nature of tascas, he encourages his cooks to take a seat and drink with diners, to “minimize the space between the kitchen and clients.”

The meals was extra Brazilian than Portuguese, extra Tropicália than fado: beef tartare with pastel de vento, a deep-fried Brazilian pastry; a beet salad with a tapioca-based cracker that regarded like purple bubble wrap; and grilled cuttlefish with a bright-orange sauce impressed by moqueca, a Brazilian seafood stew. This meal, which packed extra coloration and aptitude than all my earlier outings mixed, made me reexamine my concept of what a tasca might be.

After visiting practically 10 tascas, each basic and new, I assumed that I had tasted all of it. However that was earlier than I made it to Ofício, a glossy, trendy restaurant in Lisbon’s upscale Chiado neighborhood.

I arrived for lunch on a Wednesday, and took a seat amongst a distinctly un-Portuguese clientele: tables of younger vacationers and overseas executives. The pastel-blue stools, clubby music, and waiters in graphic T-shirts made it clear that we had been now not in a tasca. The menu, nonetheless, informed a distinct story. 

“Codfish neck,” for instance, was based mostly on a conventional tasca dish referred to as meia-desfeita — salt cod blended with chickpeas and tossed with olive oil, vinegar, chopped onion, garlic, and parsley. At Ofício, the cod was served in a yin-yang pool of two sauces (one made with puréed onions, the opposite chickpeas) and topped with parsley-infused oil and flakes of black garlic. I paused to absorb the artlike composition earlier than swirling it with a chunk of crusty bread. It was wealthy and pleasantly salty, with an fragrant punch of garlic. 

I additionally ordered the “atypical Portuguese gizzards,” a tackle moelas estufadas — a workaday basic of braised hen gizzards. The meaty tomato sauce was decreased to a silky demiglace, and the dish was topped with dainty microgreens. “It’s like a tasca dish, however the way it’s performed now’s extra artistic,” mentioned Hugo Candeias, the chef whose obsession with elevating humble Lisbon recipes has earned the restaurant a Michelin Bib Gourmand. “We need to deliver the flavour of conventional Portuguese dishes, however not essentially how they give the impression of being.”

For dessert, Candeias urged me to strive his flan. He offered me with a quivering dome served in a pool of caramel made with Muscat wine. It was velvety easy, as aromatic because it was candy. Similar to the tasca basic that served as its inspiration, the dish appeared to have one foot previously, and one other entering into the long run. 

The place to Eat

Adega Photo voltaic Minhoto: Bridging the hole between tasca and restaurant, this spot in Lisbon’s northern suburbs is beloved for its bitoque, a skinny steak served in a garlicky sauce.

A Provinciana: With its hearty dishes, wine barrels, and casual vibe, this might function the dictionary definition of tasca.

Cacué: A design-forward inside and rustic delicacies are unlikely bedfellows at this up to date restaurant within the Saldanha district.

O Cantinho do Alfredo: Navigate the gruff service and no-frills presentation, and also you’ll be rewarded with basic tasca dishes like iscas à Portuguesa (seared pork liver).

Ofício: Come to this Chiado restaurant for refined, up to date cooking that offers a nod to basic Lisbon recipes like moelas estufadas (braised gizzards).

O Velho Eurico: Youthful and daring, however with meals that feels firmly rooted in custom, this restaurant in Mouraria attracts a energetic crowd.

Tasca Baldracca: In Mouraria, a Brazilian chef takes issues in a global course.

Tasca do Gordo: This bare-bones canteen in Belém is Lisbon’s go-to for dobrada (braised tripe and white beans).

A model of this story first appeared within the December 2024 / January 2025 concern of Journey + Leisure below the headline “Blissful Meal.”