Search for Delicious 4: Lisboa

            mariscos 

noun (Spanish and Portuguese)

seafood

I came to Lisboa in search of quality seafood, thinking that my chances were pretty good.  I ended up having one of the best meals of my life, and with the exception of one meal, everything I ate during my trip was fantastic, from cephalopods to custard tarts.  Combined with a decent ubiquitous brew (Super Bock), wild cherry liquor, caipirinhas, and port wine, Lisboa turned out to be quite the gastronomic tour de force. 

Our first meal was at Casa da India, a place we spotted on our way towards the bay the first morning I arrived.  Halved chickens sizzled on a charcoal grill in the front window, and the place was packed, most people seated cafeteria style and others lining the bar.  I ordered a cup of seafood soup and grilled cuttlefish.  The soup was rich and creamy, and the cuttlefish was smoky and the perfect mix of crispy and tender, and accompanied with a cilantro infused olive oil.  Full and with an ink stained plate, we all decided to head back to our accommodations for a little siesta.

            Post-siesta and after some sightseeing later in the afternoon, we were on the hunt for a dinner location, and I was fiending for some pulpo.  But after encountering difficulty finding a place that was the right proportion of 1. not shitty and 2. affordable, we settled on a restaurant that seemed nice enough.  We were given a menu and a plate of jamón and bread was placed on the table, very appealing to hungry stomachs but also NOT free. My pulpo was rubbery, and my friend ordered Portuguese sausage, only to be given something that more closely resembled a monkey tail. 

As such, I’d like to take this moment and pause for a Public Service Announcement:

IF A RESTAURANT HAS A MENU WITH 3 OR MORE LANGUAGES, DON’T GO THERE/LEAVE IMMEDIATELY.

Luckily, in that period of shame and frustration which follows such a meal, we were able to bolster our spirits with ginja, a wild-cherry liquor typical of Portugal, in a bar with bok choy lamps in Bairro Alto. 

Back at the apartment and determined to not repeat our mistake, we turned to the OG himself, Anthony Bourdain. We watched the No Reservations episode on Lisboa, which in and of itself was a powerful experience.  I’ve talked about how inspirational No Reservations has been for me, and so watching Tony walk by places that I had seen that same morning made me feel both surreal and accomplished. 

We looked up one of the restaurants that he visited in the episode, Cervejaría Ramiro.  It was pretty close to our apartment, so the next day we went for lunch.  A lot of times you can tell if you’re in for a good meal, kind of like a spidey sense, even just a quick scan of the place, how many people, what are they eating, how do they look like they feel about what they’re eating.  We saw people with large piles of shellfish, some with bibs, cracking, extricating, smiling. 

There were also the tanks, in which swam the mariscos, all shapes, sizes, and colors.  If you know that your food has been swimming 5 minutes before you’re eating it, you’re #winning.  Most of the food is priced by the kilo, so we ordered a little smorgasboard, barnacles, spiky shells, clams sautéed in white wine with garlic, and three scarlet shrimp, one for each of us.

Appearing that order, we first used a little tool that wouldn’t look out of place in a knitter’s basket to pull out the edible parts of the shell, which tasted like the ocean.  The clams were superb, and we used the crunchy and flaky bread to mop up the juices, washed down with swigs of Super Bock. 

Then came the shrimp.  They were very large, very red, and very hot.  After squeezing lemon juice all over them, we each took our shrimp and pulled it apart, tail going one way and the head going the other, letting loose a torrent of what is nothing more but nothing less than brain soup, way up there on the list of best things ever to dip bread in.  The meat of the tail was succulent and sweet, like lobster but maybe even a bit better. 

Afterwards, I felt like I was glowing, like someone was putting just the right amount of electric current through my body, but I also wasn’t quite full.  We ordered three steak sandwiches as “dessert,” something we saw Tony do, and we walked out of the restaurant in the dreamiest of food comas.  

As a word of warning, however, due to the pricing system, the amount of money you’re paying can tend to get away from you, so be cognizant.  Our shrimp were next level, but they were also very heavy.

Later that day we had actual dessert, a pastry for which Lisboa is famous, the pastéis de Belém.  Although the custard tart is served widely in Portugal and even Spain, there is only one place that makes the dessert the “real” way, and it’s located right by the Tower of Belém and the Jeronimos Monastery, both worth a visit in and of themselves.  We had to wait in line for 30 minutes to get four pastries, but it was so worth it.  They give you cinnamon and powder sugar to put on them, and the crust is flaky and croissant-esque.  The custard filling is sweet with a little zing and just the right amount. 

Lisboa is a feast, both for the eyes and the stomach. Bom apetite!

A Few Impressions of Lisboa

Colors and Azulejos

         Colors abound in Lisboa. Blues, greens, pinks, purples.  Rain or shine, the city can never be accused of being bland.  

One of my favorite parts of being there was wandering around, taking in the colors, along with the patterns of the azulejos or tiles that cover the vast majority of the buildings.  The ubiquity and variety of this calling card of Portgual never ceased to astound me.  

Even the sidewalks are a mosaic of carefully placed stones, enough to keep you staring at your feet while you walk, and some of the plazas or praças feature even more ornate designs. 

Lisboa is its own place!

            Lisboa and Portugal more generally, definitely have their own vibe as compared to Spain.  Lisboa seemed much older to me than Madrid, more laid back, more colorful, and yet at the same time, a bit more melancholy while still friendly and warm.  Portuguese as a language was much harder to understand than I thought it would be, sounding more in the area of French and Italian than Spanish.  Portuguese is fairly easy to read if one has a knowledge of Spanish, however.

It was the first time I felt completely ignorant of the language in a foreign country, not even knowing how to say “thank you” at first (obrigado!).  Luckily, the vast majority of locals that we interacted with spoke very good English, even better than people in Spain.  When talking to a Spaniard about this, he claimed that one of the reasons for this is that they don’t dub movies and television in Portugal with Portuguese, whereas Spain is notorious for dubbing media since Franco and still to this day.  Still, it’s never a bad idea to learn a few phrases in the local tongue!

Lisboa is reminiscent of San Francisco!

            While Lisboa is quite different than Spain, it also reminded me a lot of another port city:  San Francisco!  Both cities feature nearly identical suspension bridges.  The Ponte 25 de Abril bears a striking resemblance to the Golden Gate Bridge, being both the same style and color of bridge, although the same company did not design them.

            Lisboa is also quite hilly, and the overall vibe is very relaxed.  Lisboa also has a tram system, dating back from the 1870s, and one of the best ways to see the city is to hop on the tram for a ride, especially if it’s raining!  They are akin to the cable cars of San Francisco, and evidently the first trams in Lisboa were imported from the USA.  

            At the same time, as a European capital, Lisboa’s streets are more winding and there’s history around every corner.  If San Francisco had 500 more years of history under its belt, it could then begin to have the quiet force of Lisboa, which was for a very long time, the last bastion of the Western world before its discovery of America. 

Nightlife aka Drinking in the Streets!

         One of the most apparent (and awesome) things about Lisboa is the complete lack of any sort of open container laws.  Even in Spain, the land of the botellón (even in the face of its current embattled legal situation), and especially in Madrid, bars are very strict about not taking alcoholic drinks out into the street.  Sure, you can buy cans of beer in the street pretty easily, but you better not take that gin tonic out of the bar. 

            In Lisboa, however, it was almost like you were encouraged to take your drink out to the streets.  When we went out in Bairro Alto, the streets were filled with people hanging out, many with big plastic cups of mojitos or caipirinhas in their hands.  These drinks are also very cheap, with an XXXXL drink costing you no more than 6 €.  Generally, prices are cheap in Lisboa, and it makes for a fun and lively nighttime scene.  There are plenty of cool bars and discos, and the atmosphere makes barhopping (with breaks in between) your best bet. And of course, many of the streets are gorgeous, in and of themselves.

Lisboa

Lisboa was one of those places that I knew I should go to on some level, but I couldn’t tell you exactly why.  I’ve learned to trust these sorts of feelings w/r/t travel, so when I texted my friend the Wednesday after I had gotten back from Paris and he told me that he and one of my other good friends were going to Lisboa, I hopped on the train.  Quite literally.  Plane tickets were very expensive with only two days to go, so I decided to take the night train to Lisboa, leaving Madrid at 9:45 PM Friday night and arriving 7 AM Saturday morning to meet up with my friends. 

Instead of paying 170 € for a plane ticket, I spent 90 € both ways for the train, but ten to eleven hours on a train is a long haul. I sipped on a Super Bock around midnight at the bar in the cafeteria car, looking out at the moonlit terrain, somewhere in Castilla y León.  Back in my seat, cramped legs and a stiff neck did an excellent job keeping the Sandman at bay for most of the night, as I faded in and out of a half-sleep.   

I had heard that Lisboa was supposed to have good seafood, and I assumed it was pretty similar to Spain, both temperamentally and linguistically, having had very little exposure to Portuguese.  I also knew that one of my favorite artists Panda Bear had left the states to live in the Portuguese capital, where he had made several albums that are among my all-time favorites.  It was a half-joke amongst my friends that we were going to find Panda Bear and hang out with him in his adopted city.  I wanted to see how my relationship to his music would change after I had spent some time in the place where he had created it. 

I watched the sunrise as the train approached the Portuguese capital, the growing light revealing a new country to my sleep deprived eyes.  Moving through the outskirts towards the station I felt like I was in Latin America even though I’ve never been to Latin America.  Large palm trees dotted the landscape, and the vegetation was much more lush than in Madrid.  Many of the buildings were pastel, and a lot of them looked like they had seen better days.  Spain was hit hard by the economic crisis, but Portugal took it even harder and that was palpable at points during my visits. 

I arrived at the station at 7 AM, which is an hour behind CEST.  I was going to try and walk to the Air B&B, but a light rain started to fall as I stepped outside, so I decided to take to the metro.   My friends had a different Air B&B originally, but evidently in less than ideal conditions, with a young couple and child as part of the accommodations.  They found another one right in the middle of Bairro Alto, one of the hipper and happening places in Lisbon. 

This was my first experience with Air B&B, and it was really great.  There were three of us, and we had three beds, including one king, a very well-equipped kitchen, shower, living room, etc.  Hostels are nice if you’re looking to meet people, but if you have a group already, it’s great to have some privacy, the ability to cook if you want, and something slightly more formidable than a 3 inch pad to sleep on.  Obviously, you’re in a new place to eat their food, but it’s good to be able to have the option to cook.  We ended up making brunch and dinner during our stay. 

The next few posts will deal with Lisboa, its food, its sights, its charms, its sounds. Bom dia!