Tascas Are the Highest Playgrounds to Devour in Lisbon, Portugal

what a bistro is. If hard-pressed, that you must most certainly outline trattoria, too. However how a few tasca? 

That query used to be 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 construction, the inner used to be simply as basic: white tiles, vivid lights, pink plastic chairs. However the park used to be full of development guys, workplace employees, households, and pals 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 wish to be told extra about Portuguese delicacies. He used to be drizzling chili oil over dobrada — tripe braised with white beans and served in a terra-cotta bowl. Between bites, Magalhães gave me a snappy lesson at the tasca’s humble beginnings. 

In 1755, he defined, Lisbon used to be flattened by way of an earthquake, which used to be in an instant adopted by way of a tsunami. To rebuild, laborers have been recruited from Portugal’s some distance north and Galicia, in northwestern Spain. They got here in superior numbers. Over moment, a few of the ones operating as carvoeiros, or charcoal distributors, opened stores that bought wine and, sooner or later, one-pot dishes, just like the tripe and bean stew Magalhães and I have been taking part in. And so the tasca used to be born. 

“Any person who needed to count his pennies would go to a tasca,” he mentioned.

All over the 20 th century, tascas dotted each community of Lisbon, serving as inexpensive lunchrooms for the operating elegance. Additionally they turned into related to homestyle Portuguese cooking, the usage of on a regular basis substances like salt cod, sardines, and potatoes. In contemporary many years, as native tastes have expanded and financial forces have squeezed the base series, the standard tasca has discovered itself below warning. However era their numbers have dwindled, a pristine moment has come to realize those unpretentious eating rooms — and is looking for to stock the custom alive.

I sought after to be told extra about those loved institutions, so I reached out to Ricardo Dias Felner, a Portuguese meals essayist, who instructed lunch at his native hang-out. Adega Sun Minhoto, which is situated later to a hearth station in Alvalade, a tranquility residential section now not some distance from Lisbon’s airport, had obviously been renovated once in a while — it now has pretend bricks and plastic vegetation. Nevertheless it keeps vintage touches: a dessert case, paper overlaying the tables, cheeky provider, and a handwritten record of the hour’s specials.

“Tascas know how to take something cheap and make it tasty,” Felner mentioned as we studied the menu. There used to be costeleta de novilho incorrect churrasco (grilled red meat 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, an excellent meals marketplace, used to be steps away. “Tascas don’t have a lot of storage, so they go to the market every day,” he mentioned. 

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

On Felner’s advice, I later going to A Provinciana, a century-old spot akin the ancient Rossio educate station. With its striking legs of cured ham, conventional tile paintings, a scribbled menu taped to the window, and wall of cuckoo clocks, this park had the country glance unwell. 

“It’s a traditional establishment, owned by a family,” mentioned my waitress, Carla Fernandes, who wore a bata — a light-blue checked apron that’s almost a standard-issue tasca uniform. Her mom used to be within the kitchen, and her father used to be at the back of the bar. 

I ordered the galinha de cabidela (rooster simmered in rooster blood and rice), a dish that lines its roots to northern Portugal. I paired it with a mini pitcher of pink wine from Beira Internal, the kinfolk’s ancestral native land, additionally within the north. Dessert used to be a slice of white melon referred to as branco do Ribatejo, which used to be served with a isolated shot of a selfmade natural liqueur from an unmarked bottle and a thumbs-up from Carla’s father, Amérigo. “Fixe?” he requested. “Was it cool?” 

Now not all family-run tascas are this heat and fuzzy, I got here to be told. O Cantinho do Alfredo is a negligible eating place within the residential community of Campolide the place the usual greeting is a gruff “How many people?” But the harried pitch and fossilized shape — light tile flooring, creaky fan, dusty bottles — have been not going precursors for what grew to become out to be my maximum scrumptious tasca meal but. 

I used to be joined by way of Alexandra Prado Coelho, a veteran meals essayist at Público, certainly one of Portugal’s eminent newspapers, who recommended me to effort a vintage dish, iscas à Portuguesa — slim slices of beef liver marinated in white wine, garlic, and bay leaf. The dish emerged from the kitchen having a look virtually off-puttingly basic: a couple of ungarnished slices of liver and a few boiled potatoes on a stainless steel platter. However the liver were seared to perfection in lard and expertly seasoned, so the dish used to be a triumph of simplicity. 

Issues were given even higher with dessert. We went with peras bêbedas, or peeled pears stewed in pink wine, sugar, and cinnamon sticks. The wine relief imbued the pears with a pink, syrupy sheen, and have been affectionate plenty to consume with a spoon. 

Over the blare of a Nineteen Nineties-era TV fastened within the nook, I requested Prado Coelho concerning the outlook for tascas. “The real ones are disappearing,” she mentioned. “They used to be in every neighborhood. Now there’s just a few that survive.”

Just like the earthquake-tsunami again in 1755, Lisbon is present process any other seismic shift. The twin forces of tourism and gentrification are ramping up the price of residing, making the town one of the crucial dear in Europe with regards to moderate native salaries. Public-run eating places are suffering to pay ever-increasing rents, expenses, and wages. But Prado Coelho expressed some hope that enterprising younger cooks have been serving to to replace tascas for the later moment. 

To pattern this pristine breed, I took her top and going to O Velho Eurico, a buzzy eating place on a mini cobblestoned junction in Mouraria, certainly one of Lisbon’s oldest neighborhoods. I arrived on the tail finish of lunch provider on a Wednesday, when Zé Paulo Moreira da Rocha, the chef and proprietor, used to be prowling the eating room wielding a squirt gun loaded with bagaço, Portugal’s model of grappa. Despite the fact that this has grow to be one thing of a ritual on the eating place, he controlled to bring extra booze onto my eating better half’s blouse than into her mouth. 

In 2019, when the 21-year-old Rocha took over O Velho Eurico, the former homeowners had one situation: that he stock the established order’s fresh identify. The son of restaurateurs himself, Rocha decided to secure a couple of alternative parts, too, together with a tiled mural that depicts the previous proprietor on the grill. However many alternative issues about O Velho Eurico really feel completely fashionable. 

The partitions are lined with graffiti, plates are mismatched, and vintage dishes like a bacalhau salad are increased. Within the conventional preparation, salt cod is soaked in aqua and squeezed crisp by way of hand, later served with sliced onions and olive oil. At O Velho Eurico, it took the method of snowy flakes of cod in a lavish cod gelatin speckled with inexperienced drops of leek-infused olive oil.

Only a trim journey away, I discovered any other fashionable snatch. “People are not here just to eat — it’s kind of an event,” mentioned Pedro Monteiro, the landlord of Tasca Baldracca, as he flitted from desk to desk pouring pictures from a large inexperienced bottle of a selfmade fig-leaf liqueur. A local of Brazil who used to be impressed by way of the casual, boozy nature of tascas, he encourages his chefs to sit down and drink with diners, to “cut the distance between the kitchen and customers.”

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

Then visiting just about 10 tascas, each vintage and pristine, I believed that I had tasted all of it. However that used to be ahead of I made it to Ofício, a swish, fashionable eating place in Lisbon’s upscale Chiado community.

I arrived for lunch on a Wednesday, and took a seat amongst a distinctly un-Portuguese clientele: tables of younger vacationers and international executives. The pastel-blue stools, clubby track, and waiters in evocative T-shirts made it sunny that we have been not in a tasca. The menu, on the other hand, advised a distinct story. 

“Codfish neck,” for instance, used to be in line with a conventional tasca dish known as meia-desfeita — salt cod combined with chickpeas and tossed with olive oil, vinegar, chopped onion, garlic, and parsley. At Ofício, the cod used to be served in a yin-yang pond of 2 sauces (one made with puréed onions, the alternative chickpeas) and crowned with parsley-infused oil and flakes of unlit garlic. I paused to absorb the artlike composition ahead of swirling it with a work of crusty bread. It used to be lavish and pleasantly salty, with an fragrant punch of garlic. 

I additionally ordered the “atypical Portuguese gizzards,” a tackle moelas estufadas — a workaday vintage of braised rooster gizzards. The meaty tomato sauce used to be diminished to a silky demiglace, and the dish used to be crowned with dainty microgreens. “It’s like a tasca dish, but how it’s done now is more creative,” mentioned Hugo Candeias, the chef whose obsession with raising humble Lisbon recipes has earned the eating place a Michelin Bib Gourmet. “We want to bring the flavor of traditional Portuguese dishes, but not necessarily how they look.”

For dessert, Candeias recommended me to effort his flan. He introduced me with a quivering dome served in a pond of caramel made with Muscat wine. It used to be smooth clean, as aromatic because it used to be candy. Identical to the tasca vintage that served as its inspiration, the dish perceived to have one bedrock within the generation, and any other getting into the month. 

The place to Devour

Adega Solar Minhoto: Bridging the distance between tasca and eating place, this spot in Lisbon’s northern suburbs is loved for its bitoque, a slim steak served in a garlicky sauce.

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

Cacué: A design-forward inner and rustic delicacies are not going bedfellows at this modern eating place within the Saldanha district.

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

Ofício: Come to this Chiado eating place for subtle, fresh cooking that offers a nod to vintage Lisbon recipes like moelas estufadas (braised gizzards).

O Velho Eurico: Younger and ambitious, however with meals that feels firmly rooted in custom, this eating place in Mouraria attracts a full of life public.

Tasca Baldracca: In Mouraria, a Brazilian chef takes issues in a world 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 tale first seemed within the December 2024 / January 2025 situation of Journey + Bliss below the headline “Happy Meal.”