MAS QUE NATA: PORTUGAL, FOODIE PARADISE (PART ONE: LISBON)

I put on 3 kilos in Portugal.  Basically, I ate everything I saw.  It was all divine. 

On day one, I set out in the jalopy to Sintra. If you imagine what the Garden of Eden would look like, with hordes of tourists, that's Sintra.  I went to see gardens.  Boy, has Sintra got gardens.  Huge ones.  They take hours and hours to visit.  As a result, come lunchtime I found myself in the gardens of the Montserrat estate, where the victuals were sparse and served in a kind of National Trust type tearoom.   I had a soda and a sausage roll.  The man behind the counter told me to go and sit down and he would warm up the sausage roll and bring it to me.  When it appeared, it had been daintily cut in two and served with a paper serviette.    The bill was 3,90 euros which was certainly not a National Trust price.

That evening I ventured into Estoril, the resort where I was staying just outside of Lisbon.  There were a number of unpromising looking restaurants either side of the esplanade in front of the casino (the very same casino that inspired Ian Fleming to write Casino Royale) and I was starving, so I went into Pinto's, a simple looking pizzeria.  This being Portugal, of course, there was more on offer than pizza.  I had an absolutely delicious veal steak with bacon, with a couple of glasses of white wine and a dessert.

The next day I took the local train into Lisbon, where I totally fell in love.  I had been to Lisbon before, for a New Year weekend, but now it was warm, people were eating outside, and Harold wasn't with me.  I felt my boxes being ticked all down the line.  I ate lunch at a small corner restaurant called A Campesinho off Agusta in the Caixa (shopping district) where I had a salt fish croqueta from the shop on the corner where they were made, with a salad and a glass of wine.  A gipsy accordionist was providing the ambient music.  I had just bought two pairs of divinely beautiful and comfortable sandals at a very democratic price.  Life was good.

The old vegetable market in Lisbon has been transformed into a trendy food court called Mercado.  The top restaurants in Lisbon have outlets here where you can sample their menus seated on high stools at long tables.  It was packed on Saturday evening.  Better to come with some friends though, you'd feel a bit of a gooseberry sitting there on your own, unless you are of a particularly gregarious nature.

Opposite my hotel was a cake shop called Zenith, outside which I found a sweet spot to park the car.  (Sweet spot - ha ha - geddit?)  It was a modern style cake shop, and I noticed they did have pasteis de nata.  It would have been rude not to.  I bought 4 which were daintily packaged up in a box, for me to take back to my hotel room, for a furtive afternoon delight.  Oooh missus.  The man in the cake shop told me that their pasteis were better than those from Belem, as they didn't have to make them in industrial quantities.  He could have been right.

On the Sunday it was scorchio so I went to the beach at Carcavelos.  Toda Lisboa was there.  I strolled along the promenade with an independent air, humming "Copacabana", and ended up sitting down for lunch in Ondo Grande (Big Wave) where I had garlic prawns with a tomato salad, a glass of wine and a pudding.  Nearby some young men were playing beach volleyball in shorts, so I lingered over a coffee, and then another one, taking in the view.  

On my last night on the Estoril coast I went into Cascais.  The main square is a mass of tables, so that you can't see where one restaurant ends and the next begins.  I took a table in a sidestreet, since the main square was rather awash with celebrating football fans, Benfica having just won the Portuguese league.  I ordered sardines, which came with boiled potatoes.  As I was taking the photograph you see above, I noticed the chap at the next table whisper something to his wife.  I knew they were English, and thought "Oh no they think I'm one of those hipsters who's always photographing their food!"  so I looked straight at him and said "I'm a food writer."    He looked quite delighted.  "I just said to my wife," he declared, "I bet she's a food writer!"  I smiled indulgently, waiting for the predictable question.  "I say," he began, "You're not that .. Daphne Wayne-Bough, are you?  Yes, you are!  You're our favorite food writer!  Can we have a selfie with you?"    I get this all the time.  Jay Rayner would kill for my retweets.

My next port of call was Lisbon proper, where the KNOB* were performing, but I had time to swing by Sesimbra on the way.  By this time I had managed to figure out how to use my phone as a GPS, and hence drove straight there and not via Madrid!   What an absolute godsend that GPS is.  I was quite hostile to it for years, but have realized the error of my ways.   In Sesimbra I finally got to try the famous bifana steak sandwich - not necessarily beef, despite the name.  I could hear the chef bashing the life out of it in the kitchen. Next time I'm having the piglet sandwich. Sesimbra is a quiet seaside town with half a dozen or so decent restaurants and no tourist traps. 

* Kurt Nachtnebel Oompah Band



After the brass band competition we were invited to a buffet dinner for all the bands at Restaurante Clara.  It was a set menu, so we weren't expecting anything exciting.  After a fairly dull soup, we had Bacalhau a braz: comfort food. So comforting I had two helpings. Followed by a tasting of as many of 10 desserts on offer as I could get on my plate. I now feel extremely comforted. The restaurant had a gorgeous garden, but it was quite windy that night and a bit cold, so had to photograph it through the window. And PROPER FISH KNIVES! And silver service ... a bit old fashioned but frightfully elegant - so moi.  The dessert buffet is very common in Portuguese restaurants.  Reminiscent of the sweet trolley in our own restaurants of the 1970s.

We were all staying in the Hotel Sana Lisboa, in the upmarket part of town.   I must say it is an excellent hotel.  The staff were highly efficient and charming with it, particularly the doorman who was the spitting image of Cristiano Ronaldo.  I must however compliment the pastry chef, whose creations were the jewel in the crown of the buffet lunches. As you can see, they were too good to have just one.