January 14, 2026 • 50 mins
Lisbon, Portugal, is a feast for palate. Portuguese cuisine brings flavors of Africa, Brazil, Iberia and the Far East to its dishes. Examples include piri piri chicken, roast pork in red wine, sopa de mariscos, grilled sardines, Bacalhau (dried salted cod) with potatoes and Lisbon’s sweet gift to the world, Pastel de Nata. Portugal produces a range of outstanding wines, from crisp Vinhos Verde to velvety Alentejo reds to sweet Ports. Melanie and David share their Lisbon culinary discoveries.
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The Connected Table is broadcast live Wednesdays at 2PM ET and Music on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com).
The Connected Table Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 2 (00:12):
No liability, explicit or.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Implied shall be extended to W four CY Radio or
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directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W
FOURCY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Welcome to the Connected Table Live. We're your hosts, Melanie
Young and David Ransom. You're insatiably curious culinary couple. We
enjoy traveling the world to bring you the amazing places
we visit, the people we meet, and the food, wines
and spirits and other yummy things we drink and eat,
and we want to bring it to you so you
(01:01):
will eat, drink and explore and be inspired to step
out and travel and explore with us. We are broadcasting
from where David, We're not from there, but we were
just in Well.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
We were just in Lisbon for New Years and we're
back now when we're broadcasting from our own office, but.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
We're sharing Lisbon with you. So we have a great tradition.
I particular to celebrate my New Year's birthday January one,
So we're different every year. And this year we chose
a place that had been on my bucket lists for
a long time that I never visited, Lisbon, Portugal.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
You've been before, right, I have, I've been to. This
was my fourth trip to Portugal, so it was actually
just lovely to be more familiar with it by the
time I got there this time. How long have you
been traveling for New Year's Melanie? How many years?
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Thirty seven? Thirty seven wonderful years, That's all I'm going
to say. Yeah, a long time, over three decades. And
I keep a diary of every trip and experience, and
those diaries have traveled with me from home to home,
as you know, David.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Because I've packed them up and I've moved them.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
And those memories are so incredibly special. So we made
more memories bringing in twenty twenty six in Lisbon. We
decided to give ourselves, indulge ourselves in basing ourselves there
for ten days. Usually when we go on these wonderful
wine trips, we're moving around a lot for infasing wineries
and going here and there and unpacking and packing, and
(02:28):
we had just been in Porto, which we will be
doing a special feature on and another edition of a
Connected Table. But we decided that, given it was Christmas
week and in the New Year's, we would base ourselves
in Lisbon and really get to know the city. And
I think we did a good job, did a great job.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
And for that reason used to park ourselves for ten
days at a time. Yeah, because we're almost not even home.
For ten days at a time, it seems well, yeah,
I could traveling.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
I did a show on Fearless Fabulous you about the
joy of slow travel. You know, we have slow eating,
slow wine, slow travel. Why rush and go here and
there and spend a night here, in a day trip
here and zip around you become more exhausted, then exhilarate it.
So ten days in Lisbon in the end of de
(03:17):
Summer through New Year's early January gave us a chance
to explore the city, learn its history, find incredible neighborhoods,
and of course eat some amazing foods. So we're bringing
that to you and we'll be sharing it also on
our blog. Let's just set it up with a little
bit about Lisbon in case you've never been, and what
(03:37):
opened my eyes as a first time visitor and yours
is a fourth time. My impressions about Lisbon are that
it was a mashup between San Francisco and New Orleans.
Why because you've got these amazing steep hills in San
Francisco and these amazing vistas over the Tasius River, and
you have these historic streetcars similar to the rice A
(04:00):
Ronny street cars in San Francisco, and amazing seafood dishes
similar to the torpedos that are Portuguese you find in
San Francisco. Is a seafood port. But then on the
same time, it reminded me of our home, New Orleans. Again.
You've got these historic street cars, You've got this incredible
(04:21):
architecture that has tile and stone on the outside, and
these balconies, these French balconies made of iron also in
San Francisco. You have the crumbling streets that are permanent
conditions in New Orleans. And you've got that African layer
(04:43):
and South American flavors that you get here in what
we like to call the North Caribbean. New Orleans there's
just history of both. But you know what's interesting, David,
Before I share the next interesting point about San Francisco,
New Orleans, what were your in pressions.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Well, I was fascinated by the fact that you talked
about the streets and the fact that they're that they're
somewhat difficult to navigated times, but they're they're all brick,
So they're all they're all stone and individually placed bricks
and we call them Belgium bricks here in the US,
but stone that they that have been really hand put
(05:21):
into the entire city. So there's almost no pavement as
it were. It's all these brick roadways and sidewalks. It's
beautiful to see, but it does make navigation a little
bit difficult at times because it's not the most even
of terrain, let's put it that way.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
So yeah, there's probably a good reason for that, because,
like San Francisco and New Orleans, Lisbon suffered a massive disaster,
specifically on the morning of November one, seventeen fifty five earthquake.
I don't know if they had Richter scales about them,
but it was like almost eight point on the Richter
scale hit Lisbon, just as all the residents were going
(06:01):
to church to celebrate All Saints' Day. So while they
were all in church, on earthquake hit shattered everything, destroying buildings.
But then what happened was worse one. All the locals
had lit candles and let them burning in their homes
while they went attended church services, so the candles were
(06:24):
knocked over and the city went in flames, a huge firestorm.
And then the third trifecta was the tsunami.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Yeah, so everybody was escaping into the river to escape
the flames of the city because of the city is
basically right on the shore of the river, so they
all escaped into the river, and as the as they
all kind of got to the river, the tsunami hit
so almost I think they estimated about forty thousand people
died died.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Seventeen fifty five. You see a lot of So as
a result of that, when the long rebuilding process began
and they high architects, the stone building was important. The
stone buildings, the stone roads, and the tiles, the painted
tiles that you see became part of the architecture to
protect the buildings.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
And they actually made a lot of improvements to the
building structures of the of the city as they rebuilt it.
The hills were not as effected as the as the
downtown center of the city, called the Vicus was was
that was basically leveled. The king actually was nowhere to
be found that day. He's in the photo right the
photo right back behind us there of.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Course is facing the river for a reason.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Yeah, but he was nowhere to be found that day.
He had actually gone on a picnic with his family
outside of the downtown center. He was out in Bellm
which is now where the royal palaces, and had decided
to take a picnic, so he wasn't inside. He was fine,
but he decided never to go back to Lisbon, and
so he spent the rest of his life outside of Lisbon,
(07:54):
ruling from afar, shall we.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Say, yeah, central location, the Pars do Commercia, which is
like the gathering place for everything, and where we saw
the New Year's fireworks. His statue is front and center
and the horse is facing out because he's trying to
get away from Lisbon. We heard a lot of great
stories through our tour guys, which we'll get into. But
you know, Lisbon also really didn't even open up to
(08:18):
the world until after nineteen seventy four because it fell
under a forty year rule of a dictator, the longest
authoritarian regime in Europe, under Antonio de Olivero Salazar, and
it was overthrown in a military coup overthrew the Authoritatian
(08:39):
dictatorship in nineteen seventy four. And what we learned on
our walking tour was the Carnation Revolution very important because
until then Lisbon was basically closed to the world. Portugal
was Portugal, even though it was a seafaring country. And
apparently a woman that is now revered, leege Celeste Keerro,
(09:01):
was a flower cellar worked in a local bar or
something because she handed out red carnations to everybody and
they put them in the in the rifles. What do
you call that part of the rifle where you put
the flower the barrel, the barrel, thank you the barrel.
And every year now on April twenty fifth, which is
the day they have the celebration of carnations, it's it's
(09:24):
just beautiful. Fortunately, now Lisbon seems to be doing very
well economically and the great tourism movement is evident. We
saw many tourists from all over the world well.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
I think one of the things that was New Year's
first of all, and they do and Lisbon does a
great New Year's festival, and the beautiful fireworks and music
on the river in.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
The right the buffle of their head, it's.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
Really behind Melanie's head. They set up a big stage
in the big Prato de Commercio, which is the main
square in Lisbon, and they have a huge party and
then everybody watches fireworks. We were part of that.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
And we you know, you wear blue underwear, you drink,
eat cul drapes at midnight. There's all sorts of fun customs.
It was a lot of fun and very well behaved,
no a lot of great lot of police presence. We
felt very safe. I want to emphasize that we felt
really safe during our entire time, and Lit's been like anywhere.
This heavily tourist said, you do have to watch out
for pickpockets and other things, but we felt very safe.
(10:21):
Now it's a big city, but it's a small city,
right and a lot of the neighborhoods are walkable. We
really really The tourism aspect of it concentrates in like
four areas which will go over so we stayed in
the area called Bishop b A i XA their hotels everywhere.
(10:43):
It's they considered the heart of Lisbon. I would say
it would be equivalent of going to New York and
staying in the Times Square area. It's flat, unlike many
places of listen. So if you want to go somewhere
where it's flat and don't want to go up and
down hill, this is a great place. We loved our location,
uh shaft about the higgy house where we stay at
an apartment hotel. Uh. There's wide streets. Many don't have automobiles,
(11:08):
so you can just watch a lot of stores and restaurants.
And it's next to my probably one of my favorite neighborhoods,
which is the oldest in Lisbon called Alfama. Now it's interesting.
When I was researching hotels, we almost stay in al Fama.
I would not recommend it because it is so hilly
and there's so many narrow streets. It's like a maze
(11:30):
of narrow streets deliberately so that invaders could not find
their way into the streets. We learned.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
That's one of the things we learned. Youah, yeah, Lisbon
has been invaded a couple of times.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Oh yeah, and you can't invade. Yeah. So a Fama
and nearby Morera are two very neighborhoods. They're very old.
Alfama is known for having a Jewish community. We saw
some old synagogues, whereas Mora is a Muslim community, which
is also interesting because it's a very multi cultural area here.
(12:03):
It's also the birth of where Fato, the very soulful
music was there, a mournful music was you know, obviously
for a long time the Lisbon residents had lots to mourn,
whether they were being bombarded by a hurricane, flood or
tsunami or fire. There were all the women who were
mourning the men they lost to see when they went
out and maybe did return. So this music is often played.
(12:26):
It's very somber in small eateries that they call tusca,
which is equivalent of a tavern where you can get
very affordable, more traditional food at really reasonable prices. So
that's Alfama. And you gotta you gotta have good walking
shoes and we do recommend a god. We did a
(12:46):
free walking tour. We booked through booking dot com, which
was where we booked our hotel. Kate was our guy.
She lives in al Fama. She gave us a list
which will be sharing later in the show. Some of
everybody's recommendations. Uh it is so yeah, you pay what
you want, you tip, you tip the guide. We highly
recommend it. What were your impressions of Alfama and Morrera.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
I love them, I wouldn't want to stay there. Super
hilly and the streets are narrow and very difficult to
navigate however, and again those bricks that they're paved with.
But it's a beautiful area. That's where the that's where
the main cathedral is of Lisbon. So it's not down
in the center of the city. It's up on hill
overlooking the city. And uh, it's a we actually didn't
(13:30):
go in. But it's quite a nice cathedral, they say.
And it's a beautiful area. It's it's small, intricate streets
and a couple of different little couple of different neighborhoods
within it. But it's a beautiful area and a lot
of people go there to see the nightlife and go
to this go to the shops and stores and buy things,
et cetera. It's a lovely area. We actually spent a
(13:54):
lot of time there, even though because we were staying
right on the edge of it down in the main downtown,
which is why.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
We loved are Yeah, we went up there wine bars.
We love this wine bar called Antiga Wine Bar. It
lose steps from us, great views to look over and
literally there was at one viewpoint where our guide Kate
took us and we went revisited. I thought I was
actually looking at San Francisco because the Basco de Gama
(14:20):
Bridge looks like the Cold and Gate Bridge. And then
high at the top is the monastery where there's an
incredible outdoor garden bar where you can sit and have
drinks and just look out over the river to the
other side. It's just incredible, wonderful place to visit. Alfama
(14:42):
is the historic and Mourra. They're next to each other
and you just get lost in both of them. The
other areas that are key to see one is Batto Alta,
which has very fine hotels, probably more luxury hotels, and nightlife,
a lot of clubs, a lot of great dining, good shopping.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Good shopping as well, really good shopping. That's where the
hot stores are, et cetera. But it's also it's a
it's on a hill, so like Alfames, but it's on
the other hill, on the other side of town, the
other side of the main downtown. So if you go
up that hill there, it's it's a little the streets
are a little wider, et cetera. But great shopping, wonderful restaurants.
We went to a few while we were Yeah, we did.
(15:23):
And again easy to get to and everybody walks up
and down those hills.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Yeah, and there's a famous elevator. There's a very famous
elevator that takes you up over to the train station
and everything. It was closed due to repair what they're doing,
but definitely take advantage of going to these incredible vistas. Again,
(15:47):
we had through free walking tours. We did the Alfa
Ma tour and then we did one called Historical Lisbon
and our guy Tiago was a history professor and he
that's when we went to to see the historic elevator
and the train station in the views that way to
the baro Alto and we learned so much. That's where
we learned about We went to the palace. It's now
(16:09):
a museum where the Carnation Revolution took place and where
everybody gathers every April to celebrate. And I honestly think
if we had not taken those walking tours, which are
also a very good exercise two and a half hours
of uphill walking, we probably wouldn't have seen it ourselves.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Yeah, we learned a lot that you never would see
in the guidebook as well. So yeah, it was just
you know, and these tours, there's there are a million
of those tours in probably every city. But it's worth
spending a day or spending a day taking a tour,
or a couple of days taking a couple of tours
because you booked them for a euro yeah, and then
(16:46):
you're and then it's pay what you want so and
usually the pay that it's twenty bucks ahead, so yeah,
twenty gifts. So you give them twenty euros per person
or thirty euros per couple or yeah, and you know,
because that's how they make their money.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
It's two and a half hours. I mean, you get
a value for this, and they give.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
You a lot of information and you cover a lot
of ground. And it was well worth the time and
the money spent to attend these tours. And we gave them.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
We gave both of our guides great reviews and they
gave us which we're going to share with you some
places they like to go that we all like to find,
those insider local places.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
What we have some now for you. As a matter
of fact, after that tour was over, we looked at
the list and said, while we're having lunch, oh, we
went to one of the places that he suggested, exactly
and so fat it was a lot of fun. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
So the other neighborhood, it's further out, so it's a
cab right which we get to the transportation options. It's
called Blem now. Blem is where the Royal Palace is.
It's also where the Matt Museum is, the very famous
museum of automation, architect architecture. It's like a huge museum
(17:53):
of engineering. You see a lot of steamship stuff technologya
m aat big looks like a giant beached whale kind
of on the water. We went one rainy day because
it does rain, because it does rain in the winter.
And then we walked around Belem, which is again where
(18:14):
the Royal Palace is, where this huge monastery to Belem
is a tower but it's closed. The tour dear Bulim
and a lot of eateries, and of course the one
reason many people just go to bulem Is because they
want to go and have one of the signature dishes
of Portugal and Lisbon. We're going to put it up
(18:35):
on the screen for you can see. It's a third one,
one pastas de blem. Okay, there's a whole story behind this.
First of all, we learned egg pastries are a big
deal in Portugal because well up in Porto. We learned
it was probably because they used the egg whites to
find the wines.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
So there's a million versions of past days yea, and
most of them are called paste nata, so they call
them just natas, yes, and so you know, one of
our guides said, if you're trying to find the perfect one,
just do as much research as you can and have
as many of them as you can before you leave list,
because everybody eats them. They're delicious. But the original is
(19:16):
the Pests of Bilm from eighteen thirty seven, right, which
was created in Bilm by the i think by the
bakery that well supplied yolks by the nuns of the convent.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
So the story goes there was a convent in Belem
because there's a royal palace and a big monas I
referred to the monasterio there. It's huge, huge monasterio. So
the nuns used the egg whites to starch the habits
and robes of the of the priests and their habits.
So egg whites were used to starch the robe. So
(19:51):
there was a surplus of yolks. And of course many
monasteries create amazing food products around the world to make money,
so they made pastries and the surplus eggs repurpose to
make very many pastries, but the one that has become
legendary is the pastaise de bilem, where it's only called
pastes blem and blem. Otherwise it's paste dinata and it's
(20:13):
basically a custardy egg custard in a tart with burnt
top as you can see. And the original version dates
to eighteen thirty seven. The family that runs this basically
took over making these egg custard pastaste them from the
(20:34):
nuns and took over the process and the recipe and
have been making it ever since eighteen thirty seven. It's
still family right now.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
I think only three people have the recipe exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
I mean, it's as quiet as it's.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Like coca cola. Yeah, and nobody knows exactly what it's
made with, so you're.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Probably asking is it worth it to get there? App absolutely,
we loved all the the pasta's den that we had,
but I think for me personally, and you can chime in.
This particular one had a crust that was so light
and crispy and tasty, and the burnt top it was
(21:11):
like a cumbu let.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
It was just it's delicious. These are all very traditional.
There were a couple of other places that we visited,
and of course we were testing other ones of course
where you could get flavored ones as well. We had
a wonderful one buy chocolate with Dubai chocolate and another
one with pistachio in it, and they were all delicious,
So you know, there's obviously room for checking out other
ways to make it, but this was the original and you.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Can actually you can take lessons to learn how to
make it yourself. We went to one place I think
it's called Natalaya. It was we could literally see students
learning how to make pasta pasta nata and we had
that's where we had the Dubai chocolate Oneta. Mante Geria
is the other well known producer the key with these
(22:00):
is you can get them anywhere, like you can get
croissants anywhere whatever. In France, you want to go where
they're being made. So when you go into the padia
which is the name of a bakery pot area, look
and say are they being made or look for signs
that they're actually being made because you want them fresh.
They're not the same otherwise.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
You want them, Yeah, you want them warm, Bill m
They are constantly making and they're always warm. Also the
other place that you just mentioned and I can't.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Remember the name, Yeah, Well we also went to Pastelaria
Nata with one of our guys, oh with Eating Europe,
which we'll get to. That's who we went with. And
there was just all fabulous and you just get this
incredible cup of coffee usual you get it gone latte.
They like to put look on the coffee and it's
just bliss. So that's bell. We also ate at what
(22:50):
was Bilim two eight, a nice little restaurant there. So
there's other things to do besides get the pussis Bilim
and the Matt Museum, so that's as like an uber
ride to get there, which now let's just quickly we
talked about key neighborhoods. Let's just talk about transportation, because
for me that was blown away. Okay, you see in
many Portugal images of Lisbon the street cars, they're very,
(23:13):
very famous. There's one number twenty eight that you can
just take it right all around the city. We almost
did that one rainy day. It's crowded and you have
to be aware of pickpockets, but we saw some that
were empty.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Well they were either closed off or they were on
private surce, so you.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Can that's a fun way to get around the city. However,
they also have tuck tucks. Our friends did tuck tucks.
What's your Only time I've ever done tech talk was
in Bangkok. There's tup tuk tours ten Lizzies. Yeah, they
have Model Tea.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
They have these and they're modern. They're electric, so they're
brand new. But they look like Model T's and they're
all different colors and they're a great way to get around,
you know, they see four, six or eight whatever it
may be, right because they do come in different sizes,
but they were a very very cool concept.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Yeah, to.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Compete with the tuck tucks and take people on tours
around the city with the open in open air so
would say, because they're just covered but they don't have size.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
It's so cool and you can negotiate priced. And then
we saw some crazy people biking and motorcycling and segueing.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
A lot of scooters. A lot of scooters out there too.
I would do it again. The streets.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
The streets are bumpy and hilly. But the best part
is ubers are very inexpensive. We actually went to Cintra,
which is like thirty minutes away, and how much did
it cost us dollars? It costs that much just to
go into mid city here in Louisiana. And they have
another app called Bolt, but you know, sign up for
(24:43):
get the least expensive, you get the app and you
can get around the city.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
Really. One of the nice things I found was that
in Lisbon, Uber has an electric category where you can
request an electric car and it's cheaper than all the others.
So every time I wanted an Uber and we probably
took fifteen ubers while we were there. Yeah, I went
for the electric car, better for the environment, cheaper for us.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
So that's just a general overview. Now we're going to
spend the rest of the show talking about eating. So
one of the things we did is we did sign
up with Eating Europe, which we did in trustovvery in Rome,
and we had Ken done on this show. We signed
up for the most popular tour, which is a daytime
culinary tour. They also have a dining immersion tour and
various things. Melissa our guide was awesome. It's a three
(25:26):
and a half hour tour. Very small group maybe what
six people a people, Yeah, there were.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
About six or eight of us. And what's interesting is
that they set up the visits that you do to
basically go through a multi course meal. Yeah. So you
have a bite here, and then you have an appetizer there,
then you have your entrade another spot, and then you
have dessert and coffee at another spot. Of course it
was the Pestalda Nata.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Yeah. So I'm going to tell you what we ate.
And the brain thing is Melissa was very informed. We
got a little history listen everywhere we went and it
was mainly in Alfama and Marera. Again history and she
had wine. Wine was I complimented Ken's on his team
on this because wine was served Portuguese wine. Every course
in Portugal has a wide variety of wines and we
drank several types. So our first was Gingina Popular for churiso,
(26:12):
a bomberdo Buffana, okay, Buffana. That was a tiny little place.
Buffana is like a snack. It's basically the slow roasted
porks in herbs and white wine, thinly sliced on bread.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Yeah, it's Lisbon's answer to the grab and go sandwich.
Shall we say, Yeah, there's a lot of little places
that just make biffana. They maybe a little hole in
the wall and there's a line outside goutfronts. Yeah, and
you know if there's a line up front of local
people that it's probably a good biffana. But it's just
sliced pork on a piece of bread.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
And this was a hole in the wall. I mean
there was like no sign. It's called Gingina Popular. And
we also had some sausages and cheeses. And for me,
the non meat eater, I had a really delicia us
fried cuttlefish sandwich, lightly tempura fried thick, thick pieces of cuttlefish.
It was delicious with some Peria pierri sauce because we
(27:08):
love peiri piery sauce. A lot of peiriy peery sauce there.
And then we went to Continuo de Asis, which is
a Mozambique restaurant that is so highly regarded that we
saw that the chef had cooked at the James Bear
Foundation event and had reviews for Peter and bon appetite.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Yeah, it was interesting, you know, obviously, because Portugal was
really one of the the naval powers of the world
right back in the fifteen hundreds and explored a lot
of places and took over a lot of places, shall
we say. And so Brazil, Mozambique, the Far East, that's
(27:46):
all incorporated, Africa, in South Africa, it's all incorporated into
their food and culture in a fairly deep way because
a lot of those a lot of those countries had
open door policies that they could go between Portugal and
where the or not, even though they're all independent at
this point. Yeah. So there's a lot of Brazilian, a
lot of Mozambique, a lot of Far Eastern influence in
(28:09):
these in the Portuguese lexicon, shall we say. So the
food has a lot of that too. And this restaurant
was Mozambique. Yea. They opened their shop in nineteen eighty
four and they've been so they've been going for forty years.
And it's just a tiny little Mozambique cuisine restaurant and
it's absolutely amazing and you.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Probably works just past it. I mean these are tiny
little bit so it's called Taskina no cantina cantino cantina
do asis. The next one we went to was Taskina,
So one's a cantina restaurant and whe's a little Taskina
which is a really small eatery like a taska canto
do fado. So they did a live foto at night.
We were there for lunch. There was a traditional kuvit
(28:53):
so couvert, by the way, is like different Portuguese breads
and sauces or butters or whatever. You do pay for it.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
It's and free olives, bread, olive oil and butter.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
And you're always going to be served it. If you
don't want it, say you don't in the beginning, because
otherwise you're going to pay for it. Octopus salad which
is traditional and it was very very good. And then
baccoala a braw baccola. It was an interesting story behind bagla.
It's like what the universal dish of Portugal, but it's
not local to Portugal, right.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
No, it's not. The waters are too warm in Portugal
for cod to live off the coast of Portugal. So
all the port all the cod comes from the Northern Atlantic,
whether that's Norway or Iceland, or Canada or New England,
which is which, and all of those areas have a
lot of Portuguese fishermen working the waters, and there's and
(29:42):
through the generations a lot of settling has happened in
those places as well by Portuguese who have gone there
to fish. So so, but the cod, the baccalau, which
is salted cod and dried cod, all comes from those regions.
It does not come from Portugal. And it's the Portuguese
national dish in my opinion, even though those are my words.
And we were talking to Melissa or eating europe Gode,
(30:05):
and she said, I think there if you ask a
Portuguese person, they'll say that there's three hundred and sixty
five ways to make buccalout.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
But one of the most common besides just plain grilled,
you know, or saute with steam potatoes, which she had
at Osa Greato Delfama, is baccalo aba, which is we
had also importo. It's like a mash up literally of
shredded mashed up cod and potatoes like a mash up,
and then with some onions and herbs and then on
(30:34):
top of match stick potatoes. It's actually interesting. It's probably
a better way for.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
Me to eat it than just it's like a like
a casserole. Yes, pod cod shepherd's pie.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
That's a good explaining. Yeah, cod shepherd's pie. So we
had that again. Everywhere we went there was wine and
it's delicious.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
It actually is one of my more preferred bacca load dishes,
you know, for me, it's not my favorite, but thankfully
Portugal has more than god restaurant s George. We had
a cheeseboard of Portuguese cheeses, which are very pungent, and
Kyle Baverdi, which is a signature dish a green soup,
(31:15):
so you're gonna have some green in it. It's very
popular in the Azors and it's just a delicious soup
made throughout Portugal and different versions. We had some very
good soups throughout this and then their last stop was
the pastelar Ria Santo Antonio for that Pastel but not,
which is one of the top five great tour three
and a half hours worth it completely if you want
(31:38):
to overview because I don't love baccalo, as you know.
I kind of made it my mission this trip to
find other mariiscos and seafood. Moriscos as shellfish and then
there's seafood. And I think we just did a great job.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
We pretty much covered it all.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
We did.
Speaker 3 (31:54):
If it was available, we had it.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
So one of the first things we did is we
went to time Out Market, which you'd been to before,
and we're raving about and it's just like a one
stop shop, though crowded, to go and try foods from
different restaurants and specialties. And I think we had some
of the best fresh as sushi imaginable from one place.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
It was amazing.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Oh my god, Oh my god. And then we discovered
another woman chef.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
We went there like twice, we have lunch there twice,
and we.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Tried different dishes. Seafood rice is the one that used
to get a lot. I've had octopus rice, seafood rice,
a lot of rice dishes, which is another thing reminds
me of Louisiana. But you can also get good pizzas.
We didn't get to go there was one that see
me did. We actually dined at seamea. They had an
octopus hot dog. Yes, I wanted to try that.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
I want to try it too, and they didn't have
it at the restaurant. Was too bad for us.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
No really want to go there. But time Out Market
go early or late. There is a fresh vegetable fruit
and vegetable market next to it. But it is an
incredible This is the man who created Timeout magazine. Timeout
Media started this in London and there's Timeout markets around
the world. I think this is my first one. I
(33:08):
was blown away.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
Yeah, it's one of the earlier ones, and there are
Timeouts all over the world now, but the Lisbon one
was one of the first outside of London that he
opened up. Just fabulous it was, and it's great. It
features food stalls from restaurants and independent food stales as
well from around the city and to help highlight and
focus on the cuisine of that area. And they're always
(33:32):
busy and it's a I think it's a great bargain. Yeah,
and it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
It was a lot of fun and you can get wine.
We had wine and coffee. It's just great. Now. There
were a couple of seafood dishes that I'm still dreaming about,
and again many reminded me of New Orleans. I think
my all time high time favorite was the kataplana. I've
posted that photo. Kataplana is a brass oval dish to
(34:02):
cook the seafood stew, which is also called contaplana.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
Yeah, and it's for those of you who are the.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
Picture of it, the first one one you can put
that up.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
That's for those of you who are familiar with Bulia
bass from Marseille. This is the Portuguese versus of that.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Unbelievable. I think it's one of the just we had
this one at Maria Katita. We actually dined there twice
at the recommendation of the wonderful people who have handle
hospitality at Higgey House where we stayed, and it was
near where we stayed. Just the first time I went,
I had the octopus rice, also good, but I this
(34:37):
is our last dish together and it was divine. So
they it's literally the content plane is a two piece
vessel where you cook for like thirty minutes and steam
this and it's all seaf it's all shellfish based.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
It's it's and it was just delicious, Yeah, rich savory tomato.
We brought.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Yeah, and as I said, you can also have octopus
is very popular there. Fresh fish now, the fresh fish.
The second middle photo one will show we went to
See Me. This is very common. You can go and
pick your select your food and they'll cook it for you.
This is an example at a restaurant called c se
(35:17):
A me Emmy and you can literally they march you
over to the seafood market and you pick the fresh
incredible food and they just cook it right there. And
we did that. We ended up having like flounder. You
you know, it was expensive, so that's why we were
kind of gobsmacked by the price. But that's what market
seafood places are like, whether they're in Greece or Portugal
(35:38):
or whatever. We also had some very good, very good
sushi at See Me, and that is a lively restaurant
in the barrel Alta. That was my birthday dinner. It
was terrific. But just the amount and scope of fresh
seafood is incredible, and I tasted things that I never
had before, such as the sea barnacles love right, yes,
(36:02):
goose neck barnacles and they're called per se base. There's
no photo of them in this I don't think, I see.
But we had them at a very in demand restaurant
called Ramiro emmy R R E M I R O.
We went there for New Year's Eve. Uh so they
had a limited menu, but the limited menu was shellfish
for us. So we had this incredible meal of shellfish,
(36:24):
including the goose barnacles. And they're expensive because apparently they're
very hard to dive down eight. I think they look
prehistoric and scary.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
They're han harvested, and they are barnacles. They grow on rockets. Yeah,
so there's only one way to get them, and that's
to go down there and pick them. Yeah, and it
depends on the weather, of course, and whether somebody wants
to go out and do that job. Yeah. So so
they're they're not rare, but they're they're they are expensive,
but they're delicious. In my opinion, you didn't like them
(36:52):
as much as I did. I love them.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
What's interesting about the photo, but the screen is you
can see it tells the origin. So some of these
are from the Mozambique Atlantic. You know, Portuguese Portugal basically
is bordered by the sea, the Atlantic Sea north to south.
So you're going to have this amazing seafood I particularly was.
I loved the langesteins. I love the fresh gold fish.
(37:15):
The octopus was very tender. We had a wonderful seafood soup.
We had at one Placema Mariscotia, which our guide Tiago recommended.
We had a payea one time and a seafood rice
dish the second time. We went to two different locations.
Very popular, very popular with Asians. I guess the Asian
guide must really be saying it's a super popular place.
(37:38):
We were the only people who were not Asian in there,
but it was called Uma Mari Scotia. Just fantastic, delicious, Yeah,
just fantastic. Okay, we can take that photo down. But
just there's so much more to dining out in Portugal
Lisbon than cod and if you really don't like meat,
and if you move to move.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
Away from the coast, there's a lot of me as well.
So there was chicken and pork and lamb as well. Well.
You had some pork cakes a few times, and beef
and the food, you know, the food's all prepared deliciously.
But once you're inland, and we went to the town
of Eva, which is in Ellen, Taiju. One afternoon for
lunch and there was that was meat focus because it's
an hour and a half inland from the sea, so
(38:20):
they don't they don't get that seafood banging on their
door like like they do.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
And listen, you had a pickled pheasant. Yeah, I mean,
so we went to just We didn't do a lot
of day trips because it was Christmas week and a
lot of places, but we did do two. And it's
very easy to do day trips. Everybody's offering tours. You
can haggle and negotiate. We fortunately to go to ever.
(38:45):
We have a very good friend surf wine Tours, Mario Vidal.
He's based in Kushkash which is a beautiful town to
get to on the water. Mario organizes very nice, more
luxurious wine tours and surfing tours. So wine tours, let's
give him a shout out. He has become a friend
of ours on social media and which is me Happy
(39:06):
birthday every year. And finally always say when you come
into Portugal, and I wrote him, I said, this is the.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
Time where we're going to meet, this is where we are,
and so we actually met and had at the afternoon
with him.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
So he took us to Evora, which you've been.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
To, Yeah, I've been through before. That's where there there's
a very famous chapel there called the Chapel of Bones.
It's from the fifteen or sixteen hundreds and they basically
they tiled the walls of the chapel with human bones
and it's just incredible to see. And so I had
been there before, and I was like, melanief, We're going
to go one of the town's outside of Lisbon and
(39:39):
take a day trip. This is the one we should
go to.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
A ninety minute drive. It was raining, so that was
kind of a bummer, but we went. The Chapel of
Bones was so worth it.
Speaker 3 (39:47):
Capella disos unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
And then we had the chance to go have some
wine and dine in at the Anoteca Cartusia c A
r t u x A. Cartusia is an interesting story.
We actually met with the export director and had dinner
at her husband's restaurant, the LM two O eight in Lisbon.
It turns out Cartusia was owned it's it's it's a
huge property in allan tajo Uh and basically was owned
(40:15):
by a noble family who both died and left no heirs,
and so in their estate they willed it to create
a foundation to benefit the town of Cartusia and the
monastery and educational and social service program. So the wines
are were very nice. They're available in United States, and
we tasted a few with our meal at the Anoteca,
(40:36):
which is in the heart of Evora. But it's it's
a nice story that this one winery uh basically provides
for this historic UNESCO World Heritage Site town called Evora.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
And that was that was there. That was their will
was to was to create that foundation to fund and
make wine, to fund all the product. Yeah, and all
the charities that are involved with that foundation. It's an
amazing story. And the one you know, they make six
million bottles a year, so there's no lack of wine
(41:10):
or funding for what they're trying to accomplish, and it's
a great story.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
It didn't taste many because it was rating and that
we were tired, but we tasted some lovely whites. I
had a fish called dogfish soup. It's kind of a creamier,
really savory fish soup. It was delicious. I wish I'd
just had my bandwidth at at that point. Post New
Year's I was like, I can't have any more. It
was a wonderful day trip. The other day trip we did,
(41:35):
which everybody does, is to CenTra, and I have three
things to say about that trip. One, you don't need
to spend a lot of money to go to CenTra.
It's like thirty minute drive outside of Lisbon. We hired
an uber. It was like twenty five euros. And then
you can hire a guy when you get there if
you want to show you around. Two you can easily
through booking dot com or get your guide. Just buy
(41:55):
tickets to the gardens and not the palace, because the
palace to get into the pena, which is spectacular on
the outside, but it's long lines to get in, so
you have to be patients and only to see three rooms. Tiago,
one of our GUIDs, gave us that tip centric it stunning.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
But the gardens are acres and acres and acres of
forest and formal gardens, so it's really nice to see.
And it's up on top of the mountain, overlooking CenTra
and overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in the coast.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
It's gorgeous, and the palace is it's It's definitely worth it.
But you must go when it's not rating because it is.
It is a dry day trip for sure. It has
its own micro climate also, so it will be chillier.
What we learned is the town itself is delightful, and
I think we both agreed that when we returned we
(42:41):
would actually spend the night in Centro. There were some
lots to do. There was a port tasting room, some
wine bars, good restaurant, restaurants. Very we had a very good,
very good. Uh. I had this mushroom suit made from
local CenTra mushrooms that just blew me away, just fantastic.
Our dry our uber driver recommended it.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
You know. Interesting. It was interesting because it was about
noon when we were driving over and we said, well,
maybe we'll have lunch before we go up to the
top of the top of the mountain and see the castle.
He goes, well, I've got the perfect restaurant for you,
and he dropped us right off at the restaurant as
opposed to where we had prepaid to get dropped off
at right and he said, so we detoured.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
Us and it was uncommon or something the restaurant. It's
uncommon with fantastic. But again, take it slow. This is
this is not a place to rush and say, oh
I got to check off this place, in this place
and this. I see that all the time on social
media groups I'm on, like people just try to rush
through their trips and they don't really enjoy it in
(43:40):
the same way.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
Yes, that's so true.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
It's so true. So we did Center. We were blessed
it was our last day. The weather had cleared because
in every I was raining. I was blown away by
the palace. There's a whole history behind it. There's so
much to see, so colorful. The whole area of Center
is an outdoor museum with sculptures everywhere. We didn't get
(44:03):
to Cash Cash, which is nearby. Frankly, I would do
that on a different day and have a nice lunch there.
There's a very famous chef, Jose Avilez, who has a
terrific restaurant there. We didn't get to. We tried to
go to as many restaurants as we could, but we
only had so much time in bandwidth. But what I
learned is that Lisbon has Miijlin worthy and rated restaurants.
You can do that route and you will have an
(44:25):
amazing good time. It has historic fine dining restaurants. One
that we went to and recommend was Gambrinos. I think
it dates to the nineteen twenties. It's in a more
commercial area of the Baija. I would have walked right
past it. I mean actually, yeah, I would have walked
right past this restaurant because it was in the middle
(44:45):
of all those places where the restaurants have signs and
people are trying to get you in, but you walk
in and you just feel like you're walking in history.
And it was just delightful and every was all thatshes
were prepared table side.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
You remember that it was all gared donald table side
holes and the wine director Pedro fast fabulous. So yeah,
it was very intuitive and what we wanted and picked
some beautiful wines, including a Portuguese pino noir and.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
It was terrific. From the Douro, right, yeah, from the Doro,
and we tried really hard to drink local wines. We
did green wine from Vigino Verdi, we did the dow
We love the Doo whites, We love this pino and
no wiir from the Doro, the reds, the Alan Tajo reds,
the Baradas where the sparkling wines are and uh, of
(45:28):
course Evora, we had the Cartusia wines and a few others. Uh.
You know, always drink local Portugal hus. We'd like to
go back and do more wine focus. Of course, we
had just been to Portos, so we kind of didn't
do a lot of port on this trip because we'd
just done an intensive Porto trip, but just terrific. I
wanted just also so you can get michel and rated restaurants,
(45:51):
but then you have these charming tascas uh, and we
went to a few on our culinary tour and then
Osa Grita da Alfama. She was so cute. There was
like only four wines to choose from, and we just
like ebbed the ball and just everybody's very friendly. You
can also go to some terrific wine bars. We liked
to one near us called Antigua. It was always packed,
(46:13):
but there's some where you can just order simple foods
and then the cocktail bars are very good. We went
to one called Aura oh u r A that was
I still don't know what that neighborhood is and we
walked way up. It was New Year's Eve. It was
a lot of fun and our friend Tina, who owns
a distillery said it was one of the best cocktail
bars she'd been to. Is very sassy and classy and
(46:34):
intimate called Aura oh u r a or something like that.
And then the one we love that we have to
give a shout out to it was shoes. What was it?
Speaker 3 (46:45):
Shoes and Booze.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Shoes and Booze. Okay, that we did that. We had
such a fun night there.
Speaker 3 (46:49):
It's a dual shoe shop, so there's that. They actually
have shoes on the wall for sale and may beautiful
and they're all beautiful. They're handmade. Portugal is very well
known for its shoes and leatherwork. But and then Booze
of course. So it's a cocktail bar and music bar
because and wine and wine bar where you can get
bites to eat as well. So we actually went there
for a drink and ended up staying for dinner and
(47:10):
watching the music.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
They had Boston Nova Incredible live Bosanova and Portugal, because
in addition to the sad fund of music, you're gonna
incredible of the beats of Boston Nova from Portugal. We
had an Alanasia wine terrific red with a selection of
a pistachio kind of homus and cheeses Portuguese cheeses and
I think something else and Barbara Stein shout out to her.
(47:35):
She was so sweet, she was shaken to the music
in the back of the bar.
Speaker 3 (47:38):
She's the one that runs the place and does creates
the cocktails and she's just a lovely woman.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
And the next door, if you really want to have
a more quiet they have a restaurant next door and
its own bio, a company that had the owner owns
a winery a bodega in Alentejo.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
Right, so all the wines are from him, right, and
the food in the atmosphere and the wine and the
cocktails were just delightful.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
Yeah, it was. I think it was our last night
and it was just a great I have to say
the trip was amazing. I think we covered a lot
of ground. We tried a lot of restaurants, from high
end to casual, to eateries to wine bars, to shoes
and booze and street food, and we still I don't
think made a dent because there's so much. Thanks to
(48:25):
our incredible guides, Tiago, Kate and Melissa at Eating Europe,
they all gave us lists. They gave us lists of
where to go their favorite clubs, their favorite museums, their
favorite bars, and I'm looking at it now, I just
got to figure out how I'm not going to compile
it to something to share with all of you. But
you know, when you travel, connect with locals, go take go,
(48:48):
you know, don't just be a tourist, be a traveler.
Speaker 3 (48:51):
Yeah, and don't feel that you have to see everything,
because you can always go back.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
Yeah, you can always go back. And I'm going to
say this, We'll be back to Lisbon and to Portugal.
I think it's a terrific place to go. I'm so
grateful we took the time, and I hope as we
wrap up this show that you're inspired to book the trip,
take the soap, and take another button, something new, because
you only love once. So in the spirit of the
(49:16):
Portuguese that we met connected with, enjoy life. They went
through a lot of hardship and history. They've come out
of it much like our friends in New Orleans, and
they know how to live life to the fullest. And
we hope you do too as you start your twenty
twenty six So as always, thank you for joining us.
Step outside your comfort zone, eat, drink, and explore on
(49:37):
your own and always with us on the Connected Table,
follow us on the Connected Table on Instagram, follow our blog,
The Connected Table, and always stay insatiably curious.
Speaker 3 (49:47):
Thank you a
The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are
solely those of the hosts and their guests and not
those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We
make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services,
or products mentioned on air or on our web.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
No liability, explicit or.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Implied shall be extended to W four CY Radio or
its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be
directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W
FOURCY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Welcome to the Connected Table Live. We're your hosts, Melanie
Young and David Ransom. You're insatiably curious culinary couple. We
enjoy traveling the world to bring you the amazing places
we visit, the people we meet, and the food, wines
and spirits and other yummy things we drink and eat,
and we want to bring it to you so you
(01:01):
will eat, drink and explore and be inspired to step
out and travel and explore with us. We are broadcasting
from where David, We're not from there, but we were
just in Well.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
We were just in Lisbon for New Years and we're
back now when we're broadcasting from our own office, but.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
We're sharing Lisbon with you. So we have a great tradition.
I particular to celebrate my New Year's birthday January one,
So we're different every year. And this year we chose
a place that had been on my bucket lists for
a long time that I never visited, Lisbon, Portugal.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
You've been before, right, I have, I've been to. This
was my fourth trip to Portugal, so it was actually
just lovely to be more familiar with it by the
time I got there this time. How long have you
been traveling for New Year's Melanie? How many years?
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Thirty seven? Thirty seven wonderful years, That's all I'm going
to say. Yeah, a long time, over three decades. And
I keep a diary of every trip and experience, and
those diaries have traveled with me from home to home,
as you know, David.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Because I've packed them up and I've moved them.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
And those memories are so incredibly special. So we made
more memories bringing in twenty twenty six in Lisbon. We
decided to give ourselves, indulge ourselves in basing ourselves there
for ten days. Usually when we go on these wonderful
wine trips, we're moving around a lot for infasing wineries
and going here and there and unpacking and packing, and
(02:28):
we had just been in Porto, which we will be
doing a special feature on and another edition of a
Connected Table. But we decided that, given it was Christmas
week and in the New Year's, we would base ourselves
in Lisbon and really get to know the city. And
I think we did a good job, did a great job.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
And for that reason used to park ourselves for ten
days at a time. Yeah, because we're almost not even home.
For ten days at a time, it seems well, yeah,
I could traveling.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
I did a show on Fearless Fabulous you about the
joy of slow travel. You know, we have slow eating,
slow wine, slow travel. Why rush and go here and
there and spend a night here, in a day trip
here and zip around you become more exhausted, then exhilarate it.
So ten days in Lisbon in the end of de
(03:17):
Summer through New Year's early January gave us a chance
to explore the city, learn its history, find incredible neighborhoods,
and of course eat some amazing foods. So we're bringing
that to you and we'll be sharing it also on
our blog. Let's just set it up with a little
bit about Lisbon in case you've never been, and what
(03:37):
opened my eyes as a first time visitor and yours
is a fourth time. My impressions about Lisbon are that
it was a mashup between San Francisco and New Orleans.
Why because you've got these amazing steep hills in San
Francisco and these amazing vistas over the Tasius River, and
you have these historic streetcars similar to the rice A
(04:00):
Ronny street cars in San Francisco, and amazing seafood dishes
similar to the torpedos that are Portuguese you find in
San Francisco. Is a seafood port. But then on the
same time, it reminded me of our home, New Orleans. Again.
You've got these historic street cars, You've got this incredible
(04:21):
architecture that has tile and stone on the outside, and
these balconies, these French balconies made of iron also in
San Francisco. You have the crumbling streets that are permanent
conditions in New Orleans. And you've got that African layer
(04:43):
and South American flavors that you get here in what
we like to call the North Caribbean. New Orleans there's
just history of both. But you know what's interesting, David,
Before I share the next interesting point about San Francisco,
New Orleans, what were your in pressions.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Well, I was fascinated by the fact that you talked
about the streets and the fact that they're that they're
somewhat difficult to navigated times, but they're they're all brick,
So they're all they're all stone and individually placed bricks
and we call them Belgium bricks here in the US,
but stone that they that have been really hand put
(05:21):
into the entire city. So there's almost no pavement as
it were. It's all these brick roadways and sidewalks. It's
beautiful to see, but it does make navigation a little
bit difficult at times because it's not the most even
of terrain, let's put it that way.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
So yeah, there's probably a good reason for that, because,
like San Francisco and New Orleans, Lisbon suffered a massive disaster,
specifically on the morning of November one, seventeen fifty five earthquake.
I don't know if they had Richter scales about them,
but it was like almost eight point on the Richter
scale hit Lisbon, just as all the residents were going
(06:01):
to church to celebrate All Saints' Day. So while they
were all in church, on earthquake hit shattered everything, destroying buildings.
But then what happened was worse one. All the locals
had lit candles and let them burning in their homes
while they went attended church services, so the candles were
(06:24):
knocked over and the city went in flames, a huge firestorm.
And then the third trifecta was the tsunami.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Yeah, so everybody was escaping into the river to escape
the flames of the city because of the city is
basically right on the shore of the river, so they
all escaped into the river, and as the as they
all kind of got to the river, the tsunami hit
so almost I think they estimated about forty thousand people
died died.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Seventeen fifty five. You see a lot of So as
a result of that, when the long rebuilding process began
and they high architects, the stone building was important. The
stone buildings, the stone roads, and the tiles, the painted
tiles that you see became part of the architecture to
protect the buildings.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
And they actually made a lot of improvements to the
building structures of the of the city as they rebuilt it.
The hills were not as effected as the as the
downtown center of the city, called the Vicus was was
that was basically leveled. The king actually was nowhere to
be found that day. He's in the photo right the
photo right back behind us there of.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Course is facing the river for a reason.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Yeah, but he was nowhere to be found that day.
He had actually gone on a picnic with his family
outside of the downtown center. He was out in Bellm
which is now where the royal palaces, and had decided
to take a picnic, so he wasn't inside. He was fine,
but he decided never to go back to Lisbon, and
so he spent the rest of his life outside of Lisbon,
(07:54):
ruling from afar, shall we.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Say, yeah, central location, the Pars do Commercia, which is
like the gathering place for everything, and where we saw
the New Year's fireworks. His statue is front and center
and the horse is facing out because he's trying to
get away from Lisbon. We heard a lot of great
stories through our tour guys, which we'll get into. But
you know, Lisbon also really didn't even open up to
(08:18):
the world until after nineteen seventy four because it fell
under a forty year rule of a dictator, the longest
authoritarian regime in Europe, under Antonio de Olivero Salazar, and
it was overthrown in a military coup overthrew the Authoritatian
(08:39):
dictatorship in nineteen seventy four. And what we learned on
our walking tour was the Carnation Revolution very important because
until then Lisbon was basically closed to the world. Portugal
was Portugal, even though it was a seafaring country. And
apparently a woman that is now revered, leege Celeste Keerro,
(09:01):
was a flower cellar worked in a local bar or
something because she handed out red carnations to everybody and
they put them in the in the rifles. What do
you call that part of the rifle where you put
the flower the barrel, the barrel, thank you the barrel.
And every year now on April twenty fifth, which is
the day they have the celebration of carnations, it's it's
(09:24):
just beautiful. Fortunately, now Lisbon seems to be doing very
well economically and the great tourism movement is evident. We
saw many tourists from all over the world well.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
I think one of the things that was New Year's
first of all, and they do and Lisbon does a
great New Year's festival, and the beautiful fireworks and music
on the river in.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
The right the buffle of their head, it's.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
Really behind Melanie's head. They set up a big stage
in the big Prato de Commercio, which is the main
square in Lisbon, and they have a huge party and
then everybody watches fireworks. We were part of that.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
And we you know, you wear blue underwear, you drink,
eat cul drapes at midnight. There's all sorts of fun customs.
It was a lot of fun and very well behaved,
no a lot of great lot of police presence. We
felt very safe. I want to emphasize that we felt
really safe during our entire time, and Lit's been like anywhere.
This heavily tourist said, you do have to watch out
for pickpockets and other things, but we felt very safe.
(10:21):
Now it's a big city, but it's a small city,
right and a lot of the neighborhoods are walkable. We
really really The tourism aspect of it concentrates in like
four areas which will go over so we stayed in
the area called Bishop b A i XA their hotels everywhere.
(10:43):
It's they considered the heart of Lisbon. I would say
it would be equivalent of going to New York and
staying in the Times Square area. It's flat, unlike many
places of listen. So if you want to go somewhere
where it's flat and don't want to go up and
down hill, this is a great place. We loved our location,
uh shaft about the higgy house where we stay at
an apartment hotel. Uh. There's wide streets. Many don't have automobiles,
(11:08):
so you can just watch a lot of stores and restaurants.
And it's next to my probably one of my favorite neighborhoods,
which is the oldest in Lisbon called Alfama. Now it's interesting.
When I was researching hotels, we almost stay in al Fama.
I would not recommend it because it is so hilly
and there's so many narrow streets. It's like a maze
(11:30):
of narrow streets deliberately so that invaders could not find
their way into the streets. We learned.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
That's one of the things we learned. Youah, yeah, Lisbon
has been invaded a couple of times.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Oh yeah, and you can't invade. Yeah. So a Fama
and nearby Morera are two very neighborhoods. They're very old.
Alfama is known for having a Jewish community. We saw
some old synagogues, whereas Mora is a Muslim community, which
is also interesting because it's a very multi cultural area here.
(12:03):
It's also the birth of where Fato, the very soulful
music was there, a mournful music was you know, obviously
for a long time the Lisbon residents had lots to mourn,
whether they were being bombarded by a hurricane, flood or
tsunami or fire. There were all the women who were
mourning the men they lost to see when they went
out and maybe did return. So this music is often played.
(12:26):
It's very somber in small eateries that they call tusca,
which is equivalent of a tavern where you can get
very affordable, more traditional food at really reasonable prices. So
that's Alfama. And you gotta you gotta have good walking
shoes and we do recommend a god. We did a
(12:46):
free walking tour. We booked through booking dot com, which
was where we booked our hotel. Kate was our guy.
She lives in al Fama. She gave us a list
which will be sharing later in the show. Some of
everybody's recommendations. Uh it is so yeah, you pay what
you want, you tip, you tip the guide. We highly
recommend it. What were your impressions of Alfama and Morrera.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
I love them, I wouldn't want to stay there. Super
hilly and the streets are narrow and very difficult to
navigate however, and again those bricks that they're paved with.
But it's a beautiful area. That's where the that's where
the main cathedral is of Lisbon. So it's not down
in the center of the city. It's up on hill
overlooking the city. And uh, it's a we actually didn't
(13:30):
go in. But it's quite a nice cathedral, they say.
And it's a beautiful area. It's it's small, intricate streets
and a couple of different little couple of different neighborhoods
within it. But it's a beautiful area and a lot
of people go there to see the nightlife and go
to this go to the shops and stores and buy things,
et cetera. It's a lovely area. We actually spent a
(13:54):
lot of time there, even though because we were staying
right on the edge of it down in the main downtown,
which is why.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
We loved are Yeah, we went up there wine bars.
We love this wine bar called Antiga Wine Bar. It
lose steps from us, great views to look over and
literally there was at one viewpoint where our guide Kate
took us and we went revisited. I thought I was
actually looking at San Francisco because the Basco de Gama
(14:20):
Bridge looks like the Cold and Gate Bridge. And then
high at the top is the monastery where there's an
incredible outdoor garden bar where you can sit and have
drinks and just look out over the river to the
other side. It's just incredible, wonderful place to visit. Alfama
(14:42):
is the historic and Mourra. They're next to each other
and you just get lost in both of them. The
other areas that are key to see one is Batto Alta,
which has very fine hotels, probably more luxury hotels, and nightlife,
a lot of clubs, a lot of great dining, good shopping.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Good shopping as well, really good shopping. That's where the
hot stores are, et cetera. But it's also it's a
it's on a hill, so like Alfames, but it's on
the other hill, on the other side of town, the
other side of the main downtown. So if you go
up that hill there, it's it's a little the streets
are a little wider, et cetera. But great shopping, wonderful restaurants.
We went to a few while we were Yeah, we did.
(15:23):
And again easy to get to and everybody walks up
and down those hills.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Yeah, and there's a famous elevator. There's a very famous
elevator that takes you up over to the train station
and everything. It was closed due to repair what they're doing,
but definitely take advantage of going to these incredible vistas. Again,
(15:47):
we had through free walking tours. We did the Alfa
Ma tour and then we did one called Historical Lisbon
and our guy Tiago was a history professor and he
that's when we went to to see the historic elevator
and the train station in the views that way to
the baro Alto and we learned so much. That's where
we learned about We went to the palace. It's now
(16:09):
a museum where the Carnation Revolution took place and where
everybody gathers every April to celebrate. And I honestly think
if we had not taken those walking tours, which are
also a very good exercise two and a half hours
of uphill walking, we probably wouldn't have seen it ourselves.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Yeah, we learned a lot that you never would see
in the guidebook as well. So yeah, it was just
you know, and these tours, there's there are a million
of those tours in probably every city. But it's worth
spending a day or spending a day taking a tour,
or a couple of days taking a couple of tours
because you booked them for a euro yeah, and then
(16:46):
you're and then it's pay what you want so and
usually the pay that it's twenty bucks ahead, so yeah,
twenty gifts. So you give them twenty euros per person
or thirty euros per couple or yeah, and you know,
because that's how they make their money.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
It's two and a half hours. I mean, you get
a value for this, and they give.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
You a lot of information and you cover a lot
of ground. And it was well worth the time and
the money spent to attend these tours. And we gave them.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
We gave both of our guides great reviews and they
gave us which we're going to share with you some
places they like to go that we all like to find,
those insider local places.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
What we have some now for you. As a matter
of fact, after that tour was over, we looked at
the list and said, while we're having lunch, oh, we
went to one of the places that he suggested, exactly
and so fat it was a lot of fun. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
So the other neighborhood, it's further out, so it's a
cab right which we get to the transportation options. It's
called Blem now. Blem is where the Royal Palace is.
It's also where the Matt Museum is, the very famous
museum of automation, architect architecture. It's like a huge museum
(17:53):
of engineering. You see a lot of steamship stuff technologya
m aat big looks like a giant beached whale kind
of on the water. We went one rainy day because
it does rain, because it does rain in the winter.
And then we walked around Belem, which is again where
(18:14):
the Royal Palace is, where this huge monastery to Belem
is a tower but it's closed. The tour dear Bulim
and a lot of eateries, and of course the one
reason many people just go to bulem Is because they
want to go and have one of the signature dishes
of Portugal and Lisbon. We're going to put it up
(18:35):
on the screen for you can see. It's a third one,
one pastas de blem. Okay, there's a whole story behind this.
First of all, we learned egg pastries are a big
deal in Portugal because well up in Porto. We learned
it was probably because they used the egg whites to
find the wines.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
So there's a million versions of past days yea, and
most of them are called paste nata, so they call
them just natas, yes, and so you know, one of
our guides said, if you're trying to find the perfect one,
just do as much research as you can and have
as many of them as you can before you leave list,
because everybody eats them. They're delicious. But the original is
(19:16):
the Pests of Bilm from eighteen thirty seven, right, which
was created in Bilm by the i think by the
bakery that well supplied yolks by the nuns of the convent.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
So the story goes there was a convent in Belem
because there's a royal palace and a big monas I
referred to the monasterio there. It's huge, huge monasterio. So
the nuns used the egg whites to starch the habits
and robes of the of the priests and their habits.
So egg whites were used to starch the robe. So
(19:51):
there was a surplus of yolks. And of course many
monasteries create amazing food products around the world to make money,
so they made pastries and the surplus eggs repurpose to
make very many pastries, but the one that has become
legendary is the pastaise de bilem, where it's only called
pastes blem and blem. Otherwise it's paste dinata and it's
(20:13):
basically a custardy egg custard in a tart with burnt
top as you can see. And the original version dates
to eighteen thirty seven. The family that runs this basically
took over making these egg custard pastaste them from the
(20:34):
nuns and took over the process and the recipe and
have been making it ever since eighteen thirty seven. It's
still family right now.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
I think only three people have the recipe exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
I mean, it's as quiet as it's.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Like coca cola. Yeah, and nobody knows exactly what it's
made with, so you're.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Probably asking is it worth it to get there? App absolutely,
we loved all the the pasta's den that we had,
but I think for me personally, and you can chime in.
This particular one had a crust that was so light
and crispy and tasty, and the burnt top it was
(21:11):
like a cumbu let.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
It was just it's delicious. These are all very traditional.
There were a couple of other places that we visited,
and of course we were testing other ones of course
where you could get flavored ones as well. We had
a wonderful one buy chocolate with Dubai chocolate and another
one with pistachio in it, and they were all delicious,
So you know, there's obviously room for checking out other
ways to make it, but this was the original and you.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Can actually you can take lessons to learn how to
make it yourself. We went to one place I think
it's called Natalaya. It was we could literally see students
learning how to make pasta pasta nata and we had
that's where we had the Dubai chocolate Oneta. Mante Geria
is the other well known producer the key with these
(22:00):
is you can get them anywhere, like you can get
croissants anywhere whatever. In France, you want to go where
they're being made. So when you go into the padia
which is the name of a bakery pot area, look
and say are they being made or look for signs
that they're actually being made because you want them fresh.
They're not the same otherwise.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
You want them, Yeah, you want them warm, Bill m
They are constantly making and they're always warm. Also the
other place that you just mentioned and I can't.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Remember the name, Yeah, Well we also went to Pastelaria
Nata with one of our guys, oh with Eating Europe,
which we'll get to. That's who we went with. And
there was just all fabulous and you just get this
incredible cup of coffee usual you get it gone latte.
They like to put look on the coffee and it's
just bliss. So that's bell. We also ate at what
(22:50):
was Bilim two eight, a nice little restaurant there. So
there's other things to do besides get the pussis Bilim
and the Matt Museum, so that's as like an uber
ride to get there, which now let's just quickly we
talked about key neighborhoods. Let's just talk about transportation, because
for me that was blown away. Okay, you see in
many Portugal images of Lisbon the street cars, they're very,
(23:13):
very famous. There's one number twenty eight that you can
just take it right all around the city. We almost
did that one rainy day. It's crowded and you have
to be aware of pickpockets, but we saw some that
were empty.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Well they were either closed off or they were on
private surce, so you.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Can that's a fun way to get around the city. However,
they also have tuck tucks. Our friends did tuck tucks.
What's your Only time I've ever done tech talk was
in Bangkok. There's tup tuk tours ten Lizzies. Yeah, they
have Model Tea.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
They have these and they're modern. They're electric, so they're
brand new. But they look like Model T's and they're
all different colors and they're a great way to get around,
you know, they see four, six or eight whatever it
may be, right because they do come in different sizes,
but they were a very very cool concept.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Yeah, to.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Compete with the tuck tucks and take people on tours
around the city with the open in open air so
would say, because they're just covered but they don't have size.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
It's so cool and you can negotiate priced. And then
we saw some crazy people biking and motorcycling and segueing.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
A lot of scooters. A lot of scooters out there too.
I would do it again. The streets.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
The streets are bumpy and hilly. But the best part
is ubers are very inexpensive. We actually went to Cintra,
which is like thirty minutes away, and how much did
it cost us dollars? It costs that much just to
go into mid city here in Louisiana. And they have
another app called Bolt, but you know, sign up for
(24:43):
get the least expensive, you get the app and you
can get around the city.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
Really. One of the nice things I found was that
in Lisbon, Uber has an electric category where you can
request an electric car and it's cheaper than all the others.
So every time I wanted an Uber and we probably
took fifteen ubers while we were there. Yeah, I went
for the electric car, better for the environment, cheaper for us.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
So that's just a general overview. Now we're going to
spend the rest of the show talking about eating. So
one of the things we did is we did sign
up with Eating Europe, which we did in trustovvery in Rome,
and we had Ken done on this show. We signed
up for the most popular tour, which is a daytime
culinary tour. They also have a dining immersion tour and
various things. Melissa our guide was awesome. It's a three
(25:26):
and a half hour tour. Very small group maybe what
six people a people, Yeah, there were.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
About six or eight of us. And what's interesting is
that they set up the visits that you do to
basically go through a multi course meal. Yeah. So you
have a bite here, and then you have an appetizer there,
then you have your entrade another spot, and then you
have dessert and coffee at another spot. Of course it
was the Pestalda Nata.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Yeah. So I'm going to tell you what we ate.
And the brain thing is Melissa was very informed. We
got a little history listen everywhere we went and it
was mainly in Alfama and Marera. Again history and she
had wine. Wine was I complimented Ken's on his team
on this because wine was served Portuguese wine. Every course
in Portugal has a wide variety of wines and we
drank several types. So our first was Gingina Popular for churiso,
(26:12):
a bomberdo Buffana, okay, Buffana. That was a tiny little place.
Buffana is like a snack. It's basically the slow roasted
porks in herbs and white wine, thinly sliced on bread.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Yeah, it's Lisbon's answer to the grab and go sandwich.
Shall we say, Yeah, there's a lot of little places
that just make biffana. They maybe a little hole in
the wall and there's a line outside goutfronts. Yeah, and
you know if there's a line up front of local
people that it's probably a good biffana. But it's just
sliced pork on a piece of bread.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
And this was a hole in the wall. I mean
there was like no sign. It's called Gingina Popular. And
we also had some sausages and cheeses. And for me,
the non meat eater, I had a really delicia us
fried cuttlefish sandwich, lightly tempura fried thick, thick pieces of cuttlefish.
It was delicious with some Peria pierri sauce because we
(27:08):
love peiri piery sauce. A lot of peiriy peery sauce there.
And then we went to Continuo de Asis, which is
a Mozambique restaurant that is so highly regarded that we
saw that the chef had cooked at the James Bear
Foundation event and had reviews for Peter and bon appetite.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Yeah, it was interesting, you know, obviously, because Portugal was
really one of the the naval powers of the world
right back in the fifteen hundreds and explored a lot
of places and took over a lot of places, shall
we say. And so Brazil, Mozambique, the Far East, that's
(27:46):
all incorporated, Africa, in South Africa, it's all incorporated into
their food and culture in a fairly deep way because
a lot of those a lot of those countries had
open door policies that they could go between Portugal and
where the or not, even though they're all independent at
this point. Yeah. So there's a lot of Brazilian, a
lot of Mozambique, a lot of Far Eastern influence in
(28:09):
these in the Portuguese lexicon, shall we say. So the
food has a lot of that too. And this restaurant
was Mozambique. Yea. They opened their shop in nineteen eighty
four and they've been so they've been going for forty years.
And it's just a tiny little Mozambique cuisine restaurant and
it's absolutely amazing and you.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Probably works just past it. I mean these are tiny
little bit so it's called Taskina no cantina cantino cantina
do asis. The next one we went to was Taskina,
So one's a cantina restaurant and whe's a little Taskina
which is a really small eatery like a taska canto
do fado. So they did a live foto at night.
We were there for lunch. There was a traditional kuvit
(28:53):
so couvert, by the way, is like different Portuguese breads
and sauces or butters or whatever. You do pay for it.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
It's and free olives, bread, olive oil and butter.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
And you're always going to be served it. If you
don't want it, say you don't in the beginning, because
otherwise you're going to pay for it. Octopus salad which
is traditional and it was very very good. And then
baccoala a braw baccola. It was an interesting story behind bagla.
It's like what the universal dish of Portugal, but it's
not local to Portugal, right.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
No, it's not. The waters are too warm in Portugal
for cod to live off the coast of Portugal. So
all the port all the cod comes from the Northern Atlantic,
whether that's Norway or Iceland, or Canada or New England,
which is which, and all of those areas have a
lot of Portuguese fishermen working the waters, and there's and
(29:42):
through the generations a lot of settling has happened in
those places as well by Portuguese who have gone there
to fish. So so, but the cod, the baccalau, which
is salted cod and dried cod, all comes from those regions.
It does not come from Portugal. And it's the Portuguese
national dish in my opinion, even though those are my words.
And we were talking to Melissa or eating europe Gode,
(30:05):
and she said, I think there if you ask a
Portuguese person, they'll say that there's three hundred and sixty
five ways to make buccalout.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
But one of the most common besides just plain grilled,
you know, or saute with steam potatoes, which she had
at Osa Greato Delfama, is baccalo aba, which is we
had also importo. It's like a mash up literally of
shredded mashed up cod and potatoes like a mash up,
and then with some onions and herbs and then on
(30:34):
top of match stick potatoes. It's actually interesting. It's probably
a better way for.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
Me to eat it than just it's like a like
a casserole. Yes, pod cod shepherd's pie.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
That's a good explaining. Yeah, cod shepherd's pie. So we
had that again. Everywhere we went there was wine and
it's delicious.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
It actually is one of my more preferred bacca load dishes,
you know, for me, it's not my favorite, but thankfully
Portugal has more than god restaurant s George. We had
a cheeseboard of Portuguese cheeses, which are very pungent, and
Kyle Baverdi, which is a signature dish a green soup,
(31:15):
so you're gonna have some green in it. It's very
popular in the Azors and it's just a delicious soup
made throughout Portugal and different versions. We had some very
good soups throughout this and then their last stop was
the pastelar Ria Santo Antonio for that Pastel but not,
which is one of the top five great tour three
and a half hours worth it completely if you want
(31:38):
to overview because I don't love baccalo, as you know.
I kind of made it my mission this trip to
find other mariiscos and seafood. Moriscos as shellfish and then
there's seafood. And I think we just did a great job.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
We pretty much covered it all.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
We did.
Speaker 3 (31:54):
If it was available, we had it.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
So one of the first things we did is we
went to time Out Market, which you'd been to before,
and we're raving about and it's just like a one
stop shop, though crowded, to go and try foods from
different restaurants and specialties. And I think we had some
of the best fresh as sushi imaginable from one place.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
It was amazing.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Oh my god, Oh my god. And then we discovered
another woman chef.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
We went there like twice, we have lunch there twice,
and we.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Tried different dishes. Seafood rice is the one that used
to get a lot. I've had octopus rice, seafood rice,
a lot of rice dishes, which is another thing reminds
me of Louisiana. But you can also get good pizzas.
We didn't get to go there was one that see
me did. We actually dined at seamea. They had an
octopus hot dog. Yes, I wanted to try that.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
I want to try it too, and they didn't have
it at the restaurant. Was too bad for us.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
No really want to go there. But time Out Market
go early or late. There is a fresh vegetable fruit
and vegetable market next to it. But it is an
incredible This is the man who created Timeout magazine. Timeout
Media started this in London and there's Timeout markets around
the world. I think this is my first one. I
(33:08):
was blown away.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
Yeah, it's one of the earlier ones, and there are
Timeouts all over the world now, but the Lisbon one
was one of the first outside of London that he
opened up. Just fabulous it was, and it's great. It
features food stalls from restaurants and independent food stales as
well from around the city and to help highlight and
focus on the cuisine of that area. And they're always
(33:32):
busy and it's a I think it's a great bargain. Yeah,
and it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
It was a lot of fun and you can get wine.
We had wine and coffee. It's just great. Now. There
were a couple of seafood dishes that I'm still dreaming about,
and again many reminded me of New Orleans. I think
my all time high time favorite was the kataplana. I've
posted that photo. Kataplana is a brass oval dish to
(34:02):
cook the seafood stew, which is also called contaplana.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
Yeah, and it's for those of you who are the.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
Picture of it, the first one one you can put
that up.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
That's for those of you who are familiar with Bulia
bass from Marseille. This is the Portuguese versus of that.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Unbelievable. I think it's one of the just we had
this one at Maria Katita. We actually dined there twice
at the recommendation of the wonderful people who have handle
hospitality at Higgey House where we stayed, and it was
near where we stayed. Just the first time I went,
I had the octopus rice, also good, but I this
(34:37):
is our last dish together and it was divine. So
they it's literally the content plane is a two piece
vessel where you cook for like thirty minutes and steam
this and it's all seaf it's all shellfish based.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
It's it's and it was just delicious, Yeah, rich savory tomato.
We brought.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Yeah, and as I said, you can also have octopus
is very popular there. Fresh fish now, the fresh fish.
The second middle photo one will show we went to
See Me. This is very common. You can go and
pick your select your food and they'll cook it for you.
This is an example at a restaurant called c se
(35:17):
A me Emmy and you can literally they march you
over to the seafood market and you pick the fresh
incredible food and they just cook it right there. And
we did that. We ended up having like flounder. You
you know, it was expensive, so that's why we were
kind of gobsmacked by the price. But that's what market
seafood places are like, whether they're in Greece or Portugal
(35:38):
or whatever. We also had some very good, very good
sushi at See Me, and that is a lively restaurant
in the barrel Alta. That was my birthday dinner. It
was terrific. But just the amount and scope of fresh
seafood is incredible, and I tasted things that I never
had before, such as the sea barnacles love right, yes,
(36:02):
goose neck barnacles and they're called per se base. There's
no photo of them in this I don't think, I see.
But we had them at a very in demand restaurant
called Ramiro emmy R R E M I R O.
We went there for New Year's Eve. Uh so they
had a limited menu, but the limited menu was shellfish
for us. So we had this incredible meal of shellfish,
(36:24):
including the goose barnacles. And they're expensive because apparently they're
very hard to dive down eight. I think they look
prehistoric and scary.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
They're han harvested, and they are barnacles. They grow on rockets. Yeah,
so there's only one way to get them, and that's
to go down there and pick them. Yeah, and it
depends on the weather, of course, and whether somebody wants
to go out and do that job. Yeah. So so
they're they're not rare, but they're they're they are expensive,
but they're delicious. In my opinion, you didn't like them
(36:52):
as much as I did. I love them.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
What's interesting about the photo, but the screen is you
can see it tells the origin. So some of these
are from the Mozambique Atlantic. You know, Portuguese Portugal basically
is bordered by the sea, the Atlantic Sea north to south.
So you're going to have this amazing seafood I particularly was.
I loved the langesteins. I love the fresh gold fish.
(37:15):
The octopus was very tender. We had a wonderful seafood soup.
We had at one Placema Mariscotia, which our guide Tiago recommended.
We had a payea one time and a seafood rice
dish the second time. We went to two different locations.
Very popular, very popular with Asians. I guess the Asian
guide must really be saying it's a super popular place.
(37:38):
We were the only people who were not Asian in there,
but it was called Uma Mari Scotia. Just fantastic, delicious, Yeah,
just fantastic. Okay, we can take that photo down. But
just there's so much more to dining out in Portugal
Lisbon than cod and if you really don't like meat,
and if you move to move.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
Away from the coast, there's a lot of me as well.
So there was chicken and pork and lamb as well. Well.
You had some pork cakes a few times, and beef
and the food, you know, the food's all prepared deliciously.
But once you're inland, and we went to the town
of Eva, which is in Ellen, Taiju. One afternoon for
lunch and there was that was meat focus because it's
an hour and a half inland from the sea, so
(38:20):
they don't they don't get that seafood banging on their
door like like they do.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
And listen, you had a pickled pheasant. Yeah, I mean,
so we went to just We didn't do a lot
of day trips because it was Christmas week and a
lot of places, but we did do two. And it's
very easy to do day trips. Everybody's offering tours. You
can haggle and negotiate. We fortunately to go to ever.
(38:45):
We have a very good friend surf wine Tours, Mario Vidal.
He's based in Kushkash which is a beautiful town to
get to on the water. Mario organizes very nice, more
luxurious wine tours and surfing tours. So wine tours, let's
give him a shout out. He has become a friend
of ours on social media and which is me Happy
(39:06):
birthday every year. And finally always say when you come
into Portugal, and I wrote him, I said, this is the.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
Time where we're going to meet, this is where we are,
and so we actually met and had at the afternoon
with him.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
So he took us to Evora, which you've been.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
To, Yeah, I've been through before. That's where there there's
a very famous chapel there called the Chapel of Bones.
It's from the fifteen or sixteen hundreds and they basically
they tiled the walls of the chapel with human bones
and it's just incredible to see. And so I had
been there before, and I was like, melanief, We're going
to go one of the town's outside of Lisbon and
(39:39):
take a day trip. This is the one we should
go to.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
A ninety minute drive. It was raining, so that was
kind of a bummer, but we went. The Chapel of
Bones was so worth it.
Speaker 3 (39:47):
Capella disos unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
And then we had the chance to go have some
wine and dine in at the Anoteca Cartusia c A
r t u x A. Cartusia is an interesting story.
We actually met with the export director and had dinner
at her husband's restaurant, the LM two O eight in Lisbon.
It turns out Cartusia was owned it's it's it's a
huge property in allan tajo Uh and basically was owned
(40:15):
by a noble family who both died and left no heirs,
and so in their estate they willed it to create
a foundation to benefit the town of Cartusia and the
monastery and educational and social service program. So the wines
are were very nice. They're available in United States, and
we tasted a few with our meal at the Anoteca,
(40:36):
which is in the heart of Evora. But it's it's
a nice story that this one winery uh basically provides
for this historic UNESCO World Heritage Site town called Evora.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
And that was that was there. That was their will
was to was to create that foundation to fund and
make wine, to fund all the product. Yeah, and all
the charities that are involved with that foundation. It's an
amazing story. And the one you know, they make six
million bottles a year, so there's no lack of wine
(41:10):
or funding for what they're trying to accomplish, and it's
a great story.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
It didn't taste many because it was rating and that
we were tired, but we tasted some lovely whites. I
had a fish called dogfish soup. It's kind of a creamier,
really savory fish soup. It was delicious. I wish I'd
just had my bandwidth at at that point. Post New
Year's I was like, I can't have any more. It
was a wonderful day trip. The other day trip we did,
(41:35):
which everybody does, is to CenTra, and I have three
things to say about that trip. One, you don't need
to spend a lot of money to go to CenTra.
It's like thirty minute drive outside of Lisbon. We hired
an uber. It was like twenty five euros. And then
you can hire a guy when you get there if
you want to show you around. Two you can easily
through booking dot com or get your guide. Just buy
(41:55):
tickets to the gardens and not the palace, because the
palace to get into the pena, which is spectacular on
the outside, but it's long lines to get in, so
you have to be patients and only to see three rooms. Tiago,
one of our GUIDs, gave us that tip centric it stunning.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
But the gardens are acres and acres and acres of
forest and formal gardens, so it's really nice to see.
And it's up on top of the mountain, overlooking CenTra
and overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in the coast.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
It's gorgeous, and the palace is it's It's definitely worth it.
But you must go when it's not rating because it is.
It is a dry day trip for sure. It has
its own micro climate also, so it will be chillier.
What we learned is the town itself is delightful, and
I think we both agreed that when we returned we
(42:41):
would actually spend the night in Centro. There were some
lots to do. There was a port tasting room, some
wine bars, good restaurant, restaurants. Very we had a very good,
very good. Uh. I had this mushroom suit made from
local CenTra mushrooms that just blew me away, just fantastic.
Our dry our uber driver recommended it.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
You know. Interesting. It was interesting because it was about
noon when we were driving over and we said, well,
maybe we'll have lunch before we go up to the
top of the top of the mountain and see the castle.
He goes, well, I've got the perfect restaurant for you,
and he dropped us right off at the restaurant as
opposed to where we had prepaid to get dropped off
at right and he said, so we detoured.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
Us and it was uncommon or something the restaurant. It's
uncommon with fantastic. But again, take it slow. This is
this is not a place to rush and say, oh
I got to check off this place, in this place
and this. I see that all the time on social
media groups I'm on, like people just try to rush
through their trips and they don't really enjoy it in
(43:40):
the same way.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
Yes, that's so true.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
It's so true. So we did Center. We were blessed
it was our last day. The weather had cleared because
in every I was raining. I was blown away by
the palace. There's a whole history behind it. There's so
much to see, so colorful. The whole area of Center
is an outdoor museum with sculptures everywhere. We didn't get
(44:03):
to Cash Cash, which is nearby. Frankly, I would do
that on a different day and have a nice lunch there.
There's a very famous chef, Jose Avilez, who has a
terrific restaurant there. We didn't get to. We tried to
go to as many restaurants as we could, but we
only had so much time in bandwidth. But what I
learned is that Lisbon has Miijlin worthy and rated restaurants.
You can do that route and you will have an
(44:25):
amazing good time. It has historic fine dining restaurants. One
that we went to and recommend was Gambrinos. I think
it dates to the nineteen twenties. It's in a more
commercial area of the Baija. I would have walked right
past it. I mean actually, yeah, I would have walked
right past this restaurant because it was in the middle
(44:45):
of all those places where the restaurants have signs and
people are trying to get you in, but you walk
in and you just feel like you're walking in history.
And it was just delightful and every was all thatshes
were prepared table side.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
You remember that it was all gared donald table side
holes and the wine director Pedro fast fabulous. So yeah,
it was very intuitive and what we wanted and picked
some beautiful wines, including a Portuguese pino noir and.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
It was terrific. From the Douro, right, yeah, from the Doro,
and we tried really hard to drink local wines. We
did green wine from Vigino Verdi, we did the dow
We love the Doo whites, We love this pino and
no wiir from the Doro, the reds, the Alan Tajo reds,
the Baradas where the sparkling wines are and uh, of
(45:28):
course Evora, we had the Cartusia wines and a few others. Uh.
You know, always drink local Portugal hus. We'd like to
go back and do more wine focus. Of course, we
had just been to Portos, so we kind of didn't
do a lot of port on this trip because we'd
just done an intensive Porto trip, but just terrific. I
wanted just also so you can get michel and rated restaurants,
(45:51):
but then you have these charming tascas uh, and we
went to a few on our culinary tour and then
Osa Grita da Alfama. She was so cute. There was
like only four wines to choose from, and we just
like ebbed the ball and just everybody's very friendly. You
can also go to some terrific wine bars. We liked
to one near us called Antigua. It was always packed,
(46:13):
but there's some where you can just order simple foods
and then the cocktail bars are very good. We went
to one called Aura oh u r A that was
I still don't know what that neighborhood is and we
walked way up. It was New Year's Eve. It was
a lot of fun and our friend Tina, who owns
a distillery said it was one of the best cocktail
bars she'd been to. Is very sassy and classy and
(46:34):
intimate called Aura oh u r a or something like that.
And then the one we love that we have to
give a shout out to it was shoes. What was it?
Speaker 3 (46:45):
Shoes and Booze.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Shoes and Booze. Okay, that we did that. We had
such a fun night there.
Speaker 3 (46:49):
It's a dual shoe shop, so there's that. They actually
have shoes on the wall for sale and may beautiful
and they're all beautiful. They're handmade. Portugal is very well
known for its shoes and leatherwork. But and then Booze
of course. So it's a cocktail bar and music bar
because and wine and wine bar where you can get
bites to eat as well. So we actually went there
for a drink and ended up staying for dinner and
(47:10):
watching the music.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
They had Boston Nova Incredible live Bosanova and Portugal, because
in addition to the sad fund of music, you're gonna
incredible of the beats of Boston Nova from Portugal. We
had an Alanasia wine terrific red with a selection of
a pistachio kind of homus and cheeses Portuguese cheeses and
I think something else and Barbara Stein shout out to her.
(47:35):
She was so sweet, she was shaken to the music
in the back of the bar.
Speaker 3 (47:38):
She's the one that runs the place and does creates
the cocktails and she's just a lovely woman.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
And the next door, if you really want to have
a more quiet they have a restaurant next door and
its own bio, a company that had the owner owns
a winery a bodega in Alentejo.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
Right, so all the wines are from him, right, and
the food in the atmosphere and the wine and the
cocktails were just delightful.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
Yeah, it was. I think it was our last night
and it was just a great I have to say
the trip was amazing. I think we covered a lot
of ground. We tried a lot of restaurants, from high
end to casual, to eateries to wine bars, to shoes
and booze and street food, and we still I don't
think made a dent because there's so much. Thanks to
(48:25):
our incredible guides, Tiago, Kate and Melissa at Eating Europe,
they all gave us lists. They gave us lists of
where to go their favorite clubs, their favorite museums, their
favorite bars, and I'm looking at it now, I just
got to figure out how I'm not going to compile
it to something to share with all of you. But
you know, when you travel, connect with locals, go take go,
(48:48):
you know, don't just be a tourist, be a traveler.
Speaker 3 (48:51):
Yeah, and don't feel that you have to see everything,
because you can always go back.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
Yeah, you can always go back. And I'm going to
say this, We'll be back to Lisbon and to Portugal.
I think it's a terrific place to go. I'm so
grateful we took the time, and I hope as we
wrap up this show that you're inspired to book the trip,
take the soap, and take another button, something new, because
you only love once. So in the spirit of the
(49:16):
Portuguese that we met connected with, enjoy life. They went
through a lot of hardship and history. They've come out
of it much like our friends in New Orleans, and
they know how to live life to the fullest. And
we hope you do too as you start your twenty
twenty six So as always, thank you for joining us.
Step outside your comfort zone, eat, drink, and explore on
(49:37):
your own and always with us on the Connected Table,
follow us on the Connected Table on Instagram, follow our blog,
The Connected Table, and always stay insatiably curious.
Speaker 3 (49:47):
Thank you a
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