Lisbon with Pats

03/03/2025

Portugal Shines with Eight New One-Star Restaurants 🇵🇹

From the eight restaurants newly awarded a MICHELIN Star to the brand-new Bib Gourmands, discover everything you need to know about The MICHELIN Guide Portugal...

28/02/2025

👉 The Knife Sharpener and his Flute

For many centuries, generation upon generation of Lisbon street vendors lived almost exclusively on products sold in the streets. Way before Amazon and the supermarkets began home deliveries, innumerable peddlers populated the streets all over the city, hawking all the products needed for daily life: water, milk, fish, fruit, vegetables, olive oil, paraffin, coal, shirts, caps and scarves, shoes, knives, vases, chairs, lampshades amongst many others.

Each type of vendor had their unique cry or call announcing their arrival on the street and many of them were also sung. Wonderfully, the beautiful pipe sound of the knife sharpeners of Lisbon still remains, offering the sharpening from kitchen knives, sewing or pruning scissors, pans to other cutting objects, as well as repairing umbrellas.

Always love the chance of seeing one in the flesh and listening to its distinctive tune!!! 😊

25/02/2025

24/02/2025

👉 The Statue of Our Lady that blessed the navigators in the Chapel offered by the Wealthy Sugar Merchant

This beautiful church is a gem in the Lisbon church panorama.
Hidden in a very central location, not only gathers the heritage of a late 1400s church, namely the statue of Our Lady of Restelo, before which the navigators Vasco da Gama and Pedro Álvares Cabral prayed before their long sea voyages, as well as a Renaissance chapel of the Holy Spirit ordered to be built in the late 1500s by Simoa Godinho, natural of the island of São Tomé, a wealthy and powerful black lady of 1500s Lisbon society.

Nowadays, it’s a precious church that surprises by all its wonderful details from late Gothic to Renaissance to Baroque!

22/02/2025

👉 The Faithful Friend

Salt Cod is an obsession in Portugal and it has, since long time, played an important role in the Portuguese history and culture.

In the late 1400s, Portuguese fishermen set sail around Newfoundland to fish for cod. During the Age of Discovery, when Portuguese ships set sail for remote corners of the world, salt cod was loaded into the ships as a precious, lightweight and easy to store source of protein that would sustain a crew on their long sea voyages.

Portugal loves fish and despite being a small country, it’s the third in the world – behind Iceland and Japan – in fish consumption; consuming almost 62 kg per person every year! Guess which fish is the favourite one? Salt Cod, of course.

Often referred as the “faithful friend”, the country is extremely loyal in return to Salt Cod having more than 1000 ways to cook it! 🐟

19/02/2025

Europe's Best Pastries not to miss.

Which one to try first? Second to none the delicious 'Pastel de Belém' or 'Nata' simply. 😋

Europe has a wide variety of pastries to offer. Each country has its own traditions and recipes. We present five European pastry highlights that you should d...

17/02/2025

👉 The Nuns and the Monks Sweet Treats

Portugal’s nuns and monks pioneered the country’s sweets starting in the 15th century, when Portugal dominated global trade routes, including the spice trade, and the colonial sugar industry boomed.

It’s impossible to understand Portuguese conventual sweets without knowing about the history of the country’s convents. In the eighth century, the Arabs invaded the Iberian Peninsula, bringing with them almonds, nuts, and their prodigious culture of sweets.

After crusaders retook the territory, Roman Catholic nuns built on this foundation, and when sugar was introduced to Portugal in the 1400s, the sisters started mixing it with egg yolk (often left over from using the whites when ironing noblemen’s elegant clothes), flour, and almonds, establishing the basic ingredients of convent sweets.

Over centuries, the sisters and monks, with time on their hands and needing extra sources of revenue, created a dazzling variety of earthly temptations that not only had a functional purpose but delightful effect ones as well.

They showed creativity not only with the recipes, but with their outstanding names (that would make a heavily sinner blush): barrigas-de-freira (nun’s belly), “bom bocado” (tasty little moment), “maminhas-de-freira” (nun’s little bo***es), a white cream cake, shaped like a breast, with a touch of caramel and a red berry on top, to give the shape and dark tone of the nipple's peak and ar**la - or even the blunt “parrameiros” (literally women’s private parts).

This tradition started to fade in the 1800s, after Napoleonic invasions and civil war introduced egalitarian and anti-clerical ideals. Convent sweets endured in popular culture though, and bakeries made altered versions of popular sweets such “castanhas de ovos” (egg chestnuts) or “bolo paraíso” (paradise cake). Then as now, these pastries remain incredibly popular across Portugal and are frequently designated as “regional sweets”. A heavenly pleasure! 😋

14/02/2025

👉 A Lisbon Ritual. Saúde!

Let’s make a toast to the one of the favourites drinks of the Lisboans, a true Lisbon and Western Region (Região Oeste in Portuguese) staple. Ginjinha Portuguesa, also known simply as ginjinha (literally little sour cherry), is a traditional liqueur made from ginjas, a type of sour cherry, deeply rooted in Portugal, particularly in Lisbon and the Óbidos and Alcobaça regions.

It’s not unusual to start your day (and some of the dedicated stalls selling this drink open quite early, as early as 8.30am) with a Ginjinha. Any occasion is worth a toast with this precious sour cherry liqueur!

From the conventual recipe, attributed to the Cistercian monks, who created and improved the formula for cherry liqueur, macerating sour cherries in brandy, adding sugar, water and other secret ingredients, like cinnamon or cloves, to add complexity and richness to the flavour, this sweet, fruity liqueur quickly won over the locals.

During Renaissance the drink left the strongholds of religious orders and reached the wealthy nobility, reaching the Portuguese Court, where a cherry liqueur was born, prepared in the Royal Kitchen in Óbidos (Western Region), in 1677. Soon, it became the drink of toasts and gatherings of the nobility, the bourgeoisie, poets, fado singers, bon vivants and the working class, being appreciated by all, democratically, in cafés and taverns, transforming itself into the secular tradition that it is today.

Over the centuries, this traditional liqueur has remained a constant presence in Lisbon's cafés and taverns, where it is often served in small glasses (like shots) with one or two sour cherries at the bottom. Its popularity has spread to other regions of Portugal, but Lisbon and Óbidos continue to be the epicentres of this iconic drink.

It can be consumed as an aperitif or digestive, at any time of the day or night. Either because you are meeting your friends for a concert, a dinner or a lunch, a theatre play or simply as an energy boost, you might not want to miss a toast. Cheers or, as we say in Portuguese, Saúde! 🍷

Thank you for the photo, Dianne. ❤️

Thank you for the theme suggestion, James. 🙏🍷

12/02/2025

Antonio Salazar: The Dictator Who Held Power in Portugal for 40 Years

Delve into the intriguing life of António de Oliveira Salazar, the enigmatic leader behind Portugal's Estado Novo regime. Uncover the complexities of his 40-...

10/02/2025

Exploring 5 hidden Portuguese castles (the last one is not really a castle but well worth a visit)

Portugal's rugged coastline and sun-soaked plains are dotted with over 150 castles, each a silent sentinel to centuries of conquest and reconquest. While iconic fortresses like Lisbon's São Jorge Castle draw throngs of visitors, a treasure trove of underrated castles lies waiting to be discovered. ...

08/02/2025

Something for the Weekend. Lively colours of Lisbon. 💛💙

05/02/2025

👉 The drinks of Lisbon

For much of Lisbon’s history, fresh water was difficult to obtain. How is this possible, you may ask, considering the River Tagus runs through the city?The tides are the cause. The sea enters the estuary of the river with low or high tides, making the water brackish.

There were few wells and fountains and transporting potable water over the hilly terrain proved difficult—although partially melted ice was occasionally brought down from the mountains of central Portugal, flavoured with lemon, and eaten on hot days.

Perhaps because of its scarcity, water was, quite possibly, the favourite beverage of the Lisboans. To cleanse their palates during banquets, both men and women preferred a glass of água to any other liquid. Although beer and wine were both readily available, the Portuguese generally abstained from heavy drinking.

In the 17th and 18th century, some Portuguese nobles had taken on the habit of the British and drank tea all day - though, interestingly, that practice first became popular in the British Isles after Charles II’s 1662 marriage to Portugal’s Catherine of Braganza, who drank tea imported from Macau.

By the middle of the 18th century, Port and Madeira, another fortified wine produced exclusively on the Portuguese archipelago of that name, had become popular alcoholic beverages not only in Lisbon but also in Britain and its North American colonies.

Then as now, wine, Port and Madeira are still popular drinks in Lisbon, especially when consumed socially! 🥂

03/02/2025

The Best (and Affordable) Places to Eat in Lisbon according to Travel + Leisure

These neighborhood dining spots in Lisbon, Portugal, are cheap, cheerful, and delicious.

01/02/2025

Lisbon has so many glazed tiles (azulejos) to discover... Jump in! 💙

30/01/2025

Portugal's Carnation Revolution of 1974 explained

Explore the remarkable story of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, one of Europe's most peaceful yet pivotal moments in history. Join us on a journey thro...