Day Five: Taste of Lisboa Walking Tour

We start at a little meat shop where 16 people are trying to stay under the awning while the tour guide tells us about “pata negra” which are the black pigs that make my beloved Jamon Iberico. We are given a small glass of wine, bread, olive oil, cheese, and jamon! When they say “don’t be shy” you know I am the first to get my chubby little hands on some bread!

Next stop we get to try a cod fish cake with tomato rice. The salted cod that they use here comes salted and dried and then they soak them in water for 24 hours or more depending on how thick the fish is. This tapa is the cod fish mixed with mashed potato and deep fried. This was accompanied by a rice that was in a watery tomato broth and a glass of vinho verde.

Next stop on the tour was our favorite: a bifana! I don’t know how I’ve been to this city three times and never had this! I love a pork sandwich!

This pork was perfect and the bread was so soft and fluffy and we topped it with piri piri sauce (super spicy!) and honey mustard. It was amazing, we want bifana all the time now.

After that we walked a bit and stopped into a tiny little bar for a shot of ginjia- a sour Cherry liquor that is very popular here. It started raining super hard, luckily just in time to step in to the tent of the next restaurant. The tour guide told us all about the spice trade and how Indian food and spices were brought to Portugal.

We had a beef and vegetarian samosa each with a glass of wine. Basically empanadas with crunchier outsides. The vegetarian one was mostly cheese and corn and squash.

Final stop was for espresso and pastel de nata. This pastry is everywhere and this bakery in particular was very yummy.

Three hours, six stops, lots of rain, and we were ready to go back to the hotel, get out of wet shoes, and chill with some wine.