Food Trends

A flaky puff-pastry cup filled with silky egg custard, baked fierce and fast until the top blisters and caramelises. Dusted with cinnamon and eaten warm with a bica coffee, it is Lisbon's edible icon — and impossible to stop at one.

Shredded salt cod folded through onions, matchstick fried potatoes and softly scrambled egg, finished with black olives and parsley. One of Portugal's countless cod dishes and the most comforting — proof of a nation's centuries-long love affair with bacalhau.

Plump sardines salted and grilled over charcoal until the skin chars, served on broa bread with roasted peppers. The smell fills Lisbon's alleys during the June festas, when the whole city eats them by the fistful with cold vinho verde.

Thin slices of pork marinated in garlic, white wine and paprika, simmered until tender and stuffed into a crusty roll with a smear of mustard or piri-piri. Lisbon's great fast-food sandwich, best from a tiny tasca standing at the counter.

A soothing green soup of puréed potato and finely shredded kale, poured over slices of smoky chouriço and a thread of olive oil. Humble, warming and served everywhere from home kitchens to festivals — Portugal's soul in a bowl.

Small clams steamed open in a fragrant broth of garlic, coriander, white wine and olive oil, served with bread to soak up every drop. Simple, briny and utterly Lisbon — a dish to linger over with a glass of white.

A soupy, tomato-rich rice loaded with prawns, clams, crab and whatever the day's catch brings, brightened with coriander. Served bubbling in the pot for the whole table, it is Portugal's answer to a seafood feast.

Butterflied chicken grilled over charcoal and basted with fiery piri-piri chilli sauce until the skin is lacquered and smoky. A dish carried home from Portugal's former colonies and now beloved across Lisbon, served with fries and a cold beer.

Golden croquettes of salt cod, potato and parsley, deep-fried until crisp outside and fluffy within. Sold in every pastelaria and snack bar, sometimes stuffed with a nugget of Serra cheese — Lisbon's favourite savoury bite.

A sweet sour-cherry liqueur poured into a tiny cup — with or without a boozy cherry at the bottom — and knocked back at hole-in-the-wall bars around Rossio. Not quite a dish but a ritual: Lisbon's traditional way to toast the afternoon.