Ed Levine's Serious Diet, Week 9: Vacation Eating

Posted by Ed Levine, March 6, 2008 at 8:30 AM

Traveling makes me anxious, so I usually end up unconsciously eating a lot when we go away.

In San Francisco or Paris or Chicago this can cause me to go on binges. I make up lists of foods and places I want to try and then do my best to check off every place on the list. I convince myself that, since there's no guarantee I will return to a city, I must try everything. No matter if it takes eating half a dozen meals a day.

But in Lisbon, it turns out that it's hard to compile a list of places and foods I absolutely must try. In fact, it turns out that in Lisbon it's hard to find much of anything delicious. The city is beautiful and the people are incredibly friendly, but even armed with advice from many serious eaters and from three thick guidebooks, we haven't had one meal here that I can unequivocally say I would come back for. Now I know it's difficult to condemn the food of any large city after being there three days, but consider the evidence.

Downhill from Day One

Day one was probably the highlight. We had lunch at a little snack bar right around the corner from our fabulous hotel, the Britania. The owner gestured for us to walk with him to the back, where there were three tables. When we sat down, he brought us plates of Serra cheese, olives, and pata negra. They were all delicious, and later we discovered that this is typical of what happens in Lisbon restaurants—but unlike the other places we went to, he didn't charge for something that was brought to us unasked. We had grilled pork with bacon, steak with ham and cheese on top, and sautéed pork, served with fried potatoes and rice. Good honest peasant food, and I thought it boded well for the rest of the trip.

We then took a streetcar to the city's most famous bakery. It served these addictive, warm, eggy four-bite custard tarts called pastéis de Belém, also known as pastel de nata. They were terrific sprinkled with powdered sugar and cinnamon, and every table in the huge place had ordered them. I ordered ten to go, but it turns out they don't keep all that well. The pork and fries meal and the little tarts turned out to be two of the three food highlights of our stay in Lisbon. That just about says it all about eating in Lisbon.

On a Mission for the Delicious

Throughout the next two days I searched high and low for signs of deliciousness. I stopped in ten pastry shops, only to find myself disappointed every time. Our lunches and dinners were filled with heavy, not very tasty food that was obviously tipico and just as obviously tired and uninspired. Most of the food in Lisbon had clearly remained unchanged for a hundred years. Most restaurants still had chocolate mousse and even crêpes suzette on the dessert menu.

The last day we were in Lisbon I came across a line of half a dozen people waiting for a bakery to reopen at 5 p.m. I took the line to be a good sign, so I queued up and ended up ordering a loaf of bread that was crusty on the outside and tender on the inside, the first Portuguese bread we tried worth the calories and the carbs. It was incredibly toothsome and delicious and not to be found in any guidebook or on any list by any concierge.

So you might think that in a food-challenged town like Lisbon, I might lose a pound or two on vacation. But I'm still an anxious traveler, so I fear I have been doing too much unconscious eating. I toyed with the idea of bringing my scale, but then I decided that was silly. So we'll have to wait until we return to the States for me to weigh in. In the meantime, we're driving to Seville, the city of tapas and flamenco. I can't wait, because I'm sure I'll find more than three delicious bites there.

The little tarts can be found at

Antiga Confeitaria de Belem
Address: 84-92 Rua de Belem
Phone: 21 363 7423

The phenomenal bread can be found at

Panificacao Das Merces
Address: 12-14 Tv. das Merces
Phone: 213 210 748

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Tags: Antiga Confeitaria de Belem, Ed Levine's Serious Diet, Lisbon, Panifacacao Das Merces, Portugal, vacations