We will travel to Portugal this summer and are looking for restaurant (dinner) recommendations - we are interested in high-end and small mom-n-pop places and everything in between. Anybody with recommendations for good restaurants in Lisbon ?
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Ramiro & Prado.
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A second thumbs up to Prado.
And a strong vote for O Frade in Belém. Cuisine from the Alentejo region.
The gastronomic blog, Mesa Marcada, proclaimed JoĂŁo Rodrigues of Canalha as top chef of the year and his restaurant number one in Portugal.
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Canalha also is distinguished by the Michelin guide as a Bib Gourmand.
O Frade
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I loved Ramiro!! Top quality, unadorned seafoodâŠseveral types of shrimp including carabineros. We did have dinner at Belcanto; I had tried to book but had no luck but the hotel managed to find us a table last minute.
Itâs lovely, delicious and with beautiful plating, but we had more fun at Ramiroâdifferent ends of the spectrum. Iâd return to Belcanto, though, and order a la carte. And would certainly return to Ramiro. They seated us upstairs which is quieter (they seem to put a lot of foreigners up there) but I think the ground floor, with all the action, is a better place to sit.
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I enjoyed Ramiro as well until the very endâŠwhen the waiter suggested that we add a tip to our final bill on his tablet because âservice wasnât includedâ. I donât know whether or not management now orders the wait staff to do this, but we declined and instead left a small tip in change at the table.
Maybe the Bourdain effect???..we were placed at the enclosed terrace along with most foreigners, perhaps because the waiters assigned to the terrace spoke excellent English.
We ordered the shrimp in garlic sauce (gambas al ajillo), accompanied by their wonderful buttered bread (PĂŁo torrado com manteiga) to soak up the sauce, their clams (AmĂȘijoa BulhĂŁo Pato) and scarlet prawns (carabineiros), along with a bottle of Quinta Soalheiro from the Minho, âthe best wine at the best priceâ, proclaimed our waiter.
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I still dream of those scarlet prawns!
@honkman
If you check www.guiarepsol.com on April 7, after the first ever Repsol Gala awards are held in SantarĂ©m, you can see to which Lisbon & Porto restaurants the Repsol inspectors have awarded a Sol (the Repsol guideâs âsolâ is the Iberian homemade alternative to the Michelin star).
This guide, which used to be called Campsa, originally recommended restaurants in both countries, but when it became the Repsol guide, they removed the Portuguese recommendations. We used to carry the Campsa guide around with us when exploring both countries. Now the Repsol guide is online and has an app.
It was announced at this yearâs Repsol Gala in Tenerife last Monday, that Repsol Portugal would have its own distinct dining guide (like the new red Michelin exclusively for Portugal). Iâm interested to see which Lisbon and Porto restaurants will be designated with a Sol.
Rumor has it that Belcanto and Alma will most likely be awarded with a sun, as they both sport two Michelin stars. Both have a la carte options.
Marleneâs eponymous restaurant, now with a Michelin star, is another contender (tasting menu only). Her casual spot, which we enjoyed, is Zum Zum Gastro Bar.
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@honkman
For casual in Lisbon, look at this thread with reports by Ziggy and others
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Shortcut to my Lisbon report
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We also liked Tapisco as a Spanish-Portuguese hybrid, tapas/petiscos. Weâve gone twice.
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I like A Marisqueira do Lis, which is frequented by locals.
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Canalha was our favorite on the recent trip, especially the whole sole fish.
Also tried Lupita for pizza when we were in that neighborhood. It was good but not worth waiting around for. We and the table next to us all had most of the crusts left over - never a good sign. The more adventurous toppings are worth a try, but the margherita was only ok.
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Is this a European practice? In every European country where weâve had pizza (and we eat a lot of pizza while traveling), we noticed that Europeans always (1) eat pizza with knife and fork (which I know is a European thing), and (2) leave the crusts/cornices, which kinda astounds us as frugal/clean your plate kind of Yankees, especially when the crust is good
Weâve seen this all over Northern Europe, Portugal/Azores, Canaries, back home in the US, when seated near Europeans.
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I canât speak for all of Europe, but if the âbonesâ of a pizza pie are left, thatâs a sign of a mediocre pizza crust to me. I will leave the bones if the crust isnât great.
Iâve also seen this in the US done by Americans, so I donât think itâs exclusively a âEuropeanâ thing.
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Canât speak for others, but we didnât finish the crusts because they werenât all that good, as linguafood suspected below. And we usually do eat most of it at spots like LâAntica Pizzeria Da Michele and Songâ E Napule in NYC.
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When you get a slice at a NYC street pizza joint, youâve probably been walking around the city and touching things for hours beforehand. The crust is a âhandleâ that you can sacrifice.
I can hardly imagine not eating the crust/corniche of a pizza, especially one with a wonderful tender and charred neapolitan type crust but a lot of people are not that into bread, cutting back on it, or maybe, in the case of tourists so used to the cardboard they are served in their home places that the never will taste it in the first place. Ignoramuses! European may be too much of a generalization, for all I know Brits and other northern europeans may be standard pizza as bad as the US/Canada and have developed the same bad habits. I cant say I have seen this behavior in Italy however.
âŠwhich is a crust I would eat, bones and all. The pizze I am referring to do not have that quality, and in that case I wonât waste calories. I love good food too much to waste calories on subpar or mediocre food 
